On a side note: Do Memberships at the same price as a donation work out at a better value for byond? as in does more go to byond if you were to pay say 10 dollars for a membership as opposed to directly donating 10 dollars -thinking paypal might have different percentage takes/cuts(or w/e) applied when dealing with what they deem to be business transactions as opposed to donations.
It's the same thing as far as we're concerned.
I see, it's good to know.
Aw man, I haven't been a member in over a year or so(March 2012 I think?).. shame I wish I was getting more hours at work or I'd surely support byond. :(

In response to Komuroto
Enjoy.
In response to Howey
That was nice of you to do that for him :P
In response to KickingKangaroo
So you thought you'd pander for one? Kk.
I'll start donating again when development actually starts happening .. *cough* flash client *cough* (or better yet HTML5 client) until then I suppose my money can just sit in a bucket.

Since Tom is actually answering here .. want to finally take a look at this, instead of neglecting paying customers? http://www.byond.com/forum/?post=93429

Thanks.
In response to A.T.H.K
7 releases in January.

Stop neglecting us Tom!
In response to Murrawhip
Neglecting core features that've openly been said to be worked on. Client-side processing, map instancing, flash client, ect. 500 was a nice step where BYOND needs to be, but since has slowed. If they could've held momentum; I'd actively donate $5/week. Might not seem much, but piled with everyone else holding back(ATHK, for example) until things that need to be added are added(or at least progress on these are shown); it's a fair amount.
In response to Murrawhip
Murrawhip wrote:
7 releases in January.

Stop neglecting us Tom!

Did you read any of the notes? Mainly bug fixes for multi threading and the introduction of "Credits" a thing that shouldn't of been made as no one should rely solely on the hub system especially if they want a well known and popular game, that system was a waste of effort, anyone can integrate PayPal or another system like Google Wallet if they actually tried.

I guess this somewhat contradicts requests to have the guild system back in a way, but if BYOND wants money and membership gives you ... Pretty much nothing then benefits like thy should be introduced or re introduced...

The flash client was probably mentioned sometime in 2010 or 11 but nothing has been done and any effort is wasted as flash will be obsolete soon.

Seriously 5k a month and they haven't shown all thy much for it...
In response to A.T.H.K
Aff, I'm afraid BYOND Community is losing it's patience, even A.T.H.K, who's created great utilities like BYOND Panel, dislikes the development speed.

I understand you, to be honest I thought they were doing very well as they were rarely reaching their monthly goal (they did in December, and the first months it was up), but not anymore. I think the updates related to client-side are good, they do seem great but it's hard to know what has changed at all, I know they said something related to the interface, but that's all.

Some of the "pending updates" that people seem to want the most are -> Flash client (I do really wish this too, I remember some years ago when we got the first posts related to it, and then the moment it was released... yet after that nothing happened, at all), changes on Map (many people have been suggesting that the client should only receive data of their screen (appareantly we get information from all the map, and that'd imply many changes on procs like view(), so it'd take long), etc.

I'll probably donate to BYOND soon, but it'd be really nice if we got more information from Lummox or Tom. I remember back in the days when Lummox used to describe the functions the v5.00 update would give (matrix and so on), but after they really haven't said much.

I appreciate a lot their work though, perhaps they just need to communicate a bit better with their community.


By the way, have they really quit working on Flash Client? NEStalgia got greenlight on Steam, so I was expecting to see some announcements related to this.
I think you guys are overestimating the amount of progress Lummox and Tom can produce with a code base as big and as complicated as BYOND's. Lummox is putting in full-time hours, and you can't really expect more than that. This isn't some magical process that lets them pump out bug-free features at an unrealistic rate. They do what they can with the time they have. If you're not content with progress, then that's tough, because they can't afford to take on another programmer.

As for memberships, the development community is a small fraction of BYOND as a whole. The people that play games don't keep up with the development of BYOND, so I doubt that's an actual issue as far as income is concerned. What BYOND needs to survive is fresh blood playing and creating games, and catering to the tiny development community probably won't help with that... If the people here are going to release popular games, they can do so with the current tools.

