Locked: Why I think Byond barely gets new developers

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#20 Jun 16 2012, 11:55 am
it isn't about educating the newbies. i've been making games here since 08 and it has been a slow and steady learning curve.

maybe more events that encouraged game development could help get the ball rolling, but you can't have people becoming game designers overnight. some of it comes from a little natural ability and enthusiasm, but most of it comes from experience.

our bad reputation and crummy software that looks like it was made 10 years ago is why developers in general prefer respected things like unity, game maker, and ags over byond
#21 Jun 16 2012, 11:57 am
In response to Yut Put (#20)
Yut Put wrote:
it isn't about educating the newbies. i've been making games here since 08 and it has been a slow and steady learning curve.

maybe more events that encouraged game development could help get the ball rolling, but you can't have people becoming game designers overnight. some of it comes from a little natural ability and enthusiasm, but most of it comes from experience.
Just because you don't have the special "gaming gene" doesn't mean you can't do this. I know someone who used to be so troubled with DM and indents and easy crap and now he's getting to the point of going to Java and/or Unity3D
our bad reputation and crummy software that looks like it was made 10 years ago is why developers in general prefer respected things like unity, game maker, and ags over byond
So we can just rebuild it by collaborating on a game that we can utilize and advertise that can possibly rebuild the reputation AND give byond some more money

Besides, most people use Byond for educational purposes.
#22 Jun 16 2012, 11:58 am
oh yeah, and i don't think i've used the help forum once in the past 4 years. as a newbie, i simply read and studied zilal's tutorial and some other things i could find using my amateur searching skills and experimented until i had some little games. the real push for me when i was getting started were the libraries and resources offered. forum_account helps solve this.
#23 Jun 16 2012, 11:59 am
In response to Yut Put (#22)
Yut Put wrote:
oh yeah, and i don't think i've used the help forum once in the past 4 years. as a newbie, i simply read and studied zilal's tutorial and some other things i could find using my amateur searching skills and experimented until i had some little games. the real push for me when i was getting started were the libraries and resources offered. forum_account helps solve this.
Just because you did it the hard way doesn't mean everyone else has to get bull **** answers for what they don't know. Some people are not knowing of these libs and demos and their existence keep in mind.
#24 Jun 16 2012, 12:01 pm
In response to Iobject (#21)
Just because you don't have the special "gaming gene" doesn't mean you can't do this. I know someone who used to be so troubled with DM and indents and easy crap and now he's getting to the point of going to Java and/or Unity3D

you're not even reading my post. i said that it is a very slow and steady learning curve and that you can't become a developer overnight because of this, which makes it difficult to quickly educate newbies on design and development for the purposes of increasing our reputation as opposed to just drawing in oldbies. so basically you're restating what i said(for the second time...hrm)

So we can just rebuild it by collaborating on a game that we can utilize and advertise that can possibly rebuild the reputation AND give byond some more money

now you sound like orangeweapons. im done here
#25 Jun 16 2012, 12:02 pm
You did not read my first post clearly. Useless answers lead to useless solutions.

This is your opinion. And the answers are not useless. Go and look at some of the questions I've answered or commented on the answers of.

Most people aren't providing broken code - if they do, it gets fixed. Most of the time, they're providing code that does nothing at all and then asking us to write an entire block of functionality for them.

what's wrong with it and tell them how to fix it without code,

This is what does happen, and what you just dismissed as 'useless answers.'

The issue is not people being unfair to everyone who asks a question. The issue is people asking bad questions. And yes, there are bad questions.
'how do I make a ban verb?' is not a bad question. It is a naivé question.
When someone then explains the logic behind a ban verb, and the person goes;
'i don't understand can u show me?'
THAT is a bad question.
#26 Jun 16 2012, 12:02 pm
In response to Yut Put (#24)
Yut Put wrote:
Just because you don't have the special "gaming gene" doesn't mean you can't do this. I know someone who used to be so troubled with DM and indents and easy crap and now he's getting to the point of going to Java and/or Unity3D

you're not even reading my post. i said that it is a very slow and steady learning curve and that you can't become a developer overnight because of this, which makes it difficult to educated newbies on design and development. so basically you're restating what i said(for the second time...hrm)
I was replying to the fact you said that you are "born with it" rather than you get into it when you're a teen.
So we can just rebuild it by collaborating on a game that we can utilize and advertise that can possibly rebuild the reputation AND give byond some more money

now you sound like orangeweapons. im done here
It doesn't matter who I sound like, it matters that we find a real solution. I could have just said to Google a solution or find it out yourself, but that would be ironic.
#27 Jun 16 2012, 12:04 pm
In response to Deathguard (#25)
Deathguard wrote:
You did not read my first post clearly. Useless answers lead to useless solutions.

