In response to Jittai
Jittai wrote:
Byond's average standards are really low imo. Even with original games, developers should be striving to be better than everyone else. And upon defeating them absorb their immortal power. There can only be one.

^^ lol.
Que lightning strikes and tremors.
In response to Dark-DVF
Dark-DVF wrote:
You don't have a scanner? You have to buy one before buying memberships

I think buying memberships is more important than buying a scanner. >:D
Dariuc, I must say. Your game is very vast and has a lot of features. But the voices are kinda of.. it makes me shiver. Lol. And their heads are big. But I love the fact that you have a crap load of stuff in it. I could definitely get in to your game if I played for a while.

With that being said, I think graphics and good sound only opens up the door for people to like your game more QUICKER is all. But without good gameplay, the players will leave just as quick your graphics got them to stay.
In response to Xirre
All the art for my game was done in like 1 -2 months of the development.
Everything else of the 1 yr period was play testing, bug squashing and game play mechanics. I can't sit here and say "everyone" will love the gameplay mechanics.

What I can say is that I'm satisfied with them right now, even though I'm missing a few things I'd like to add to them due to not having an artist to make them-such as ninja-pets.


Edit:
Yes also my sounds suck. That's cuz I have to do them myself and I need to master them.
When I was first adding the custom sounds I made I didn't make them loud enough, so now they just sound less clear. I'll try to work on fixing that.
Lol. When I watched your tutorial.. I cried at the voice.. Sounded like a cheesy movie. But I loved the game when I first tried it. Meh, I think you'll get better either way.

My game still looks like chicken shit anyways lol. I don't want to know what it'd be like if I voiced it XD my voice is deep af.
I agree ... Interesting topic if byond had this way of thinking would'nt be so dead .... [email protected] thats my msn
A
As others have stated, it's best to design your project to appeal to the genre that is being targetted. Ignore the internal market of BYOND because it's tiny and if your game is of a good standard, it's going to be played regardless.
In response to Writing A New One
I disagree with the last part.
There's tons of excellent games that simply never get played, for superficial reasons, or just because the player is too busy focusing on something else.

For instance, space station 13. I've tried the game, wallowed around in it, tried to see what made it so awesome, read the wiki, the faqs, etc. And ultimately I just didn't see why it was that great. I read that it apparently has alot of depth, but being plopped onto a map with no explanation, no build up and no type of story is sort of a major deal breaker for me. Which is sort of one of my points, "real" games don't do that. They always give a small intro, tutorial, or back story to go along with the game.

You could have the world's greatest game, but if it's presented in a way that people aren't used to, for the most part they will simply login, look around, and log out.


I agree with the rest though, I've already scouted my potential market. I was asking so that perhaps I could attempt to affect the mood here, or perhaps trend is a better word. For as many ignorant people that run around trolling on this website, I am grateful for the moderators, their work and the creators of this product.

So I was mostly asking from the standpoint of - how can i introduce the average byondling to something different-- and actually get them to stick around long enough to see that "different" isn't always bad.
In response to Dariuc
One thing I've noticed with people who play BYOND games is they lack... Common sense as far as video games go.

An example, I made a game once, to move you used WASD because the game also made use of the mouse. Someone, who never bothered reading the clearly labeled help section sat there for 30 minutes shouting "HOW I MOVE". As far as PC games go, I am willing to bet for movement WASD is used a lot more than the arrow keys, and to anyone who plays PC games they would have instantly figured this out. But most BYOND players don't.

If you're going to make a BYOND game, you have to design it as if it's being played by retards who've never played a video game in their entire life and who do not understand what the word "help" means.
In response to The Magic Man
Well, you have valid points. -_-

I agree with the WASD thing too.. I've seen it. Someone logged into my game once, was like "how do you move, how do you move" and then when I didn't answer right away they got mad and left.

Of course its WASD,I even had some people insist that they wouldn't play the game anymore unless I change the movement to arrow keys. It's a bit ridiculous so I get where you are coming from.
I'd not bother about users like that, you can find better ones elsewhere.
In response to Stephen001
I'm not looking at them for "me" I'm looking at it as a way to change the climate of this website, and thus expose the current people who visit this site daily to try something different- possibly converting them from their current mentality towards "byond games" to see that "byond games" should be "games" in general.

Personally I planned to just release my game and not even mention anything about it on this site due to past experiences. I had already planned to promote it and look for players elsewhere and I already have a few interested parties and places to visit for that. This post was actually about improving byond's "current situation" in regards to the players that frequent the site rather than me trying to net those players. Talking about it is fine, but stopping there doesn't really fix things so I've been actively taking steps on my own for some months now in my own way to help contribute to changing the "mood" of this community -so to speak.
Ignore them, produce a game that nets a bigger market outside, pull that market in so they are the majority instead. There will be some friction, as there always is with big influxes of users into small communities, but the atmosphere will quickly change.

