ID:181710
 
Where do you see BYOND in 10 years?

And

Where would you LIKE to see BYOND in 10 years?


For me, I think BYOND will see a more mature base
and with all of the efforts to truly create polished games, I think BYOND will see a greater influx of developers and dev teams but will still not reach it's full potential unless the staff AND the community step thier games up. (Mostly the community -- I think once the community creates more revenue for BYOND, the staff can advertise like it should!)


As far as wehre I would LIKE to see it in 10 years. I would like to see it progress to have it so that people could actually make a living on BYOND like they do on Steam. I would like to see a player base in the 100,000 + mark with high standards of games. Publicized game drops, etc. I for some strange reason would like to see BYOND in HS/College Level programming/game design classes to get people a chance to make thier own games.

Discuss.
I would like to not be seeing BYOND anymore in 10 years unless they're paying me. :)
In response to Foomer
Foomer wrote:
I would like to not be seeing BYOND anymore in 10 years unless they're paying me. :)

Preach to the choir, brother.
I'd hope that plain OO will be old hat in 10 years time, like procedural is now.
Where do I see BYOND in ten years? I see it fairly successful. The past year seems to have been pretty good for BYOND - I can only see it going better.

Where would I like to see BYOND in ten years? A successful game-making community, like Game Maker but without the epic failure of being forced to pay.
In response to Vic Rattlehead
Vic Rattlehead wrote:
Where would I like to see BYOND in ten years? A successful game-making community, like Game Maker but without the epic failure of being forced to pay.

Having to pay for software is "epic fail"? By the way, you can use the free lite edition, which has several less features than the pro ($30.00) edition.


Where do I see BYOND:
It's hard to say, either overtaken by anime or two separate sites, one suited for anime and the other suited for non anime.

Where would I like to see BYOND:
Of course, I cannot see BYOND lasting 10 years if the developers of BYOND are not gaining anymore money then they do now. Although, I have no clue what they are taken in yearly; I assume they would want a lot more if they expect BYOND to last that long. So I would like to see a free version of BYOND and a pro version, which will obviously not be free.
I don't. Quite frankly I have seen a lot of online game making communities. Even before I was involved with BYOND I was involved with a lot of other communities. Some of them were creations of single, off-line games, others involved similar systems to BYOND, even if they weren't always as open ended.

These communities always started off big and they seemed healthy, people were always having fun. But sooner or later, interest started to fade, and while the community was still there, it only contained five or six die hard fans who refused to leave.

BYOND has some potential as a game making platform, but it is also showing it's age every single day. While I enjoy pixels and 2D games, BYOND hasn't made any real strides to improve itself to update for the current times. It's always the same thing, "We will never do 3D" and I think that is a real shame, because I think with a lot of work and effort, not only would BYOND be great in 3D, but could bring in a whole new age at BYOND.

I've been around BYOND since middle school and besides updates in the software, the community hasn't had any real radical changes in the way it works besides the guilds. And I feel the guilds are a less then ideal way to run BYOND. All it does it further separate an already separated community.

Now all the game genres are split up into their own guilds, but what does it matter, the community is still full of haters and complainers and the oldbies up in their ivory towers, treating newbies like dirt sometimes. Not only can this community seem difficult to get into, but it can often times seem unfriendly.

Not only that, but every once and awhile you hear about how they can't survive without us and about money and such. When BYOND first started to try and change the community, they had real, fun events, events where you could win prizes, not just BYOND memberships, but that soon faded. I can't even remember the last time I saw a special event hosted from the BYOND community itself that even gave away memberships, let alone any real prizes.

I pay for things I feel are worth my time and money. Besides the BYOND platform (which I'd never pay for), the community offers nothing new to me, it offers nothing I couldn't find for free else where.

I don't see BYOND closed, like, dead, but I don't see it being very alive. I see it having a small, tight nit group of oldbies still trying to keep it alive, while the rest of the BYOND world decays. And in years after that it'll be remembered to that of the days of ZZT.
In response to Ham Doctor
Ham Doctor wrote:
BYOND has some potential as a game making platform, but it is also showing it's age every single day. While I enjoy pixels and 2D games, BYOND hasn't made any real strides to improve itself to update for the current times. It's always the same thing, "We will never do 3D" and I think that is a real shame, because I think with a lot of work and effort, not only would BYOND be great in 3D, but could bring in a whole new age at BYOND.

