In response to Murrawhip
Yeah thanks for that :) i was wondering why no one mentioned that.

I've seen people turn their games into .Exe files upload the link to download and then... There's no need to have Byond to play!
In response to Moonlight Memento
Moonlight Memento wrote:
They've been kind with WHAT? Forcing us to pay 24$ for a feature that was free? There was NO need for that. Listing being members only was enough. Let alone RAISING THE PRICE.

Oh wait, I'm going against the hive mind, I must just be whining as usual according to you geniuses. Because hey, a hive mind knows more than ANYONE, right?

You are whining.

They're now charging you for something THEY create and THEY host to use with software they allow you FREE use while they work to give you it all.

The fact stands that it's not YOUR platform, it is theirs. You do not pay the upkeep for BYOND (because you're too busy whining about the cost of a membership and its features), nor do you run the business, so at the end of the day, what you say DOES NOT MATTER. Get it through your head.

You can cry all day about being charged for one feature, but nobody really gives a crap. It's done, and it's going to stay how it was changed to be.

Game over, you still lose, whether you reply again or not.
One thing I'm curious about is why the forum link from the hub info was removed. I understand that hubs feature a discussion tab now, and the feature/bug tracker is very useful, but I'd still appreciate the option to point people to my own forum instead.

EDIT: I also can't seem to moderate the forums' posts, which seems like it'd be sort of necessary.
In response to Devourer Of Souls
Devourer Of Souls wrote:
One thing I'm curious about is why the forum link from the hub info was removed. I understand that hubs feature a discussion tab now, and the feature/bug tracker is very useful, but I'd still appreciate the option to point people to my own forum instead.

Agreeing with this.
Why complain about introducing a cost to creating hubs? Tom is still providing a far cheaper solution than other companies that expect $49-$99 (some might charge even more) to even have any developer access. $24 is actually a generous amount compared to what I stated.

I know how it feels to lose the ability to create hubs under no membership, but money does need to be made somewhere. There are still ways to distribute or host projects regardless of no hub.
I absolutely love it all!

Sure, it's different but it's a helluva lot cleaner and as you guys planned, "centralized". Looks great. Keep it up, guys.
Also, thanks for fixing my login issue, Tom.

EDIT: Were featured games removed?
What the hell Tom. I'm gone for 2 years and you break the whole site!

/sarcasm of course.
In response to Moonlight Memento
I am sorry to burst your little bubble, Memento, but in no way is any part of the BYOND website or software some divine right of yours. It is a privilege. I don't care what reasoning Tom has behind doing anything. It's his website. Not yours.
If someone is so against having to package their game, make their own website, and advertise it without BYOND having to spoon feed them... then they can cough up $24. Simple.

BYOND isn't a right. It's a privilege.

And, to the people that say they can't afford $24, that's bullshit. You can earn $24 online in less than a week and all you need is a PayPal (and you don't even need a bank card to make one of those).

There are no excuses. Support the project or put in some extra effort to advertise your game.
I think this goes without saying, but if my posts are being so "offensive" they get deleted, why are their posts not?

You need to spend 24$ to have a shot at advertising. Which, around here, rarely works.

24$ you aren't going to make back either. If I have to spend money to make my project useful I'd rather it be in a powerful engine.
Hmm. This will take some time getting used to, but i think it looks great, and will be a better experience down the road. Good job, although i do agree that the place could use some color, just to boost the overall aesthetics of the site.
In response to Moonlight Memento
Moonlight Memento wrote:
"Your logic is flawed. BYOND hubs are not a requirement for advertisement. As others have mentioned, you can do this all on your own website. Now that a Flash client is going to be available, you could technically have people playing your games without even knowing exactly what BYOND is. At least some percentage of BYOND gamers might not even know what a BYOND hub is.

You do not need the BYOND hub to make a successful game."

A Flash player? That will likely require some Flash knowledge. Oh yeah. It also requires me wanting to make my game browser-based, hoping it works with all browsers... yeaaah.

No, it will not require knowledge of flash. And since flash is a browser plugin, it does not require you to do anything to make it work across browsers.

Keep going though, your ignorance is really welcome here.

It was free for 11 years. Why did it need to become pay to use?

To be sustainable.

Again, because you people can't read: To market a product, you don't take features away from the FREE version of the product and tack it onto the paid one. That's not marketing.

Could you please let me know where you received your degree in marketing? What do you know about how to market a product? Have you ever run a business with a client base the size of BYOND? Have you analyzed the risk/reward in expanding that client base?


Advertising a BYOND game? Hardly. I have to advertise the software, and the annoying methods of joining without the hub... at that point, get something that doesn't look like complete spyware and takes forever to play one game. Like the whole Open Location bull.

Actually you don't, but again, you're not only ignorant, you're too lazy to do any research. BYOND allows you to create a self extracting archive that will autojoin to any location you would like, as a guest, even. With this, you can disable client authentication and you don't even need BYOND keys. There is no 'install BYOND, make a key, open the pager, go to open location, type an address', there is only 'Make your game installer, distribute'.


Here is it again for people who can't read.
To market a product, you don't take features away from the FREE version of the product and tack it onto the paid one. That's not marketing.

Ever consider that you are the one being thick here?
So you mean with all the memberships, BYOND was actually going downhill? Pretty different from Tom's say just a year ago.

