Ok I used to play SS13 on the TGstation server for a long time. Then I got banned for a few months. Now I haven't updated Byond in a VERY long time. I finally get back on it for the FIRST TIME EVER I am forced to update Byond to play.
Now this wouldn't be a big deal if the new system wasn't so backwards and had everything useful removed. I'm unsure if it's just a bad setup and you can do old things but I haven't been able to figure it out and I'm fairly smart.
The first thing they removed was being able to join a friend's game. I used to be able to go to my friend's list and see someone online and just click the the word "Join" and Byond would just launch the game. That was amazing simple and straightforward. Yes it could have used maybe a button or something but the text was even blue so you knew it was a text. Now when I open my friends it shows my friendlist and doesn't even say that there are offline ones. It just has them greyed out. So I see my friend is online and there doesn't appear to be any options. The best thing is when I KNOW my friend is in a game but Byond says he is "Away". I click on my friend's name and instead of being prompted to do whatever it is I want a new tab is forced open for a chat. Just making this a drop down with options and changing it from online to in game and the game name would make a world of difference. Now moving into the chat that's all it appears to be. you can add them as a friend or remove them or block them. There is no join option, no information about what they are doing, nothing it just says away and you can send a message or look at the friend's info. There needs to be something so you can INTERACT with your friends.
Now what is REALLY upsetting me is the fact that I can NOT favorite any servers. I have to go to the website and click the link or look through all the servers having to look for the server I want. Yes this is nice to have the server browser in the Byond application BUT it is moronic to not have ANY way to favorite a server and save it. I play on 3 different servers so when people say "Oh you can just click the replay for the last server" that doesn't help at all.
What really annoys me about all this is the fact that all of this WAS part of the application but was removed for ASCETIC reasons. They took the FUNCTIONING application and decided to make it "Look cool" and sacrificed all the function for it. That on top of the disgusting adds I have to watch if anything happens and have to relaunch the game and the fact that it INTERRUPTS my game infuriates me. I mean anyone who plays SS13 and has ever disconnected especially playing antag know's that a full like 2min of watching a stupid vampire idiotic commercial is ruining your game and making you want to punch your computer.
Now I may just be ignorant of a system to save the servers or join a friend and would greatly enjoy if someone could tell me how to do it if there is a way but as far as I can see this is just ruining a system that I enjoyed for the simple fact that it didn't "Look cool" or "It was to hard". Stop putting looks above function and stop pandering to the morons out there. Leave the options for people with two brain cells bring back the ability to add a link and name for a server so you can join.
Jan 26 2014, 9:40 am
|
|
King_LiOnZ
 |
It will take some time to get use to.
|
Palleh wrote:
That on top of the disgusting adds It's less than $30 a year to remove ads, if it annoys you that much. Look up at the contribution bar. We're definitely in need of monetary support to keep the engine alive. We get threads like this pretty much weekly. Even though it may be well-intentioned, the ads wouldn't have had to happen if the community were willing to support BYOND. We have an average of 500 players online on SS13 alone. An average of 5,000 users a week. A little under $12 a year from each of 5,000 users would support BYOND for an entire year, thus freeing us to improve the engine. Instead, all we see is people complaining about how everything should be free. | |
You can still favourite servers. Click the little wheel on the top right corner of the pager.
| |
Palleh wrote:
I used to be able to go to my friend's list and see someone online and just click the the word "Join" and Byond would just launch the game... If a friend is in a game, the friends list will show that game's hub icon to the right of their name. Hovering over a friend will show a tooltip with their current status (away/offline) and the name of the game (if any) they are in. Clicking on a friend will open a tab with their basic profile information, a chat area, and a join link to any game they might be on. There's a horizontal bar separating the online and offline friends/fans, so once you learn that "greyed-out" means offline, it's pretty easy to read. Not sure why your friend wasn't showing up as in the game, might be a bug. Now what is REALLY upsetting me is the fact that I can NOT favorite any servers. As MisterPerson mentioned, you can favorite servers. Click the gear icon in the top-right, select "Open Location", and enter the address of the server in the top input. Then click "Add" and enter a name for the bookmark. After restarting the pager, your top bookmark and a "More bookmarks" link will appear on your homepage to quickly access this list. It could be more integrated into the UI, but it is still available. That on top of the disgusting adds I have to watch if anything happens and have to relaunch the game and the fact that it INTERRUPTS my game infuriates me. I mean anyone who plays SS13 and has ever disconnected especially playing antag know's that a full like 2min of watching a stupid vampire idiotic commercial is ruining your game and making you want to punch your computer. Tom's made significant efforts to accommodate SS13, he even changed ads to not run on reboot. Not sure what can be done for players who manually disconnect... the ads have to play at some point! If they bother you that much, pick up a membership--you'll be supporting the platform and solving your problem at the same time ;) | |
Ok so the friends thing does not work like that. I don't know if you are using a beta or something but I get a black screen wtih hi name above it and there is nothing to join. It says he is away after playing ss13 for a long period of time. There is no symbol in the list or chat screen extended or not.