This is your opinion. And the answers are not useless. Go and look at some of the questions I've answered or commented on the answers of.

Most people aren't providing broken code - if they do, it gets fixed. Most of the time, they're providing code that does nothing at all and then asking us to write an entire block of functionality for them.
No, they are asking for how to fix the code. They never say they wanted code. I could understand if it says "Fix my code you're my ***** give me code" but that's not the case here clearly.
what's wrong with it and tell them how to fix it without code,

This is what does happen, and what you just dismissed as 'useless answers.'
Wait, so telling them what's wrong with the code is saying to find it out yourself?

I never said all answers were useless, I said most are.
#28 Jun 16 2012, 12:04 pm
"some of it comes from a little natural ability and enthusiasm, but most of it comes from experience."

means that some people are going to be more driven and have more clever ideas than others, but that is nothing compared to the weight experience has on game development. bye
#29 Jun 16 2012, 12:05 pm
They never say they wanted code.

This happens all the time. They may not come out and say 'Give me the code,' but they essentially wave off answers that dont' involve giving them code.

Go and study Developer Help. Like ... the first three pages of it.

The problem is that some people do not want to learn to write DM because learning takes a lot of time and effort.
They like the IDEA of writing DM, so they will sort of try and write it, not get very far, and then try and have people write it for them.
#30 Jun 16 2012, 12:08 pm
In response to Deathguard (#29)
Deathguard wrote:
They never say they wanted code.

This happens all the time. They may not come out and say 'Give me the code,' but they essentially wave off answers that dont' involve giving them code.

Go and study Developer Help. Like ... the first three pages of it.

The problem is that some people do not want to learn to write DM because learning takes a lot of time and effort.
They like the IDEA of writing DM, so they will sort of try and write it, not get very far, and then try and have people write it for them.
So then we have to alienate the people even if they want to? I remember my first dev help question was ruled off as asking for code when clearly I had been told to Google it.

If they rule out the real solution, then they may be asking for code, but to be safe I would break down their code and tell them what they can do to fix it or what they can add to it to fix it. If they severely decide to say that's not a solution, then you can ignore it, but don't just pop up your first answer saying to figure it out yourself.
#31 Jun 16 2012, 12:58 pm
You say that we don't need more "oldbies", but who do you expect to answer all of these question in a thorough and helpful manner? Dissecting someone else's code line-by-line is a time-consuming thing and requires a solid understanding of the language and programming in general. Most of the people who post "go google it" or "we won't help you make your rip" (and I rarely see this) are newbies themselves.

You seem to be laying out a lot of work, but I'm not sure who you expect to do it. How many questions have you answered?
#32 Jun 16 2012, 1:01 pm
In response to DarkCampainger (#31)
DarkCampainger wrote:
You say that we don't need more "oldbies", but who do you expect to answer all of these question in a thorough and helpful manner? Dissecting someone else's code line-by-line is a time-consuming thing and requires a solid understanding of the language and programming in general. Most of the people who post "go google it" or "we won't help you make your rip" (and I rarely see this) are newbies themselves.

You seem to be laying out a lot of work, but I'm not sure who you expect to do it. How many questions have you answered?

I may not have answered many questions myself, although I'm sure if someone knew at least half of what they need to in DM (which is more than what I know) and more active, we could get questions answered. Most of why people use the quotes I have stated is because they judge people that are new in saying they rip games.

Newbies wouldn't call newbies rippers unless they themselves were not newbies.

Anyways, it's a dead topic, but thanks for replying at least without raging! :)
#33 Jun 16 2012, 1:52 pm
In response to Iobject (#32)
Here is the big secret: Most developers are lazy. If we were able to inspire the lazy, or attract non-lazy developers, this problem would be solved.

SilkWizard's monetary success on NEStalgia is inspiration that could be publisized more. Maybe SilkWizard would write up his success story, or make a YouTube Video (or both) that could go on the front page.

To attract non-lazy developers, we need more BYOND games to be successful. To do so, we need to inspire the lazy developers we've already got. See the cycle?
#34 Jun 16 2012, 2:54 pm
We must improve on it! DM++ or DM# anyone?!?!
#35 Jun 16 2012, 3:07 pm
In response to Cloud Magic (#33)
Cloud Magic wrote:
Maybe SilkWizard would write up his success story, or make a YouTube Video (or both) that could go on the front page.

Uh, he sort of did already.

