ID:1260432
 
Hi there BYOND people. I hope this is the right place to ask these questions. My name is Jimmy and I have a few elements I would like to incorporate (or in the very least test) in my game. I wanted to see if they were possible to do and get a feel for how difficult they would be to achieve. I am hoping to get an idea of what I need to cut or avoid during development. I am hoping to have my first game built in 2 months. If you are curious I have background in visual basic and sql.

What I have read:
BYOND White Paper
BYOND Game Development Tools
Chapter 1 of the BYOND guide - I am planning on reading the whole thing but I haven't had time to yet as I just started 2 days ago.

Is it possible to achieve the following:

Dynamic Map Building - Can I have players add things in the game and explore their recently added structures. For example add a *precoded/built* room to a castle in a map mode (much like the dream engine does anyways) then allow them to play in the room and go back and forth between adding and removing / moving structures. ie: Simcity

Day / Night - Cycle through day / night. Have elements of the game only take place at night. ie: Don't Starve

Weather Elements - Raining, Snowing. Have weather elements change objects and turfs. If it snowed the grass turf would change to snow. ie: Don't Starve, Minecraft

I think those are the 3 main elements I'm not sure I can achieve based on my initial research / reading of the userguide. Honestly a simple yes / no would be fine, but feel free to elaborate and show me examples of people achieving this with BYOND.

Please note I am willing to do the research and hard work figuring out how to do it if you can point me in a general direction. You won't hurt my feelings if you call me and idiot just be honest.

Thanks for your help!
Short answer: yes.
Welcome to BYOND, WillowtheWizard.

I don't have any examples that I've made regarding what you're asking about, but each of them are possible. Some users have added what you're looking for into their games.

Dynamic Map Building - I'm fairly certain a couple of role-playing games have added something similar to this in their game to give the players more freedom over their role-player experience.

Day / Night Cycle - This used to be rather common in games, and I'd imagine it still is in some of them. This would probably be the easiest of the three.

Weather Elements - I usually only see this with role-playing games, but they do have it where you can see the rain and snow, however a lot of the times they don't change the turfs like you asked about. It can be done, however, so no worries there.

As for the BYOND guide, one of our users (Albro1) has started a series of youtube videos, going over each chapter. If that sounds like something that would interest you, here's a link to the list of videos: link.

Once you get familiar with the language, you'll probably have a general idea on how to get these things going. If you run into any issues, you can always post your problem in Developer Help and someone will most likely assist you.
Thank you lige and vrocaan! This is good news indeed! I'll probably pick the easiest of these game elements to implement and try to put it in my first game. I don't want to get too bogged down with having everything all in my first iteration. Thanks for the tips and links this is excellent! Cheers mate!
In response to Lige
I'm already getting advertised? D'aww, thanks Lige.