Yes as I said I may have been ignorant about it and I thank both of you for the info on how it works. I'll get on that and see if it works for me. Finally I just got annoyed after twice having my game freeze so I had to restart it and that one add infuriated me lol. I get that there needs to be adds but just put a like dislike choice so you get adds that mean are aligned with what interest you. | |
Palleh wrote:
Ok so the friends thing does not work like that. I don't know if you are using a beta or something but I get a black screen wtih hi name above it and there is nothing to join. It says he is away after playing ss13 for a long period of time. There is no symbol in the list or chat screen extended or not. If a user is online and in a game, and this is not displayed on the tooltip or on the user's page (in the pager), then this is a bug. Make a report in the BYOND Bug forum and let us know what your version of IE is (along with the other template information), as that may be relevant to the problem. It was not our intention to remove any functionality within the pager, and, in fact, we went to some lengths to accommodate users who missed the old bookmarking system (which is now accessible from the 'home' page). I think the new pager is superior in almost all ways since it has a logical system to communicate with friends and find games. However, it may take some getting used to, especially if you are experiencing bugs that are causing things not to work as they should. | |
I can't join my friend's games!
Oh, look! This guy is online! And look, an icon of the game he's playing is next to his name!  What happens if I click his name?  If you don't have the "Activity" tab open, go to it and you can see what games someone is playing and join them. My game froze and I saw an ad! I'm angry about it! As for your game freezing problem...try to not get mad at BYOND's ads, and more mad about the game freezing and making you restart, consequently causing an ad to appear. I need to see my favorite games! Well, there are two easy ways to do this: Go to the "Games" tab:  And change "Show:" to "Show: Favorites"  OR, you can click one link on the "Home" page that does those two steps for you:   | |
Albro1 wrote:
I can't join my friend's games! Well let's see the truth of it.  He is online. No game setup.  Look at what appears when I click his name. NOTHING!  And there isn't a favorites section. Plus this mostlikely would just show SS13 not the SERVER. The guys before were much more helpful and less condescending. They actually know how to get a server saved. | |
Tom wrote:
Palleh wrote: I'm unsure what my IE version would do to make a difference but it's set up to install new automatically. verson 10.0.9200.16750 update versiona 10.0.12 . Byond is 5.0 public version 503.1224 . It says I'm using up to date and that I'm using stable. Should I try beta? Any other info that could help? | |
It was meant as more of a happy little tutorial thing, but if you really take offense to it then perhaps you need to go sit in your corner for a bit and come back when you're ready to be more mature and actually try to figure out the problem with your pager.
Obviously there's a problem with your pager, since you have blank pages. Also... Palleh wrote: They actually know how to get a server saved.What does this mean? | |
Moderator warning to everybody involved in this thread:
If we can dial back the hostility, hyperbole, and insult a bit, that would be greatly appreciated. Palleh, please try to keep a level head about this. The new pager is only a few months out of beta (and we've already made significant adjustments to how things work in order to accomodate the SS13 community a bit more with the new structure), so we would really appreciate it if you could be more compliant with requests for information regarding the issue you are experiencing. We will do our best to make sure that any issues that you are experiencing get ironed out. As for anybody else that feels the need to jump in from this point forward, this thread has transitioned from a complaint to essentially a bug identification. Unhelpful/insulting commentary from this point on will be snipped and edited. Thank you. | |
On the "Home" tab there should be a "Bookmarks" button that will work for saving individual servers (it uses the same system as the old pager).
I am wondering if the database isn't properly updating your friends & favorites. Try this: 1) Close all BYOND programs. 2) Go to your [My Documents]\BYOND\cfg folder 3) Rename the file 'localhub.db' to 'localhub.db.bak' 4) Restart byond.exe See if that changes anything. If it does, we'll want to see what happened here so we'll want to get a copy of that localhub.db file. | |
It seems strange that you don't have all the drop downs I would try out Toms solution if that doesn't work uninstall BYOND and delete the folder that is in the below location.
[My Documents]\BYOND Then reinstall and see if that helps :) | |
Tom wrote:
On the "Home" tab there should be a "Bookmarks" button that will work for saving individual servers (it uses the same system as the old pager). I just tried it no change. I did see I could favorite SS13 and have it set to a favorite but couldn't bookmark the TGStaton server as a favorite. The bookmark thing worked PERFECTLY but my friend's list is still the exact same. I think my friend is having the same problem and we both were forced to update after not having updated in a LONG time. | |
Let's try a test here, since you appear to be online right now. Go to SS13 and confirm that someone random is in a game there (eg 'Dred1792'). In the Friends tab, there is a "Search" box, so type that user's name, which should pull up his page. Tell me if anything regarding the location shows up in that page. I just did it for the aforementioned 'Dred1792' and it correctly is reporting his location with a 'Join' link. I just want to make sure we are testing the exact same thing to eliminate some variables.
| |
Since my post was deleted .... .... Thanks for that? I compiled with all forum rules... And the warning above...
I would suggest removing the files for a fool proof fix, Toms suggestions are fine though ... He would know best of course ;) | |
Tom wrote:
Let's try a test here, since you appear to be online right now. Go to SS13 and confirm that someone random is in a game there (eg 'Dred1792'). In the Friends tab, there is a "Search" box, so type that user's name, which should pull up his page. Tell me if anything regarding the location shows up in that page. I just did it for the aforementioned 'Dred1792' and it correctly is reporting his location with a 'Join' link. I just want to make sure we are testing the exact same thing to eliminate some variables. I understand. I just tried it with C4g and it did the same thing. Black screen with a portrait at the top left his name beside it frien to the right block below it. Though when I'm in a game there is an invite button at the bottom right. I could just try a fresh install but if you want to try bugfixing I wouldn't mind. | |
I think a fresh Install would do you wonders,but if Tom or other staff have a better idea I would listen to them. :)
| |