I mean, I wouldn't be against some sort of bi-weekly update for extra communication, but I can understand why they wouldn't want to do that, too. Development with the engine isn't going to go smoothly, and talking about features when it's hard to estimate how many hours they will take is finicky. And with how people bash BYOND, I wouldn't be surprised if there were whiners because x feature that was spoken about wasn't released within a 'reasonable' amount of time.
There may be unseen development or maintenance that we're unaware of, and I think we deserve to receive regular updates on the development of BYOND. After all, this is a product that is not just used to play games but used to develop them as well, and IMO it's imperative for developers to be aware of upcoming & deferred changes so they can prepare for them.

It would answer questions such as "what is the status of the [feature]?" and make things clear for the developers i.e., the majority of users concerned with supporting BYOND and that may be able to support it in other ways than donations.

On the rare occasion when a question is answered it only answers a single question and doesn't provide any further insight into the state of the project.

Questions that I have are "have the donations helped out so far?", "how long will it take for the alternative client to be developed & how will it affect skins?", "what kind of problems is the project facing right now and may we try to assist?". An ongoing question in my mind remains "what's the plan?" as while I'm developing things I have no idea if something rolls around the corner that could improve my work or render it moot. If I wait a few weeks I can see if they're going to make that change I requested...

I strongly recommend the development of a page where such updates can be posted. Nothing has to be set in stone, but just having an indication of how much work needs to be done on something and where the priorities are (maybe a calendar?) really fills in a lot of the blanks.

N.B.: This is another reason why the ability to see the amount donated for past months would be a good addition. It gives insight into the total amount that has been donated so far, and the amount that was expected. It allows us to see if the times that there have been >$5000 in donations has helped to cut back on the times where there have been less, or if there's still a gap that could be filled.
Falcon lazorz wrote:
Howey wrote:
Enjoy.

It'd be a real shame if I only had a year and a half left on my membership.. how happy I would be to get an extra five years or so.. oh boy I'm so depressed.

If I had the money spare to do it, I'd say Enjoy to you too.
In response to A.T.H.K
A.T.H.K wrote:
Did you read any of the notes? Mainly bug fixes for multi threading and the introduction of "Credits" a thing that shouldn't of been made as no one should rely solely on the hub system especially if they want a well known and popular game, that system was a waste of effort, anyone can integrate PayPal or another system like Google Wallet if they actually tried.

Seriously 5k a month and they haven't shown all thy much for it...

.output, .winget, and .winset. I'm happy as a clam with the new stuff that they've worked in, and how much it allows me to do on the client-side of things.

I think you are seriously underestimating how huge server-side threading and these client-side features really are.
In response to Ter13
Ter13 wrote:
.output, .winget, and .winset. I'm happy as a clam with the new stuff that they've worked in, and how much it allows me to do on the client-side of things.

.output release 504.1229 Jan 29, ok that one isn't all that bad, except you can't pass through images..

.winget wasn't done in Jan nor was winset .. however they had one update in release 504.1228

Winset and Winget can now be accessed via JavaScript in a browser control, allowing for more responsive interfaces. See the new section in the skin reference for details.

I think you are seriously underestimating how huge server-side threading and these client-side features really are.

Threading that is still buggy and hardly works? ok, see latest http://www.byond.com/forum/?post=180952&page=9 "More multithread fixes."

Client side features are always good however only one was made in Jan, the rest of was pretty much bug fixes and while those are fantastic to fix up, they could at least keep everyone in the loop, Tom hasn't mentioned the flash client in a long time, Lummox deals mainly in the bug report section and everything else just gets left behind.
Not to mention that we are paying Lummox .. the BYOND community is more than capable of helping out on the project. BYOND has many talent people that know all sorts of languages, they would probably be more than happy to help with development for free..
A.T.H.K wrote:
.winget wasn't done in Jan nor was winset .. however they had one update in release 504.1228

http://www.byond.com/members/ Ter13?command=view_post&post=1477869&first_unread=1

http://www.byond.com/members/ Ter13?command=view_post&post=1479799&first_unread=1
Your point being? You got your requests answered and fulfilled that's ... Good I guess, it's a pretty nifty feature but I don't see why you got it done in a few days when there's more useful features sitting around without an answer..
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