#41 Jun 16 2012, 5:55 pm
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It's also kind of sad when BYOND's only "good", known, and advertised game (ignoring Space Station 13's popularity and reputation outside of BYOND) is just based on concepts from games from the 1980s...and that's pretty much what the name of the game implies. If all BYOND is known to do is to recreate the style of games from 20 years ago...I don't think that'll interest or attract anyone.
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#42 Jun 16 2012, 6:07 pm
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Of course it's clear to the people that made it and the people that are already using it, but there's no way it's clear to the people who are seeing it for the first time. I understood the play/make games distinction perfectly fine the first time I opened up the BYOND suite, but this may just be me being intuitive. | |
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#43 Jun 16 2012, 6:31 pm
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Forum_account wrote:
Having a good and successful game shows what BYOND is capable of but doesn't make it appealing to use and that's ultimately what matters. I agree with this. The BYOND IDE does need to give a better first impression, but as I was saying, if potential developers never even hear about the BYOND suite, then the first impression it gives won't even matter. I don't think BYOND should rely on popular games to do all the advertising for it. In the future, there will likely be plenty of standalone and flash client based games that won't even advertise that they were made with BYOND. The only way you could know with a standalone is to look through the DLLs in the installation files, but who does that? With the flash client, players might not have a clue that some games have been made with BYOND. This is why BYOND needs its own advertising. With the introduction of standalone and flash clients, the advertising will need to be increasingly geared towards potential game developers. Leave it to the individual game communities to advertise for new players. So, like I said, BYOND needs people to write about it all across the web. BYOND needs a real Wikipedia article, as well as an article on the DM language itself. Tons of smart people use that encyclopedia for information, and if those people happen to be potential game developers, they might not notice BYOND in the list of suites. BYOND also needs external download mirrors in popular sites, like CNET. There, the software will be much more likely to get reviewed. More importantly, all of these things will add up to raise the level of BYOND in google search results, when people search for things like "multiplayer game creation". I think advertising should be more of a priority than making the program look nice. If you are an author, and want to promote your book, do you spend more time working on the front cover, or advertising and spreading the word of its existence? The answer should be obvious, and it should work for BYOND as well. | |
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#44 Jun 16 2012, 6:51 pm
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Well now, this is quite an interesting post. I saw quite a bit of surprising and informative things here, but the most surprising thing by far is what came up when I googled byond after reading through all of this.
Go ahead, go do it, I bet you won't like what you see very much. Why? Because sure, BYOND's website is the first thing to come up and its FB is the second, but after that it gets pretty sketchy. I mean the very next thing is an old link to a page I am pretty sure is no longer updated or supported, and it is one that advertises 'byonds finest' as a bunch of anime games and maybe even rips. That's not even what troubles me the most, though. It's that there is no page explaining what BYOND is precisely, not wikipedia, ehow, or anything. Yes, its clearly for making and playing games, but there isn't a page describing what it is, what it uses and/or how it was designed, and so on. All those things are present with pretty much any other programming language or game design image, so why not with this? What is there to tell new people googling BYOND that it has great networking options, or even whats better about it than other engines in general? I only know that BYOND is designed through a mixture of languages mostly relying on C++ or something like that from reading it somewhere random long ago,and even that as you can clearly tell is a rather vague memory or description. I don't think developer help is an issue, I've looked through it a lot, and it seems to do well and serve its purpose a lot more than it seems to have troubling posts. I am all for BYOND being advertised by the games its made with, and I am sure the standalone and flash client will both be have ways of advertising BYOND or making it money. I've seen plenty of that. I do, however, think that there are some good points about advertising, reputation improvement, and so on and so forth here. It's not all about advertising and talking about BYOND around the internet, but it could certainly help. Also I just now thought to google BYOND twitter, and was surprised to see it even had one considering it not even being on the first page of my earlier search. Clearly, google is working against things a bit, when it should be helping a lot. That's probably really tough to fix, but that needs to be worked on more than advertising and such; heck it IS bad advertising. Not the best reply, but I am coming in late here, and hopefully I don't sound too crazy or foolish. Just my quick, somewhat rambled yet hopefully understandable two cents on this at the moment. I'll likely think a lot clearer, and of a lot better things after I have had more time to absorb and think over everything I've read here. Edit: Already had to fix a couple things, and add a couple things. I really post too fast sometimes. | |
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#45 Jun 16 2012, 7:00 pm
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If BYOND doesn't appeal to game developers the way it is, increasing its exposure will just give more people a bad impression of it.
