ID:178549
 
Hi, my names Devin, im new to byond obviously or I wouldnt be posting here :), I would really like to create my own game and could use some help from people who know this sort of thing.. If you could tell me what to do to get started or anything I would really appreciate it :)

- Achaleon
Hey! Why don' you start like I did, Go to Developers (On the BYOND site) and click Tutoials, then go to ZBT, also try to skim the manual under the link Guide.
Hey, I brought this one in! Score one more for Sariat!


Here are some pointers:

Start off with a small game to learn the code and make your projects bigger and bigger. Don't start off making an epic rpg. You'll crash and burn. CRASH and BURN.

Check out the tutorials on the navigation bar. ZBT is good. So is Rcet's tutorial (Or so I've heard). Hmmm, I need to make one :P

Also, you can buy a book on the language for only 20 dollars! Plus shipping and handling! And I get some of the money! Since I reffered you! Go Sariat!

Good luck!

Achaleon wrote:
Hi, my names Devin, im new to byond obviously or I wouldnt be posting here :), I would really like to create my own game and could use some help from people who know this sort of thing.. If you could tell me what to do to get started or anything I would really appreciate it :)

In addition to the advice above, I'd like to offer one that might not seem obvious: Play some of the games that already exist to get a feel for how BYOND works and what it can do. (Actually, existing games barely scratch the surface of what it can do.) The DBZ games won't be good examples of this, but there are plenty of others. If you check out Games Live! from time to time, you'll see multiplayer games that are really worth your time to see:

  • QuickStep (I've barely ever gotten a chance to play, myself, but it's a good board game)
  • Laser Wars
  • Bombard
  • Shapeshifter
  • Tanks
  • Bacchanal
  • Bunniflip
  • Snow Boarder (a nice demonstration of a simple game you can make)

    If I left out a few, it's because they're not up very often or I haven't played them (or both).

    The BYOND engine is extremely flexible, so it helps to play others' games to get a feel for what it can do, and how. Chances are you won't see many of the best games right away, but will the more time you spend hanging around.

    Lummox JR
In response to Lummox JR
Lummox JR wrote:
Actually, existing games barely scratch the surface of what it can do.

The rest of your post sounds just fine, but this part always bugs me: what do you (and any others who have used this phrase or a similar one prior to now) mean by 'only scratched the surface?' We have discussed on how 3-dimentional complexities are almost impossible, and you yourself have trouble just getting bugs out of your current game (not to put you down of course, I love Incursion!) Because of such, I dislike hearing that what people have done only scratches the surface. Could I be afforded a slightly more detailed explination?

-Lord of Water
In response to Lord of Water
Lord of Water wrote:
Lummox JR wrote:
Actually, existing games barely scratch the surface of what it can do.

The rest of your post sounds just fine, but this part always bugs me: what do you (and any others who have used this phrase or a similar one prior to now) mean by 'only scratched the surface?' We have discussed on how 3-dimentional complexities are almost impossible, and you yourself have trouble just getting bugs out of your current game (not to put you down of course, I love Incursion!) Because of such, I dislike hearing that what people have done only scratches the surface. Could I be afforded a slightly more detailed explination?

I think you take much too pessimistic a view of BYOND's potential. I'm one who's very prone to quickly finding the limitations of any given system, and yet I've been amazed how many ways there are to work around such limitations in BYOND.

Full 3D being nearly impossible is accurate, but because BYOND is designed over a vastly different drawing model. Keep in mind that true 3D games are fairly new, still, in gamedom. Games of almost any other type or description are workable in this engine.

As for my own bugs, keep in mind that most of those are the standard sort you'd find in any game; few have been hard to find or defeat. I have experienced plenty of BYOND bugs, too, but those were mostly because of expansions to the game engine and the ways I pushed its limits. The engine has evolved significantly over time and nowadays Incursion has very little trouble getting along with it.

Here's what I mean by possibilities: Games for the most part still don't use the full potential of the mini-browser or text links for control (some do use the browser well, but many don't). world.Topic() could be used to link multiple servers for an MMORPG. E-mail games and hubfiles remain barely explored. Novel uses for savefiles are just beginning to come to light. The new ways of developing icons on the fly have seen a lot of use, but really we ain't seen nothin' yet. People's experiments with HUD displays using client.screen are really just getting off the ground. pixel_x and pixel_y--probably the greatest pair of variables to come down the pike since the procession of betas--are so new they're still steaming from the forge, and they've hardly been touched. Indeed, the number of tools available to develop something cool far outweigh the restrictions thereon.