Space Station 13's own community had a wonderful example of this developmentally when the goons picked up on the game, and the fact it was open source. We went from a scenario where there were 3 useful committers, and a lot of people basically throwing a strop about:

"why XYZ isn't done", "why didn't my genius ideas get implemented by other people", "why is it even open source", "I'm going to fork it and make my own amazing closed source add-on" etc etc

To a situation where the goon fork had 5+ useful committers using branching and other sensible software project techniques, and their main community surrounding it had a very can-do and understanding attitude to the developers, all of a month after they picked it up. We were even getting a bit of help off Slurm to backport some of their fixes on our branch, in spite of the mud-slinging the existing BYOND community were doing at said goons at the time.

All of 3 months later, the whinging BYOND SS13 community were dead in the water and had left/got over themselves, and every server worth a damn was based off the goon fork. The 'vanilla' project hasn't been updated in a good 3 years now, and there is no "BYOND" SS13 community, per-say. I'd be quite happy to be the first to say, the goons were the best thing to happen to SS13 communally and developmentally in many years.

You effect big changes on a community by bringing new people in, in a nutshell.
In response to Stephen001
I understand that. And I've already planned for that.
My point ultimately is that ignoring the existing base, people who consistently use this website on a daily basis might be a mistake as well.

They seem to be only exposed to "x game". When they could just as easily be exposed to "y elements" in x game, and once they have been exposed not only might they insist on seeing more of "xy "game, they might feel inclined to say "hey, this design and set up is kinda dumb. I want one like this."

Then, 500+ anime x games get overhauled, better improvements at the very least and a peek at better ways to handle whatever it is they want to create in the future. Win win. I don't believe that alienating or ignoring anyone will do any good. I get that treatment all the time and all it made me want to do is visit this place less.But hey, if you'd rather I just ignore byond altogether and do my own thing, that's fine too.
Well my point is people is what effects these changes, and bringing in new people effects the biggest changes the quickest.

You bringing in 200 players to mingle with the existing lot effects a bit of a change as some existing BYONDers fit in with that community, and grow within it. Those that don't fit well or actively try to mess things up, you ban ... too bad, nevermind. Many developers bringing in thousands of new gamers will cause other developers to stand up and go "Oh hey, I want in on that", causing them to step up their game ... or die off.

The existing community will either change to suit the new majority and integrate with it, or keep to themselves in their little corner and die off eventually. That's the win/win, and the win/win SS13 had with the goons.

Anything else is politics, pretty much, and that's ordinarily non-sense. You can't pander 3000 13 year olds into being more intellectual, critical, tasteful and self-sufficient gamers.
In response to Stephen001
Ultimately though, I see anywhere from 200- 500+ SS13 users on any any given time- and I don't see how they changed byond all that much community wise, since for the most part they simply login to play SS13.

Don't get me wrong, I completely see your point. I have no plans to actively crusade after anyone that really frequents this place. I do think it's a bit of a waste not to cater to people that visit the website in some way shape or form though. You literally have a huge, untapped audience of people. The easiest way to take advantage of that is to change the way they view gaming. The only way to change the way they view gaming is to expose them to better gaming practices. I doubt the "evolution" method you described will really develop others that much because as you can see, original games don't get the prestige or notoriety they deserve. So who is to say that a person who makes one that is successful will even affect the type of change you are speaking of?

We've had Eternia. Epic, now Epic Legend, and to be honest none of them is pulling anywhere near the types of players as SS13- and that's simply because SS13 is somewhat appealing to not only the outside, but the inside as well.
SS13's pre-goon community couldn't top 50 players online at once. That means at best, 450+ are 'non-BYOND'. In reality, the majority of that 50 tops online left, when the goons started playing. As someone who was the 'community manager' (if you can even use that term) of SS13 during that transition period, I can assure you they effected a massive change in terms of SS13's community, and pace of development, approach to development etc etc.

The same can be leveraged to good effect BYOND-wide, and of course has the benefits of more ad revenue for BYOND, more dontations, memberships etc.

Good competition drives change, in games, developers, and even community attitudes as a whole.
In response to Stephen001
While that's 100% true,there's more than one way to effect a change. Approaching a problem from multiple angles is actually the quickest way to get it solved.
(Which is basically what I'm doing.)
An angle where you pander to a segment acknowledged for their poor taste and odd design expectations, is not an angle for improving their tastes and design expectations.
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