Fugsnarf wrote:

Now, I'm red-green colorblind, so I can't tell exactly what color you use in the current one;

It's blue =)!!! First time in my life I got to tell someone who is color blind what a color was. This is oddly exciting!

Dpheonix7 wrote:

I know you are trying to filter rip games. What if a group does not like a certain game and they all go and tag as a rip, is there a way to make sure if a game is tagged as a rip or original that it is the proper tag for it?

You should have more faith in the moderators than that. They're not going to band together and deliberately classify something as a rip when it isn't. That'd just be cold, and their peers would turn on them faster than cheese melts in a pre-heated oven.

Of course, it's more than possible that something might slip through the cracks and be accidentally mis-tagged, but a support ticket would probably see that fixed up quick-smart.

--

Diggin' all these changes by the way. Love the new layout, love the flash client, neither here-nor-there about the web-pager, but still, kick-ass.

http://i1083.photobucket.com/albums/j396/HowTheHeathenRages/ Fixed.png?t=1293498573

Reasoning:
Now, though you may be wondering:
Wtf, why did he remove the Ads box?

Well, I believe that if you show confidence as in: We don't need no ads for money, we GOT money!
Then newcomers will think "Wow, BYOND is so freaking legit that it doesn't need ads, this is definitely worth investing time into if the developers are practically RIDING Membership money!"

It will also provide the site with tons of space for extra things such as: a hit counter, a chat so that newcomers can keep in touch with each other:

"Guest 1: dude, this site is so freaking legit, I cnt wait 2 make an account!
Guest 2(Secretly an Admin): y not make one now?
Guest 1: i wanna talk 2 my friends guest 3 and 4.
Guest 3: hi
Guest 4: yeah besides we dont know how to make games so were gonna wait until there's a free tutorial guide or something
Guest 2: oh well go to <insert tutorial link> and it teaches u how i tihnk
Guest 4: yea in a sec let us finish talking.
"
With all the extra space, and legitimacy there's room for thought and there will be additional cash flow.

(If you've reached this part of the post there's no need to read on)

As for the less important change, it's to keep newcomers from being let down by lack originality

Thanks for responding, Tom! Allow me to disagree with you on a few points.

Tom wrote:

Toadfish wrote:

A hub is almost useless if it isn't listed somewhere. One of BYOND's appeals is a shared playerbase, which is only possible because of the hub (listing) system.

There's no reason that people can't advertise their hub entries to the outside world; in fact, we need this for BYOND to grow. Also, a player on an unlisted hub still broadcasts his location to his friends. Judging by our traffic numbers, it seems that most users don't even go through the website to play games (which actually hurts us since that is where our revenue is derived).

But this and being listed on BYOND are not mutually exclusive. And also, since we're already listing the "good games", going by this logic, the new system actually gives their authors less incentive to advertise their games than authors of bad games. If anything, it's the original games that are capable of getting an audience from the outside, not rips.

The problem with the current situation is that it is self-perpetuating; Anime developers have no problem getting players because they can just broadcast their game to the existing base. Other developers thus get lost in the mix, and we never bring in any new kinds of gamers. The idea here is to promote original games and try to give BYOND a more mainstream appeal.

The new site currently doesn't have a mechanism to search unlisted games, but that's something we can consider. I'm on the fence because I think that it may negate some of the benefits of the proposed system.

Like I said, I think promoting good games by harming the bad ones is not the best way to go about this. Many of our best developers started as rippers; it's possible they wouldn't have become interested in BYOND in the first place, were it not for those rips.

Isn't the published/unpublished system enough to promote good games? Why is there a need to not list bad games in the first place? I can only see this causing problems. Hiding bad games does little to promote creating better games (especially because history shows almost every new good developer started with a rip or a bad game). I don't think it's the way to go about this.

That said, I agree with the general notion. Anime games don't need more attention than they already get. Promoting non-anime games seems to me like a very sound decision. I just take issue with the way it's done.

Allow me to also state that I never quite understood the idea of "getting rid of rips". I will talk about this in my blog.

It's a pretty simple idea which has been debated to death already.

I'll sum it all up by saying rips are a deterrent to original and innovative creations. There's little incentive to learn DM and create a quality product when you can just download a source, slap your name on it, then enjoy tons regular players with a portion of them willing to "donate" towards your 15 minutes of work.

EnigmaticGallivanter wrote:

Red-Green colorblind can usually see Blue... At least Mark Zuckerberg can.

Seeing is not necessarily believing when a person is red-green colorblind, at least in my case. Even though I can literally see the color and it isn't mixing with other colors or looking like something else altogether, I can't tell you a lot of times exactly what the color is. Case in point, I never learned my colors very well because of my colorblindness when I was younger. Essentially, I'm "color-challenged", if you will.

Nightmare3 wrote:

Will currently hub pages go through any scrutiny as the update is released? Do you have to hold BYOND membership in order to keep your hub page public or is it a one time payment sort of thing?

From what I can see and what I've heard, I don't believe the new site does anything to the accessibility of hubs. The only thing done to the hubs themselves has been a nice make-over.

I have enjoyed supporting Byond since I have joined, but a small question irks me
how hard is it and is it possible right now for byond to be coded on the android platform?

If the flash client releases, it will be playable via site on android versions 2.2+