You seem to think that implementing a 3D element will be fairly easy to do. Also, you know how much more complicated it would be just to program in the language? There are a ton of software around that allows you to develop 3D games, I'm not sure why people are always complaining about BYOND not being 3D.

Lummox JR gave a reply to a previous thread asking about the possibilities of BYOND going 3D. [link]

Heck, Unity is now free. Go there if you are interested in 3D development.
In response to Calus CoRPS
Saying it was free really got my hopes up. It's but a 30 day free trial and then a $400 fee (for the iPhone Basic version, at least).
In response to Calus CoRPS
And that is the kind of attitude I am talking about here. BYOND is going to forever be stuck in 1995, because instead of at least trying to be open minded, they simply flat out refuse and then tell people to go else where. Real nice. Sooner or later, there will be a time when BYOND simply isn't good enough anymore. It happens to the best of them.

I guess the nice thing about BYOND is that even if BYOND itself dies, the software isn't dependent on the community or the hub. People can still build and play games with or without the community.
In response to Calus CoRPS
DerDragon is working on a 3D engine that uses a lot of stuff you can see from BYOND. It look's like it has promise.
In response to Ham Doctor
BYOND 3D is near impossible, hence why you were directed somewhere else. Also, BYOND is meant to be simple, and that's why it will live on; it's a great place to begin programming.
In response to Ham Doctor
Ham Doctor wrote:
And that is the kind of attitude I am talking about here. BYOND is going to forever be stuck in 1995, because instead of at least trying to be open minded, they simply flat out refuse and then tell people to go else where. Real nice. Sooner or later, there will be a time when BYOND simply isn't good enough anymore. It happens to the best of them.

You see, I am opened minded, but I am not going to give you a pat on the back and say great idea. It has been requested numerous times and has been replied with an informative response as to why it will not happen. Try looking at the link I provided in my previous response. I am fairly sure you alone are not willing to fund the project. But if I am wrong, I suggest getting in contact with the developers of BYOND.

I am not exactly sure why you believe BYOND is "stuck in 1995". Perhaps, it is because the community uses it for the purpose it was created for, 2D game development and MUDs? I have a fairly simple solution though: if you want to create 2D online games then stay. If you are going to be disappointed if BYOND does not allow 3D development in the near future, leave.

As I stated previously, there are a ton of software that allows you to create 3D games. Someone told me that Unity was free, but that might be false. Either way, why don't you try google once in a while?
In response to Ham Doctor
DerDragon actually hasn't worked on that in a while. I've used it, as he adds more to it the language gets vastly more complex. This is what would happen to DM if 3D support were to be added, it would no longer be the simple easy to use language we know, it would be along the lines of C++ in complexity.
It's going to be exactly where it is right now, after it's first 10 years of operation.

More and more companies are giving communities the tools to develop content within the framework of a mod that I have a hard time seeing a project like BYOND growing unless it drastically changes it's model. Don't get me wrong, BYOND was an awesome springboard to teach myself the fundamentals of workflow, discipline and ambition. Back in the day, when my only alternative was to go and buy a ton of books and learn python, BYOND was a godsend. I just wouldn't recommend it to someone who is looking for their start in game development today.

'sup dude.
In response to Ham Doctor
BYOND does have surprisingly good user retention. Despite all of the criticism, outdated technology, and what-not, we have a lot of developers and players who've been stuck around for a long time. That's certainly a positive.

I think a mistake a lot of people make is wanting BYOND to be everything from a generic language to a 3D gaming engine. While there are plenty of technical reasons why we haven't pursued those things further, that isn't really the limiting factor. Even with the best tools, there's going to be an inverse correlation between functionality and usability. What makes DM a good gaming framework is the same thing that limits it: the relative simplicity of the system. The main challenge in developing BYOND has been to balance the feature stream with the target development audience, which to me is people who have design ambitions but not necessarily a great deal of-- or any-- programming experience. The reasoning here is that there are plenty of people with great ideas who never get to see them come to life because.. well, because programming is HARD WORK. BYOND programming is still hard work, but maybe a little less so. Every time we pile on features-- say, 3D-- the ratio of hard core programming to design increases.

That said, we really do try to keep both audiences-- designers and more experienced programmers-- happy. I think it's unfair to say that the engine isn't improving considering we just released a major graphical update to usher in a newer era of BYOND games (again, at the sake of more complexity, and I'm sure we'll hear about it once people start using it). I've always said that great things can be done in BYOND RIGHT NOW (even when RIGHT NOW was 1999) because, at its core, it is a system to show off game design, and a well-designed game can override expectations of era-based glitz. Tetris is still a great game.