Using games to increase BYOND's exposure isn't a bad idea. It could work. I'm sure there are a lot of people who know what Multimedia Fusion is only because Knytt was made with it. The reason this doesn't work is because BYOND doesn't appeal to game developers. NEStalgia brought in some people and I'm sure some of them thought "hey, I'd like to make a game like this", but most didn't choose to use BYOND. Imagine a youtube video that shows someone going to the website, downloading BYOND, and opening Dream Maker. They make a few icons, write some code, then make a map. When they run the game, it shows that with very little effort you can get something that looks like a game. Then - this is the important part - they host the game and IM their friends a byond:// link to join the world. Their friends join the game and you can see their mobs moving around the world too. To have a four minute video that shows how easy it is to make a multiplayer game would be impressive*. This could be used to give BYOND more exposure and make it look appealing at the same time. * It'd be as impressive as the game is. With the odd/clunky default Dream Seeker interface and the choppy movement, it might not be that impressive. The networking is what would be appealing, the rest of it just has to not look terrible. With some very small changes and a little bit of work (to make these videos) you could change BYOND from being an awkward/sketchy program to being an honestly impressive game development kit. | |
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#46 Jun 16 2012, 7:15 pm
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Actually, "recreating styles from 20 years ago" has never been more popular. You see retro style games popping up nowadays every where you look.
It doesn't matter what style you create your game in as long as it's fun. As for a video, I was thinking about making a video like this one that shows all the current best games we have. Then I remembered there's only like 3 or 4 active games worth playing and the video would probably only last a minute. | |
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#47 Jun 16 2012, 7:17 pm
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You want to make a video of a mob walking around shooting beams at Saibamen? ffffffff
and a Ninja hitting a log until he unlocks Bunshin? ffffffffff | |
Well, that's just one side of the same coin.
Now that we are on the subject of design, I realized how much is missing from the BYOND site. What it needs is a "Get Started" page in huge bold letters, linked from the main page that talks you through exactly how to use each program in the suite. It should explain this step by step, as most program sites would. First it would explain where to download the package, and where to create a BYOND account. Then, it should talk you through how to use the pager, where to find games, how to add games as favorites, and how to add friends etc. Then, it could explain Dream Maker, and every little function of it. This should be broken down into the different interfaces, like the code editor, icon editor, and map editor. Each feature of those needs to be fully explained somewhere on the site. It needs to do this with plenty of nice screenshots, and some with arrows to point at specific things if necessary. Also, BYOND lacks an official FAQs page, so that needs to be added as well. Here is an example FAQ page with lots of nice information made by Deadron. It would be nice to have something like that on the BYOND site. Overall, the site itself is not very user friendly for new visitors, and just kind of expects you to download BYOND and figure it out yourself. That's a bad way to present the software. The main BYOND page needs to be updated with buttons that say "Click Here to Get Started!", linking to a page that shows new visitors how to get started using the software. It should probably have a link to a FAQ page, and perhaps an "About BYOND" page that talks a bit about the history of the suite and the language. This would be a major improvement on the first impression of BYOND for new developers and players. | |
EmpirezTeam wrote:
As for a video, I was thinking about making a video like this one that shows all the current best games we have. Then I remembered there's only like 3 or 4 active games worth playing and the video would probably only last a minute. The games in that video don't look fun, they just look nice. It'd be hard for that kind of video to work well for BYOND. Even if BYOND had a lot of fun games, the games will never have particularly impressive graphics. Multiverse7 wrote: What it needs is a "Get Started" page in huge bold letters, linked from the main page that talks you through exactly how to use each program in the suite. It should explain this step by step, as most program sites would. ... it should talk you through how to use the pager ... it could explain Dream Maker, and every little function of it. This should be broken down into the different interfaces, like the code editor, icon editor, and map editor. While that page would be good to have (every page on the site that describes BYOND is a potential hit for a google search), it wouldn't be what makes BYOND appealing to users. You shouldn't have to read a detailed guide to figure out what BYOND is and how to use it, it should be obvious. The reason that having this type of content would help is because it'd show people what BYOND gives you and how you can use it (at a high level) to make games. People who are looking at BYOND for the first time won't know if it's a portal for games made in existing languages or if it's some simple drag-and-drop to make a "game" type of program. It'd be very informative to show people how BYOND works, not so they understand every detail of the map and icon editor, but just to see that BYOND provides those tools. | |
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#50 Jun 16 2012, 10:27 pm
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I'm all for improving the site, but I honestly don't see the problem (and it sounds like other users above agree with me and they, after all, were new to BYOND once). We have those big links on the front page. Developers click through to the Developer page and there are three links right at the top that explain stuff further. In fact, you wrote the second one. While I think a video would be great to illustrate games and/or game-creation, someone has to make it. If someone wants to do it and it's any good, I'll be glad to put it right there on the page.
