In putting together the recent DDT release, I noticed that quite a number of former issues seem to have been satisactorily solved:
The download package concept means that the deadron.com website and publicity messages sent to various lists never need to mention that the game is a client, or that BYOND must be installed.
While I'm very proud of BYOND and go on about it at length to anyone who will listen, I noticed in publicizing Living & Dead that the mention of "you need to go here and install this BYOND system first" meant that most people would never bother trying. Now that people can just download the game and be prompted to download BYOND, this mental barrier is removed. And not a single person has mentioned it to me, or complained that they couldn't get it installed or anything. I think now it just comes across as a step in the install process.
Next, the good old "guest" key issue seems to be mostly solved. My logs have shown a couple of guest logins in past weeks, but the overwhelming majority of people now create keys as desired, where previously maybe 50% or more would log in as guest.
The hub system has done wonders. The logs clearly show that most people who get BYOND for BYOND's sake (that is, download it directly without having a game opener) now are able to find the games, and typically hop to each game and give it a try.
The new insta-hosting is very helpful too. While teaching my friend to program (by creating a program line by line with him using ICQ -- man I wish I'd had this kind of help when I first started C programming 10 years ago or so!), when he compiled the game he could click a single link and I could join by going to the Live page on the website. No setting of options or running a daemon. Quite nice.
So wow...this is a whole different world from even six months ago. Vastly more usable and much more likely to "just work" for the typical user.
A couple of requests to continue this progress:
It might be time to remove the "What's this?" banner from the list. Now that banners are set using the console, and now that we have real players coming in, that thing probably doesn't serve a purpose anymore.
The link for hosting your game is very easy to miss. It comes along with a bunch of status info (much of which I think could be removed) and frequently zips off the page as game content is spewed to the text area, and once the text area is filled it becomes inaccessible. Could we get a button for this or something?
ID:138219
 Jan 25 2001, 10:17 am
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On 1/25/01 1:17 pm Deadron wrote:
The download package concept means that the deadron.com website and publicity messages sent to various lists never need to mention that the game is a client, or that BYOND must be installed. Excellent! Eventually I hope to have a self-extracting EXE to make the process even more brainless. I think you are going to really like the latest addition too. In the next release, you'll be able to upload this distribution zip to your hub site. Users with BYOND installed will then be able to play your game-- locally-- simply by pointing it to a url. It will download, unzip, and connect to it automatically! And since this url will be used as the identifier for your local copy of the game, it will give you a lot of control. For instance, whenever you upgrade the versions, users will automatically be informed (with the ability to upgrade) the moment they play the game. We plan to use this same technology for upgrading BYOND itself. You may be thinking that this is a lot of work for just distributing local downloads, which usually aren't even multiplayer games and thus aren't the focus of the system. But remember, just because a game is run locally doesn't mean that it isn't multiplayer! Over the last few months we've decided that this distributed game concept is really the way to go. BYOND games seem to do quite well when hosted over cable or even 56K, and with the new hub system it is quite trivial to announce and connect to games all over the 'net. So the vision is this: a distributed game might be run on many different machines. When a game is run, the user will be told that there are other "Live!" instances of the same game out there, and they can choose to connect to one of those, or host their own, or simply play in single-player. The user won't even know necessarily where the games are being hosted-- the url will be transparent, which eliminates some security concerns. It should all be pretty slick. The hub system has done wonders. The logs clearly show that most people who get BYOND for BYOND's sake (that is, download it directly without having a game opener) now are able to find the games, and typically hop to each game and give it a try. Great! In the next release the hub will also be available as a list in your pager. That should be handy. A couple of requests to continue this progress: Good point. Will do. And Guy, it's interesting you like the banner; it was created during DantomFest in a moment of desperation (I had a plane to catch) using nothing but Windows Paint! The link for hosting your game is very easy to miss. It comes along with a bunch of status info (much of which I think could be removed) and frequently zips off the page as game content is spewed to the text area, and once the text area is filled it becomes inaccessible. Could we get a button for this or something? Yeah, I think you are right. I'll try to come up with something better. | |
On 1/25/01 3:32 pm Tom H. wrote:
Over the last few months we've decided that this distributed game concept is really the way to go. This definitely gives a lot of flexibility for games which are not designed as single-instance persistent worlds. Intriguingly, it could even be used for games that are "sort of" persistent...that is, games where communication between instances is so infrequent that you have a big world connected by the instances. Basically, a game version of BYOND Home. (I haven't been a big fan of BYOND Home, but my impression is that it did lead to the hubbification concept, and it does have these interesting concepts...) HOWEVER, I hope you never plan to get rid of the BYOND server. That makes so much else possible...not only persistent single-instance worlds, but the kind of client/server and server/website interaction the DDT is using for DragonSnot. I think the deadron.com home page is considerably more compelling because of what we can do with all this. | |
On 1/25/01 3:32 pm Tom H. wrote:
Yeah, I think you are right. I'll try to come up with something better. The options that immediately come to mind are a menu item (which would likely go unnoticed unless it was a whole menu unto itself) and a banner you can click. But you might want to keep the BYOND banner the first thing that appears. Or you could have a banner that says "Visit the X menu to hubify" and have it be replaced by the BYOND banner after 20 seconds or something. Z | |
On 1/25/01 9:33 pm Zilal wrote:
On 1/25/01 3:32 pm Tom H. wrote: No need a button...above the text area after the tabs a ways. | |
On 1/25/01 9:39 pm Deadron wrote:
No need a button...above the text area after the tabs a ways. Any reason why? Z | |
On 1/25/01 10:56 pm Zilal wrote:
On 1/25/01 9:39 pm Deadron wrote: I've decided to host worlds that I've been running longer than 20 seconds. | |
On 1/26/01 1:54 pm Spuzzum wrote:
Any reason why? I don't understand. | |
I don't understand. When I have a world running, sometimes I task switch to the code to fix a little problem I noticed. Then, much after 20 or so seconds later, I open up the world and connect to localhost (Unix asserts itself again) to test out multiplayer. If it were in a banner that changed to the BYOND logo after 20 seconds, your opportunity to host your world would vanish. A button would give you perpetual hosting capability, though. So I agree with Ron. | |
On 1/27/01 12:32 am Spuzzum wrote:
A button would give you perpetual hosting capability, though. So would a menu item! I think the button is a fine idea too, of course. I was just curious why it HAD to be that. Z | |
On 1/27/01 9:58 pm Zilal wrote:
On 1/27/01 12:32 am Spuzzum wrote: Oh, I'd be fine with a menu item, too. I just wouldn't want a banner. =) | |
On 1/29/01 1:37 am Spuzzum wrote:
On 1/27/01 9:58 pm Zilal wrote: A menu item is too buried. We want to encourage players to host their games, so: a) the option can't zoom by in the text window, becoming unavailable when the text scrolls off the top b) the option can't be buried in a menu they will never check so c) it has to be some form of button in their face and of obvious purpose | |
That's good news. I like your point about using the auto-installer to make the BYOND download part of a single process... when I have a game that's ready to publicize, that's definitely the route I'll take.
Good idea. But, Dantom, please save a backup copy of that banner... aside from the fact that it always makes me grin (I don't know why), it may come in handy somewhere down the road!