With regards to the actual topic at hand, I have some free time over the holidays if you want me to do the coding part of any web changes.

Addendum: I am a professional web developer with roughly 5 years of experience.

Up to you.
In response to Wirewraith
Wirewraith wrote:
With regards to the actual topic at hand, I have some free time over the holidays if you want me to do the coding part of any web changes.

Addendum: I am a professional web developer with roughly 5 years of experience.

Up to you.


Depends on what languages you're adept with. But the main issue comes from security, I'd imagine a lot of the deep core stuff needs to be locked down pretty tight.
Lummox JR wrote:
I don't have a second job, no.

youre only hurting yourself

Nadrew wrote:
Depends on what languages you're adept with. But the main issue comes from security, I'd imagine a lot of the deep core stuff needs to be locked down pretty tight.

that's why a lot of companies segregate the back-end from the front-end and have separate departments work on each

Wirewraith wrote:
I am a professional web developer with roughly 5 years of experience.

portfolio or is it NDA? i have a friend in their 30s that does it professionally too, and has been for a while, and i still have to help them from time to time, so i don't see how your statement reflects on your qualifications
In response to Zagros5000
Zagros5000 wrote:
have u even tried the webclient? in what way is it far from done?

While big improvements to the webclient have been made, it's far too choppy for the typical RPG at the moment... and most games you'd want to make in BYOND, unless you're okay with out of the blue animation delays and unstable screen lag. It's disappointing to see that it doesn't perform near the same level as DS yet, when it was implied that its performance could be better.

I'd really like the webclient's performance to become a big priority soon, so I don't have to delay releasing my game for too long because the client isn't stable enough. A popular ORPG in the webclient, especially if it's getting traffic from gaming portals etc, would push other devs to make use of the client, but as it is I wouldn't encourage developers to write any Javscript so they aren't forced to rely entirely on the webclient (which is a shame, because some of the new stuff you can do is very, very useful).

I'm definitely bias, but focusing on adding new features to an engine that's had close to 20 years to flesh out when the webclient is in its current condition seems off. The pace seems slow for something that has the potential to bring new users to BYOND, whereas new features only really appeal to the very small crowd of existing developers.
In response to Pixel Realms
Pixel Realms wrote:
when it was implied that its performance could be better

it COULD. the community in theory has the power to change this and make their own improvements. replacing the web client's intrinsic functionality would be the most accessible option.

I'd really like the webclient's performance to become a big priority soon

i dont think it officially will unless StageXL changes to circumvent whatever problems lummox runs into or lummox starts over without dart or StageXL
StageXL isn't really the problem. Choppiness I think can be averted by preloading all icons as soon as they're downloaded, effectively front-loading them. Dream Seeker uses icons only as soon as it needs to, but because it's working at such a low level it tends not to show these kinds of slowdowns.
You've been doing a great job on all fronts, Lummox, so I hope that didn't come across as too bitter. I'm just very eager for the webclient to play smoothly after almost half a year of optimizing.
In response to Nadrew
GatewayRa wrote:
portfolio or is it NDA? i have a friend in their 30s that does it professionally too, and has been for a while, and i still have to help them from time to time, so i don't see how your statement reflects on your qualifications

Lummox knows me + can get my portfolio link if he asks. I don't need to entertain you and your snippy tone.


Nadrew wrote:
Depends on what languages you're adept with. But the main issue comes from security, I'd imagine a lot of the deep core stuff needs to be locked down pretty tight.

I'm mostly front end with a decent amount of PHP knowledge. Html, JS, CSS are of course locked down. My offer for help was more to do with Lummox's comments on turning any potential design into actual code, and less to do with any actual backend rewrite. Although thinking about it you might mean keeping the byond site core a secret or something I guess. Like I said, it's up to Lummox.
In response to Wirewraith
I love BYONDer's who's been here since forever and are intelligent, and they rarely post.
I just want an efficient path-finding so I can move into pixel movement games, what is everyone crying about. All the tools are right here, waiting to be used. Lawl.

The web client will get done eventually, don't depend on it for all the success you think it'll bring. Remember there's still games to make good around here.

Hell, the best game will be by me and it'll be tiled movement.

All I want is a redesign, a little more freedom to developers, byond is too civil on design. It goes for a social approach but is way too plain. Makes 0 sense. Not saying myspace it up but at-least make it worth looking at by making it more clean and not the most boring color mix. But I'm not even rushing this want, it'll come surely.
The claimed optimizations Dart offers will never be available to BYOND's audience, as it'll never distributed in a Chrome build.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/03/25/ google-will-not-integrate-its-dart-programming-language-into -chrome/

The freezing that sometimes crashes the browser whenever webclient is loaded is likely also because of the funky and redundant output of the dart2js compiling in the browser, and the clunk probably adds overhead at runtime too.

There was a report in the webclient about textures bleeding into each other, which is because of uncentered texture coordinates-- which may be because of how StageXL handles it? Also StageXL doesn't pack the textures for you, which should be there as an optimization, so you're still limited to however many texture units the compatibility allows for a single passing, unless you do it yourself.

I just don't think the webclient will ever be as efficient as can be unless somebody restarts it in pure JavaScript.

Wirewraith wrote:
I don't need to entertain you and your snippy tone.

I'd pick it apart piece by piece, diagnosing it for every single flaw.

I'm mostly front end with a decent amount of PHP knowledge.

The original website was made in Perl.

turning any potential design into actual code

I don't think that's the problem. I think the problem is turning design concept into design, and pulling it off well. Sometimes a concept sounds good in theory but it yields to be impractical. That's a problem a lot of "game designers" here have.
In response to GatewayRa
GatewayRa wrote:
I don't think that's the problem. I think the problem is turning design concept into design, and pulling it off well. Sometimes a concept sounds good in theory but it yields to be impractical. That's a problem a lot of "game designers" here have.

Lummox JR wrote:
The tricky part for me has been, when people come up with appearance concepts, those concepts have to be translated into HTML/CSS and have to be done on a level that's fairly consistent site-wide, on a site that had (understatedly) organic growth for quite some time. HTML changes are never trivial.

Um.

In response to Wirewraith
I don't retract my statement. I believe Lummox needs design concept to design translation, not design to code, despite how he worded it.
I'm not saying I want to help with the design aspect of things. I agree that it's important but it's not my forte. We aren't debating the importance of various parts of the process.
:(
Everyone on the website loads instantly for me, even the Search on the forums is only like 1 second. Literally everything else is <0.1 seconds.

The website seems great to me, simple and easy to use with very few clicks required. I only access it by PC so I don't know what it looks like on a phone
In response to Tens of DU
Tens of DU wrote:
even the Search on the forums is only like 1 second.

I call complete BS on this.
In response to Rushnut
Rushnut wrote:
Tens of DU wrote:
even the Search on the forums is only like 1 second.

I call complete BS on this.

Agreed, search went down hill takes over a minute to load results..
Yeah, search is pretty slow.
I think some people are misunderstanding what "Responsive design" means.

It means the layout of the site adapts to the current screen width of the viewing device.

so if you view on mobile, it shows less or makes it more small screen friendly, but if you tilt to landscape mode, it shows more again.

same for if you re-size the browser window.

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