I agree that we do need to improve on the community front, especially with events and contests and other things to energize the user base. We need to make the site accomodating to new users, since they are our lifeblood. All of the site redesign, the guilds, etc were attempts to improve the user experience given the complaints of the time. We did some things right, a lot wrong, and we'll do what we can to make things better in the future. We've outlived a lot of communities and (sadly heh) I don't see this project dying anytime soon.

As an aside, I wish that people who've stuck with us for years would become BYOND Members even if they don't think they are getting any value out of the purchase. The main point of Membership is to show support for the project, which has always been a small-time, self-funded operation, the kind of thing I'd hope anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit would support. I don't know if it's this economy or what, but we're really struggling financially despite an uptick in users and count on the Memberships to get us by each month. Also, it instills in me a little hope for humanity when people are willing to pay just to support something they use.
In response to Calus CoRPS
Calus CoRPS wrote:
Having to pay for software is "epic fail"? By the way, you can use the free lite edition, which has several less features than the pro ($30.00) edition.

GameMaker Pro also has horrible DRM that doesn't work at all or stops working for no reason, which leaves with with nothing or screwing around with their support mail to get it fixed.

I had to file a PayPal dispute to get a refund for my license that never worked.
I'd hope that in 10 years, BYOND would take on a more professional looking image.

While I know quite a few people like the site style, the software presentation etc, I really don't. I don't go on the site during lunch at work (apart from when no-one is around), simple because I'm actively embarrassed by it's look and feel. I don't want to try and explain to passers-by what BYOND is and why I like it, because the first impression makes that a socially difficult task. By and large I got by using it at home (when I was sharing with other CS students), by making it a running joke, and one of the guys had already used the software. When we had chat about why he left BYOND, it boiled down to "I grew up". We explored that a reasonable amount, and some of the usual feature related things came up, but it was mostly down to the same reason he doesn't browse DBZ geocities sites any more, he sees it as childish because of presentation. The software and the games suffer a very similar issue, but the site strikes me as the most startling case, because it should be the easiest look and feel to manage well, in theory.
In response to Stephen001
Stephen001 wrote:
but it was mostly down to the same reason he doesn't browse DBZ geocities sites any more, he sees it as childish because of presentation.

That, AND because Geocities died.

Personally, I like the website, and I'm not embarrassed to use it at all. Then again, I don't really care what people think of me, my hobbies or how I spend my increasingly large amount of free time.

I would rather the site stay as it is, then turn into flashy complex sites that look and feel nice, but are utterly time consuming to browse.
In response to Tom
I honestly don't think it is "unfair" to say BYOND hasn't really advanced at all. Because it really hasn't. To be honest, I actually run two versions of BYOND on my PC, 3.5 and the current version. I only use the current version because most of the online games use it.

I don't like the new set up for a lot of the features of the updated BYOND, and with the way the community responds, I don't bother emoting these criticisms because I feel it would just be another "go somewhere else" response.

Sure the newest version of BYOND supports Isometric graphics. People were able to do that in BYOND before. As a matter of fact, some of the libraries available for Isometric graphics seem to do it better then the built in BYOND engine right now. Of course this might be because it's still in early stages, but I found the system overall a hassle to use. The mapping system in Iso mode felt clunky and unresponsive and the feature itself can be frustrating at times.

Let's not forget the new GUI feature where people can customize the way the whole interface works. While it works "alright" and we have seen few amazing interfaces designed, most of them simply even more ugly then the default style. Perhaps if there was a section specially designed for people to submit stylized, free interfaces for people to download it wouldn't be such an issue for me, but right now the GUI editor is a hassle to use, some features I feel that should have been supported from fay one still haven't. That feature simply feels like sugar coating.

Besides these two things, I haven't really felt BYOND has made any leaps or bounds. There are several engines out there that do almost exactly what BYOND is just now implementing and they do it better.

I like BYOND, I'll always have a soft place for it it, I am actually working on a game in 3.5 right now. But it simply isn't anything I'd invest any real money in it. I feel you should get what you pay for and right now I don't feel BYOND is even worth $15.00 a year.. And I play world of warcraft, which is like a second job instead of a game.
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