The installer still requires BYOND to be or to get installed. It's wholly pointless. Until that can be bypassed it's not good at all. Game Maker can do it, why can't BYOND? Maybe that would be a FEATURE people would want to PAY for.

You see, people want to pay for features, not to retain what they had for like 11 years.

"Could you please let me know where you received your degree in marketing? What do you know about how to market a product? Have you ever run a business with a client base the size of BYOND? Have you analyzed the risk/reward in expanding that client base?"

That wasn't ignorant for sure. I know justice isn't going to be handed out here so I don't know why I bother.

Keep the hubs this way, not like I've really looked far into developing on BYOND in the last two years anyway.

In response to Moonlight Memento
Moonlight Memento wrote:
So you mean with all the memberships, BYOND was actually going downhill? Pretty different from Tom's say just a year ago.

The installer still requires BYOND to be or to get installed. It's wholly pointless. Until that can be bypassed it's not good at all. Game Maker can do it, why can't BYOND? Maybe that would be a FEATURE people would want to PAY for.


Here's a thought... the installer... uh... installs uh... hmm... what do installers do...


Oh, right. The installer installs your game and the portable BYOND, seamlessly and without the user even knowing, at the same time. I know, it's hard to comprehend, but technology is pretty amazing these days. Then, your game executable, made with Dream Maker's packaging tool, will auto connect to the location of your choice when run.

I know you need the help, so let's reiterate:
Installer installs everything the user needs seamlessly, just like any other program or game.
When game is run, the client opens and does not prompt for a "BYOND login". Your game has complete control.



In response to Moonlight Memento
So what was all the arguing for?
So were featured games removed altogether?
Seems like a feature that will be missed.
In response to Moonlight Memento
Moonlight Memento wrote:
Now that a Flash client is going to be available, you could technically have people playing your games without even knowing exactly what BYOND is. At least some percentage of BYOND gamers might not even know what a BYOND hub is.

Not entirely, BYOND still has watermarking. It's not as bad as the watermarking in the free version of Game Maker, but at least their paid version removes all of it while adding a bunch of nice features.

From what I understand players using the Flash client will be forced to look at ads while our games load. It's also going to be housed here on the BYOND website exclusively, essentially making it a paid-only feature related to hub entries.

Airjoe wrote:
Here's a thought... the installer... uh... installs uh... hmm... what do installers do...

Oh, right. The installer installs your game and the portable BYOND, seamlessly and without the user even knowing, at the same time. I know, it's hard to comprehend, but technology is pretty amazing these days. Then, your game executable, made with Dream Maker's packaging tool, will auto connect to the location of your choice when run.

Actually BYOND's Make EXE function is pretty broken and I've always been quite vocal about it. BYOND isn't able to create a single, stand-alone executable for your game. Instead it creates an online installer pointed at your hub page. You can use certain commands to execute a local dmb, but depending on whether or not the user has BYOND installed the game will not even boot because of issues with the pager. Don't forget even with the portable version of BYOND you're still dealing with a bunch of files rather than a single executable.
In response to SuperAntx
SuperAntx wrote:
Actually BYOND's Make EXE function is pretty broken and I've always been quite vocal about it. BYOND isn't able to create a single, stand-alone executable for your game. Instead it creates an online installer pointed at your hub page. You can use certain commands to execute a local dmb, but depending on whether or not the user has BYOND installed the game will not even boot because of issues with the pager. Don't forget even with the portable version of BYOND you're still dealing with a bunch of files rather than a single executable.

I was referring to the portable version of BYOND, and I fail to understand why having "a bunch of files rather than a single executable" is a problem. When was the last time you saw a game run out of a single executable? Programs have dependencies. Hell, half of the games on Steam install entirely different versions of the Microsoft Visual C++ runtime environment!

Use the make exe functionality, the portable version of BYOND, like done in this post, and then wrap it all in an NSIS installer and you're good to go. Would it be cool if BYOND integrated with NSIS or something like it, sure, but it's not a difficult thing to do yourself. Let's no cater to the lowest common denominator, here.
In response to SuperAntx
Actually BYOND's Make EXE function is pretty broken and I've always been quite vocal about it. BYOND isn't able to create a single, stand-alone executable for your game. Instead it creates an online installer pointed at your hub page. You can use certain commands to execute a local dmb, but depending on whether or not the user has BYOND installed the game will not even boot because of issues with the pager. Don't forget even with the portable version of BYOND you're still dealing with a bunch of files rather than a single executable.


I don't think having more files than just a single executable isn't a problem at all. If you look at Dwarf Fortress, a very VERY successful indie game, their download has like 5 folders full of hundreds of files that the game uses and no one seems to be complaining about it.
In response to SuperAntx
SuperAntx wrote:
From what I understand players using the Flash client will be forced to look at ads while our games load. It's also going to be housed here on the BYOND website exclusively, essentially making it a paid-only feature related to hub entries.

That's all still up in the air. We'll probably have the Flash games on the site at first, but we definitely have plans to expand off site since one of the points to all this is to allow BYOND games to be played from portals like Kongregate and even Facebook.

Also, we're working on a much better standalone system for games. We just have to make sure we don't get cut out of the equation entirely.

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