ID:53052
 
Keywords: digest
BYOND Action and BombsAway

The big mover in BYOND Action this week is Evi of au's bomb-throwing bonanza, BombsAway. Styled in a manner not too different to Bomberman, Evi has you throwing bombs at your opponents across an open arena. This game can only be described by Evi as "the most awesomest game of gloriful goodness since minesweeper", what can I say, he likes his bombs. This explosive (pun intended) deathmatch has all the fast paced action you come to expect from BYOND Action's game listings. Evi of au has recently entrusted the source code to Andre-g1, who will go on to extend the game. You can expect some real treats out of this over the next month or so.

BYOND RPG opens its arms
BYOND RPG's Commander in Chief of the roleplay; Audeuro, has opened up the forum to all BYOND users. If you're looking to publicise your new and original RPG game or had a really burning opinion on some of BYOND RPG's classics such as My Life as a Spy, now is the time to scoot over to their forums and say it! Audeuro's post and Tiberath's follow-up comment will give you the low-down on this change.

Along the Tech Tree and Wargames

Practically an institution in its own right, ACWraith's Along the Tech Tree gives you another dose of this week's best from BYOND Strategy. Acebloke has also been putting some love into Wargames over the past week. Wargames is one of BYOND's real longstanding strategies, receiving a semi-regular touch-up to keep it fresh. Picture SimCity, then add tanks. Wargames places you in charge of the development of a free nation. Collect resources to amass and army capable of conquering your neighbours. Just this week Acebloke has tweaked the kill system to help balance, along with a number of other things. More on that here. If you want to know more about Wargames, Iain sports a particularly good review of it.

BYOND 433.1009 and the world without limits (mostly)

BYOND recently put out a killer of a new version for testing. Version 433.1009 raises a number of the limits on various types of BYOND objects. Undoubtedly this has real benefits for people looking to make large map worlds, such as RPGs. A big thing to remember is, the limits are only raised when the world is running, so your map in DreamMaker can't be any bigger than it could before. However if you are partial to loading maps dynamically, you have a heck of a lot more objects to play with. For reference, runtime object limits are now in line with that of datums, 16.7 million or so. BYOND developer Lummox JR highlights a point for consideration with these new limits:

"The new limit is over 16 million. However you should be aware that if you stress those limits you'll also stress the computer's memory quite a bit."

This is a very good point. Let's say your /obj has 20 variables on it and you go make 16 million of those. That could easily be upwards of 256 MB of system memory blown there. So remember, these new limits are there yo help people who've hit a squeeze by only being allowed 64K of something. As Lummox JR notes:

"The main difference is that some limits, like for strings, are no longer easy to bump into and therefore games that stressed the 64K limits now have a lot more room to breathe."

Hopefully this will inspire people to think dynamically about how their game works, loading maps when needed and making things a bit more populated.
The "point for consideration" link is broken.
http://www.byond.com/developer/forum/%20id=682632<=link doesn't work...

"So remember, these new limits are there yo help people who've hit a squeeze by only being allowed 64K of something"
The link to my members page is broken.

[Edit]- and so is the one to BombsAway.
Thats 'cuz no one likes joo >:O.
Pretty nice article :)

Good job to whoever participated in doing it.

@Tubutas, that's not true :(
I like this it was interesting. And bombs away is fun.
Although I can't fix the post, the only thing broken in the mentioned link below is the lack of question mark, and a space being where it is. Here is the link the article points to.
Wow that is interesting about the new byond update, but what was the old one?
Whoa, thanks for the plug.

I do wish to keep Wargames (and Wargames 2, I'll get that finished up sometime this year!) moving, but even I admit there is plenty of things to polish up yet :p