Anyways, we get about roughly fifty posts per year about someone complaining about BYOND and its reputation. Quite frankly, anything you say won't have an impact on this community and its developers - step up to the plate; actions speak louder than words.

#36 Jun 16 2012, 4:02 pm
I don't mean to sound rude, but this thread is just full of negativity. Are you guys actually advertising how "bad" BYOND's community is? Things like this generally just lead to flame wars and don't really help the situation. You need to realize that people just don't change much, and you can't try and force them to. If you want a better community then you need more better people to restore the balance of things. Advertising to get more developers is the only way we can break this cycle.

Honestly, I think the reason why BYOND doesn't get many new developers isn't an internal one. I think it's an external one. You have to think from the point of view of an outsider. If I google "how to make your own games", chances are, I'm going to run into GameMaker or RPG Maker, not the BYOND suite. I think this is one of the main problems. The BYOND software itself just isn't getting enough advertising. We need to quit fighting about how bad the community is and figure out how to promote the BYOND suite. Sure, you can advertise the games that were made with it, but are you trying to attract players or developers? Seriously, how many developers on BYOND DIDN'T start out here as a game player? I am one from that group. Now, if you want to see people actually pursuing game development come to BYOND, and you want the community to improve, I believe that will happen if we start advertising how good the BYOND software is.

We need to let the world outside the BYOND community know why the BYOND suite is better than the popular GameMaker and RPG Maker suites. Surely we can come up with some compelling arguments. Sure, the other programs are capable of impressive 3D graphics, but the way in which games are programmed with them is not very professional, and they probably can't even come close to how easy it is to make your games multiplayer with BYOND. One issue you might want to start with is that cursed BYOND Wikipedia article. Now, you might think that Wikipedia is all about information, but it actually tends to advertise things very well, if they manage to survive its wrath. Now, most of the popular game making suites out there have a Wikipedia article about them, but BYOND doesn't. It's as simple as that. So, we need to get together and collaborate on how we can make an article really happen. It has to be every bit as thorough as the one for GameMaker. Take a look at the 42 references cited on the GameMaker article. Almost every single one links right back to the GameMaker site itself. If it's good enough for them, then it can be good enough for us. A BYOND article is probably already possible, so lets scan the BYOND site for some 30 or more really good references to cite.

Now, if you are worried that BYOND needs more reputable sources to cite for such an article, then we need to help that with other forms of advertising. See how advertising builds on itself? We need authors at lots of different reputable sites talking about the BYOND suite. We need to seriously send some emails to authors who write online about game development (I'm not totally sure where to look).

Another thing to consider are paid ads for BYOND. This would have to be up to the staff to figure out though. It's probably not within their budget though, and not really all that necessary, since I don't think other game making suites actually put up ads across the net. If this were done though, it would likely cause an exponential increase in developers, so it might be worth considering.

Yet another, perhaps lesser form of advertising are merely download links and portals. We need to get the BYOND software uploaded and distributed to all the popular software download sites, like CNET and tucows.

Basically, BYOND needs to get mainstream instead of being a niche program. We need to really try to compete with the other, more popular game making suites. We need to get popular like them, if we want more developers to come our way.
#37 Jun 16 2012, 4:28 pm (Edited on Jun 16 2012, 4:39 pm)
In response to Multiverse7 (#36)
Multiverse7 wrote:
The BYOND software itself just isn't getting enough advertising.

BYOND doesn't do any advertising so it's hard to argue with that, but...

BYOND has been around for long enough that many game developers must have stumbled upon it. From the looks of it, hardly any of them decided to use it. BYOND just doesn't look like a serious game development tool. It's not that BYOND has a bad reputation (most people have never heard of it and have no opinion of it) that causes people to decide to use different game development tools. With no prior knowledge of BYOND, people look at it and just decide to use something else. Most of the BYOND website is dedicated to playing games, so most people probably don't even realize BYOND is used to make games too.

You just have to think of things from a new user's perspective:

1. The installer has that sketchy looking borderless "welcome BYOND" popup that fades out and the download popups (the one that shows the download's progress and the one that asks if you want to play by yourself or host the game) don't have borders either. Those are the kind of effects I expect from a Photoshop keygen program. The installer also creates a desktop icon without asking if you want it and has a vague prompt at the end (something like "look for games to play?" - people won't know what that means). It might help to have two separate downloads (one to install the game playing software and one to install the game development tools) or to have an option in the installer that says "would you like to install the game development tools too?". Two installers might seem bad, but realize it'd mean there'd be a page on the BYOND website that says in big letters "click *here* to download the BYOND game development kit" - this makes it 100% obvious that BYOND can be used to make games.