One of the purposes behind my Dream Tutor column in BYONDscape is to try to inspire internewbiate developers to play around with features like these. Development in BYOND is still at a fairly primitive level, but there are people out there who will soon discover it and do things bigger and better than many of the current developers have ever tried. Most of our current crop of developers, the better ones especially, are still locked into projects that began before the round of 307 betas that increased the engine's abilities practically tenfold. What will they do next when they release their current works? Some of the current work in the pipeline is absolutely astounding; just imagine what will develop from these same people starting fresh with these brand new capabilities.

I think the fact that you latched so quickly onto the lack of 3D support is rather telling, really. Modern gaming has come to rely on 3D too heavily. But take a look back at the cool or at least fun-for-a-while games that were out for the original 8-bit Nintendo; they had quite a variety to them, yet they were based on a simple tile system with smooth scrolling and sprites--slightly different from BYOND's system but similar in a lot of ways. I fondly remember magazines that used to feature code you could type into an Atari in an afternoon and have a working game as a result. 3D isn't the end-all-be-all of gaming; it's cool, yes, but many 2D games can be at least as fun.

And consider how hard it is to develop for 3D. Who would want to spend the time making large texture bitmaps, and how many would be able to? Who would develop 3D models (to say nothing of posable models) and set up texture coordinates--and with what? The tools needed for 3D development are drastically more complicated in scope. A development suite for 3D games would be so much more complex as to warrant charging for it; in fact it strikes me that there are probably systems out there now that would do what you want, but aren't free. It's because 3D is a can of worms nobody wants to open.

Which is all to say: If you're fixated on 3D games, you're not using your imagination. Look at all the wonderful games we've accomplished with 2D here. Think how many more are on the way.

Lummox JR
In response to Lummox JR
And here's a little more of BYOND's potential:



And..



This was supposed to be a secret, but I couldn't hold it in any longer.
In response to Lummox JR
I agree with lummox JR.
Though I may be new to the community I do see alot of potential.

I am working on a new game, the game should be pretty good. I am not going to say its going to be the best game on byond (like some developers) but I will say I will be doing alot of things never done before.


Oh yea,

2D 100x > 3D ( Though I am a bit biased cause I grew up in the super nintendo generation.)

My favorite game of all time is final fantasy 2.
My second favorite is Tactics Ogre.
(both 2d, both amazing)
In response to Nadrew
OMG
In response to Winbiko
2D definitely has its advantages over 3D... among them being the quantity and quality of detail that's possible. It takes a lot more time and information to render a room in 3D than it does to render the same one in 2D.

One of the things that impressed upon me the most (note: not impressed me the most) about the first N64 Zelda game was how tiny the "overworld" was, compared to the 2D Zelda games. I thought it was a good game, even a good Zelda game, and it recaptured a lot of the elements of the series and translated them successfully from 2D to 3D... but something was lost.

Also, on a note completely unrelated to 3D, who did they think they were, leaving out the overture? Sacrelige!
In response to Lesbian Assassin
One of the things that impressed upon me the most (note: not impressed me the most) about the first N64 Zelda game was how tiny the "overworld" was, compared to the 2D Zelda games.

That's more due to the N64's low storage capacity than because it was 3D. I can't see it being too hard to fill a bunch of colored heightmaps with trees and bushes, if only you have the memory to store it in. (Which is why Nintendo finally switched to DVD with GameCube.)

One other thing though that I've noticed is that most 3D games, since N64 came out, have had a much lower replay value than many of the old 2D games had. Looking at simple games like Angband (rogue-like) that can be played over and over and are never the same, the latest 3D games tend to be very linear with only a few variations in the story.
In response to Lummox JR
First: I could care less about using Byond for 3D games. As others have said, the development time/difficulty curve for developing a 3D game is exponentially higher than that for a 2D game, and it doesn't necessarily mean that you have a BETTER game when all is said and done. If Byond sticks to its 2D roots, I'd be fine with that.

However (and this statement is sure to make me a heretic) I would love to see Byond step beyond its cross-platform text-only beginnings, and use DirectX (rather than the standard Windows API graphics library) behind the scenes. It would make things run that much more smoothly.