Really, people aren't finding BYOND because we are not a major source of traffic (maybe due to lack of backlinks). If googling for "make a game" had BYOND as the first hit, we'd get more developers. Some would leave, but I venture not for lack of documentation but because the tool isn't flexible/powerful enough for them. That's fine. It's not for everyone. If we made enough money, we could afford to advertise (gaming placement is extremely expensive). We're trying to focus on some things that will hopefully make us money. | |
Multiverse7 wrote:
What it needs is a "Get Started" page in huge bold letters, linked from the main page that talks you through exactly how to use each program in the suite. It should explain this step by step, as most program sites would. I feel like I'm going crazy here because we do have a "Get Started" page linked from the main page. When you click on the huge glowy box that lights over the whole "Create" section, it goes to the Developer page (this link is also reiterated in text in the main page blurb below the ginormous "Create" box). At the very top of this Developer page (under the aptly named "Get Started" header) are three boxes and the middle one is a document that explains all the stuff Forum_account wanted and even has a link to a page about the interfaces. I know these docs pass the Forum_account sniff test because he wrote them (ergo it is mindboggling to me that he is now complaining that we don't have such information on our site and I can only assume he forgot about this or is just complaining for the sake of it) I really don't see how this is confusing at all, unless people really have such short attention spans that they aren't even willing to look at that section. Now it's true that we don't have a similar thing for explaining the pager, etc, and I suppose we could do that (although this post is really targeted to devs anyway). I think the process is fairly self-explanatory because when a person downloads BYOND, it takes them to the games page and they click on the game they want to play and the browser plugin should connect them to it (sometimes this is broken in which case that can be mucho confusing, but that's a bug more than anything else). Like I said above, I agree that some of the UIs are outdated but I don't really think that's confusing people.. just not making the experience as good as a it should be. | |
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#52 Jun 17 2012, 12:08 am (Edited on Jun 17 2012, 12:16 am)
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Tom, I think you may be misunderstanding us. This "Getting Started" page I was talking about should be where new visitors go BEFORE they even download the package. It would be something between an intro and a how-to. Here is an example of a getting started page that I found for Mozilla Firefox. Even programs as simple as browsers have them! It's not the best example though, because it doesn't really show you where to download it. There are plenty of better ones, but I'm not sure where to look at the moment.
Now, if you were referring to the BYOND Whitepaper page as the Get Started page, then that's not what I mean at all. The main BYOND Whitepaper page is not even the closest one to a "Getting Started" page, as it has way too much text. If that were really a Get Started page, then it would probably scare away any potential developers, because it makes things look complicated. However, the Whitepaper Tools page is much closer to being what I would call a "Getting Started" page. It introduces the development software and breaks down the features pretty well. The only thing it's missing is info about the pager, where to download the software, and where to make an account, which should be at the beginning of the page. That is the kind of page that needs to be linked directly from the main page. It might even be a good replacement for the download page. Basically, it would show you what the software looks like, give a brief overview of its features, and provide links to create an account and download the program. What it's for is to tell new visitors, "This is what the software looks like, and how it works, and if you are interested, this is where you can create an account and download it". Edit: The Whitepaper Tools page does have a "Download BYOND" link. Now I would seriously recommend editing that page to look more professional, and directly linking it from the Main Page. It just needs some info on the pager, then it's basically complete. | |
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#53 Jun 17 2012, 1:08 am
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I think the developer start page is really BYOND 101, since that is the first link on the page. It summarizes BYOND, provides links for more info, and explains accounts. I can add a link to the tools page too. I would expect devs to read this before they download the software due to the fact that the front page links these first, but we could always add links from the download page.
But I really don't believe this is what is holding developers back. If it were really confusing, we would be getting questions in the forum like "how do I compile a game?". I suspect most people find our site through games, and some decide to try to make games. That's why we have so many Anime games; the Anime players naturally want to make the same type of game. So if we had more players, we'd have more developers too, and if we had more diverse games that attracted attention, we'd get more diverse developers too. Attracting attention as a development platform independent of the game community aspect mostly requires us getting better SEO through backlinks and references on major sites (and a wikipedia article would be a good start if they would deem us worthy). I think the best way to do that is to have a successful game, because just the fact that successful game X was made with BYOND would put us on the map. But it certainly doesn't hurt for our users to try to spread the word themselves and get a grassroots campaign going to get BYOND some press. | |
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#54 Jun 17 2012, 2:34 am
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Here is a good start.
These are the corresponding pages for submitting software to what are probably the largest free software databases online: CNET, Softpedia, and Tucows. Not only would people be able to find BYOND on these sites, but submitting it there could have a significant effect on search engine results. Tom, I think it should probably be you that submits BYOND on these sites, if you so choose, because generally it is supposed to be the author that does it. Now as for a Wikipedia article, we will need to discuss that in another thread, so it doesn't derail this one. That's a subject with a history of failure, so the article needs to be done right, the first time, with lots of references. I think the greatest advertising force a product can have is a large community that promotes it. If we all work on promoting BYOND, I think we can easily make it go viral! | |
So, do you think someone should begin a new post on ways in which BYOND could advertise itself, and we could discuss the pros and cons of using these revenues? (By cons, I'm thinking of using places such as thepiratebay.se)
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#56 Jun 17 2012, 6:26 am
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Most BYOND users found BYOND through word of mouth. If someone tells you "hey, check out this game development tool called BYOND", you'll know what it is even if its website doesn't really tell you. I'm sure there are some people who found BYOND, knew nothing about it, and started using it. But, for each one of those people, there are many more who assumed BYOND was not the right tool for them and left.