2. The pager looks weird and outdated. The system tray icon is nice (except for the "you've got updates" balloons) but the window is just strange looking. People won't know what it is or what it's supposed to be used for. It's kind of for chatting but it looks nothing like a chat program. It lists the games you've downloaded but in a dropdown menu. Download the icons of the games from the website and show something that looks like the hub's search results, but in a nice-looking application kind of way. Maybe even have it pull content from the website so you can essentially browse the byond.com/games site through the pager.

3. The game development tools are hard to find. People have to either know to look for dreammaker.exe or know to go to File -> Start Dream Maker in the pager. How are people supposed to know what Dream Maker is? How are people supposed to know there's a game development tool inside the BYOND software?

4. Game distribution options are confusing. The BYOND hub is confusing, even to current BYOND users who browse the forums frequently. If the pager was better and had the capabilities I mentioned here, people would at least see the hub and say "oh, that's how you get your game list in the pager" (except they wouldn't call it "the pager"). The ability to package games as an .exe has always had limited support/practicality but hopefully this will be improving soon.

5. The BYOND nomenclature is confusing, alienating, and unnecessary. They're not "keys", they're "usernames", "user accounts", or "accounts". It's not "Dream Maker", it's "the IDE" or "the game development kit". It's not "Dream Seeker", it's the "game client". It's not "the pager", it's just "BYOND". The average grandmother can create a youtube account and upload a video, but wouldn't stand a chance at figuring out BYOND.

BYOND isn't the only program of its kind. Look at other software and see how it looks and works. People don't use BYOND because they simply have no idea what it is. The people that have figured it out seem to like it but most people don't understand it, feel alienated, and use something else instead. BYOND is the weird kid who sits in the back of the classroom and does nothing but draw pictures of dragons. He might be a perfectly nice person, he might be funny, he might make a good friend, but nobody will ever know because he's so weird that everyone is afraid to approach him. BYOND can be different and unique while still conforming to the set of norms that people expect software to adhere to.
#38 Jun 16 2012, 4:32 pm
You don't need to go out and advertise. All it takes is more games like NEStalgia that actually see some form of success for people to start taking BYOND seriously. It's why Kickstarter is getting so popular - people are seeing the great results everyone else is getting and so they join because they want a piece of that pie too.
#39 Jun 16 2012, 5:14 pm
I don't think people are getting confused by the site. Go to http://www.byond.com. it's pretty clear that this is a system to play and create games. The left side says "Play" in big letters and the right side says "Create". I know this generation is pretty ADD-riddled but I'm pretty sure they can figure this out.

I guess we could have two separate installers although I doubt it would matter (technically speaking the systems share the same libraries so it wouldn't be a "lite" download for the players-only). One reason I want players downloading the compiler is so that they can experiment with making games after being inspired by those they play.

The pager is outdated. We actually have a more modern UI for it that uses a browser and fancy icons etc. in the existing distribution (there might even be a way to activate it), but after playing with it for a while we realized that it would probably lead to more complaints than benefits because the usability was a bit sketchy. But that's something I plan on revisiting. It depends largely on how we decide to go with our web-based games as it may make more sense to have all of our pager/chatting on-site rather than through the hub.

The biggest problem with getting new developers is simply having them find out about BYOND. When you do a web search for things like "multiplayer game creation" BYOND should show up on the first page but it doesn't. We've tried SEO approaches and got a few keywords this way but we are largely unknown. We could try paying for ads but I've always been pretty skeptical of that. Of course a lot of developers are going to look at BYOND and decide it isn't for them, but I don't think that's out of confusion, since the first page they see makes it pretty clear what this is.

Ultimately, I believe, and have always believed, that the success of BYOND is completely contingent on the success of BYOND games. When NEStalgia was in the spotlight for a few months, we had our biggest traffic ever and I'm sure some of those people stuck around to try making games. Regardless, NEStalgia being successful helps us because it uses the BYOND subscription system so even if it doesn't bring users, it brings money, which we can push towards development and advertisement. Now that was just a blip, but if we were to have a game with some real long-term success, it would do wonders for the development community. Imagine if a game with the success of Minecraft had been written in DM-- you don't think other people would want to do the same thing? And I do believe it is very possible to make a commercially successful game through BYOND, because a game doesn't have to have fancy glitz to be popular, and casual multiplayer is still a huge, untapped market. We have games on here that get 100 players, and that's basically from our existing pool of 5-10K users. Get some real press and that will look like nothing.
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