Regards,
Corporate Dog
In response to Lesbian Assassin
Thats something that always confused me.
Why does the game have to be real looking to pull you into it?
Content>Graphics.

People need to start playing ADnD and MUDs.

me:
=====
Rak
Lvl 3 half-orc fighter
Chaotic/Nuetral
-Has a pet pig named bacon.
-Pig is True Good
-Spends all his money on ale and women

In response to Winbiko
Winbiko wrote:
Thats something that always confused me.
Why does the game have to be real looking to pull you into it?
Content>Graphics.

People need to start playing ADnD and MUDs.

me:
=====
Rak
Lvl 3 half-orc fighter
Chaotic/Nuetral
-Has a pet pig named bacon.
-Pig is True Good
-Spends all his money on ale and women


Ziricov Ulaeth
43rd season half-orc Assassin
Enemy kingdom members killed : 143
Killed by enemy kingdom members: 6
Chaotic Evil(-1000 alignment)
Wielding Serrated Adamantium Dirk of Haste, (Enchanted) Mithril Dagger
Wearing Dragon-Scale Armpads, Emerald Chest Plate, and Hood of the Executioner
Mounted on a Panther, and accompanied by a level 50 Pixie.

That was my character on a MUD, until it closed down *sniffle*.

Oh, and I was part of the /[(Shadows of Silence)]\ Kingdom

Alathon
In response to Alathon
See this is what I am talking about. You can get just as attacted to a character in a game without graphics.
In response to Alathon
MUDs played: 0
Money spent on playing MUDs: 0.00
Having friends : Priceless

This was brought to you the by Donate-Dimes-to-Sariat Foundation. Help stop the hunger.
In response to Lummox JR
Lummox JR wrote:
Here's what I mean by possibilities: Games for the most
part still don't use the full potential of the mini-
browser or text links for control (some do use the
browser well, but many don't).

Gah! I totally had an epiphany today regarding the browser.

The game I'm writing presents the user with a whole number of menu screens and a "chat lobby", before actually taking the user to the game interface proper. These menus don't really need to be updated on the fly, but they are graphics & animation heavy.

I have been trying to create the menu interfaces completely in the map window. It's worked so far, but the process has been tedious to say the least.

Then I got an idea which will cut down on my work considerably... why not scrap the map window for the initial menu screens, and just create a series of HTML/JavaScript pages that I can stick in the browser window instead?!? This method will even allow me to use
inline input fields and selection boxes.

And all this time I thought that the browser window was going to be useless for anything other than displaying documentation...

Regards,
Corporate Dog
In response to Lummox JR
Lummox JR wrote:
If you check out Games Live! from time to time, you'll see multiplayer games that are really worth your time to see:

  • QuickStep (I've barely ever gotten a chance to play, myself, but it's a good board game)
  • Laser Wars
  • Bombard
  • Shapeshifter
  • Tanks
  • Bacchanal
  • Bunniflip
  • Snow Boarder (a nice demonstration of a simple game you can make)

    If I left out a few, it's because they're not up very often or I haven't played them (or both).

  • I would add DragonSnot, as an example of how you can employ pixel-based animation and multi-tiled mobs/objs.
In response to Corporate Dog
Corporate Dog wrote:
The game I'm writing presents the user with a whole number of menu screens and a "chat lobby", before actually taking the user to the game interface proper. These menus don't really need to be updated on the fly, but they are graphics & animation heavy.

I have been trying to create the menu interfaces completely in the map window. It's worked so far, but the process has been tedious to say the least.

Then I got an idea which will cut down on my work considerably... why not scrap the map window for the initial menu screens, and just create a series of HTML/JavaScript pages that I can stick in the browser window instead?!? This method will even allow me to use
inline input fields and selection boxes.

And all this time I thought that the browser window was going to be useless for anything other than displaying documentation...

You might find my BYONDscape article on the subject helpful:

Dream Tutor: What Good Is The Browser?

I used to think the browser was just for documentation too until I explored it a bit more. In fact it's amazingly pliable--and you don't even really need JavaScript. Pretty much any of the important stuff you can do in DM using client.Topic(). I've used this to create various interfaces for Incursion, including a handy admin page, a page to modify spam settings, and a page to read or change the house rules. Shadowdarke used a pop-up browser window to create a nifty interface for Tanks. Deadron made a library to use HTML forms to select characters. This is really one of the cooler features of BYOND.

Lummox JR