The BYOND staff consistently has problems viewing the software from the user's perspective and the moderators often can't view posts from the non-moderator's perspective, so it's not surprising that people have trouble imagining how a non-byond user would see BYOND. Tom wrote: While I think a video would be great to illustrategamesand/orgame-creation,someonehasto make it. And that person's name is Tom. If BYOND was open source and the community could help to improve the software, people might be inclined to help advertise on a bigger scale. If people have nothing to gain from it, they're not going to go out of their way to help BYOND. | |
Forum_account wrote:
Most BYOND users found BYOND through word of mouth. If someone tells you "hey, check out this game development tool called BYOND", you'll know what it is even if its website doesn't really tell you. I'm sure there are some people who found BYOND, knew nothing about it, and started using it. But, for each one of those people, there are many more who assumed BYOND was not the right tool for them and left. ^ I found out this way. If my friend Dark-Hokage had not told me of byond, I would have never been a game developer. He told me after he recently googled it (since I know him in real life) and he thought it was awesome, so we made a few naruto rips and then learned that's not how to use Byond. Then I focused on original projects and his interests shifted towards other things like skating or boxing and etc. The thing is, I'm still trying my best to get byond better. Teka bought me a membership and I've been using it for my hub and been utilizing some of the FTP features (but S2B is too big for it now about 100k KB) The point is, this post isn't about driving people in, it's about how we scare them out. This doesn't apply to everyone, but almost everyone does it (and has done it to me) What's even worse is that the people that do it won't even accept that, even though in reality it's the truth. We also need more people willing to pay to get people into projects to work for it. Edit: I'm glad I made this ranting topic, because it seems to be really productive on ideas on how we can improve byond! :) My work on byond isn't done though! I will strive further to create things that will be totally amazing! Keep in mind that DM isn't the only thing I do. (So if you need help on Photoshop, Flash, Sony Vegas Pro/Camtasia Studio, etc ask someone better and if they can't do it, ask me!) | |
Multiverse7 wrote:
These are the corresponding pages for submitting software to what are probably the largest free software databases online: CNET, Softpedia, and Tucows. We've gone through several periods of SEO attempts where I have submitted BYOND to these kinds of sites. I have paid services to submit BYOND through the PAD file. Truthfully, ths had negligeable impact on our search placement. BYOND is listed in quite a few game directories but it has not had any major media exposure (which is why Wikipedia won't list it). | |
I once saw a wiki that showed Byond (as a program) and it said so many horrible things about byond. Turns out most of them were true (most of them, not all of them)
We have improved such issues like the tiled movement (instead of pixel movement) and the major lag, but they are right in the sense we have a ton of rips (that aren't listed unless you register) and the forums is a huge drama outbreak where dev-help is almost completely useless. In my opinion, I don't like seeing people rage and hate on me when I post in dev help (which isn't very often you can check my posts in there) and I generally try to find solutions myself, then check the Byond help (on dream maker), then ask messenger friends, go back to finding out solutions myself, then post on dev help and by then I'm doomed unless the lights of heavens shine on me as I get the "best idea ever" for it. Other than that, Dev-help has killed ideas I had previously anticipated due to the "Un-Help" it is in my opinion. Whenever there's criticism to be seen, you should always improve on such things. I feel we are seeing the criticism and going through the denial phase and passing it off as if it's nothing. | |
It says "free developer tools" but it doesn't explain what they are. Maybe the free tool is that you can upload your game to the site. It says it's got a "simple yet powerful program language" - maybe that's some kind of drag and drop interface that generates code for you. There's also no indication of how to download these tools, no indication that they've been installed as part of the BYOND installer, and no way to know how to access them once they've been installed.
Of course it's clear to the people that made it and the people that are already using it, but there's no way it's clear to the people who are seeing it for the first time. If you wanted to re-do BYOND's networking code and you found a networking library whose website claimed it "does things no other networking library can", would that be sufficient or would you want to hear more before deciding to use it?
Games might bring more attention to the tool but you're still relying on the appeal of the tool itself. People have made impressive things through tedious means (example). If the game is impressive but the game development tool looks strange, people will just walk away thinking "why didn't that guy just use Flash or something else?". Having a good and successful game shows what BYOND is capable of but doesn't make it appealing to use and that's ultimately what matters.