Byond seems dead.

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ID:376221
 
Feb 26 2012, 12:38 pm
Frankly, I am thinking that byond died the moment it forced people to become a member just to get the games public.

Any comments on this?

*Also, they should have told people in the first place about that addition!*
Feb 26 2012, 12:41 pm
Feb 26 2012, 12:41 pm
They did tell people about it once they decided to do it. They gave at least a week (Going to stick with a week as I cannot remember how long it actually was) of notice for people to buy memberships while they are at their cheapest.

Anyways, I understand how you are thinking like this. It's a new change, and some things aren't allowed anymore, so it is going to seem dead. The forums are still pretty active though, and that's good. If the developer forums are active, it is a good sign that things are being made. Either that, or newbies are learning, which means things will later be made. BYOND is now becoming what it was intended to be instead of a social community.

EDIT: Thanks guys, I was way off. It was 2 months.
Feb 26 2012, 12:41 pm
I am talking about submitting games for view.
But apparently, you wont talk about it so it seems.
Feb 26 2012, 12:47 pm
Ah, your right, advertising on that level should be a privelege or given only to those who are worthy. Nothing saying others can grant such....
Feb 26 2012, 1:00 pm
In response to Developous
Developous wrote:
I am talking about submitting games for view.
But apparently, you wont talk about it so it seems.

What's wrong with this new system? The only games that got accepted were competent games made by members anyway.
Feb 26 2012, 1:19 pm (Edited by moderator on Feb 26 2012, 5:35 pm)
Developous wrote:
Frankly, I am thinking that byond died the moment it forced people to become a member just to get the games public.

Any comments on this?

Yes. Clearly, despite the fact that we have the same number of games and the same number of people we have for months, the site has died in the past few weeks. Entirely.

*Also, they should have told people in the first place about that addition!*

They did.
Feb 26 2012, 2:23 pm
It's likely that you just haven't taken to looking in the correct places yet, Developous. A website change will do that.
Feb 26 2012, 2:28 pm
Developous wrote:
Frankly, I am thinking that byond died the moment it forced people to become a member just to get the games public.

The BYOND hub isn't the only way to make a game public. There are plenty of ways to host the .zip of a game you've created and make the link known to people. You don't need to be a BYOND member to do that.
Feb 26 2012, 2:36 pm
I think the BYOND hub allows for more statistics on each game ..

Like the amount of players per server medals etc etc.

Although its easy to pull the info if the hub is existing, obviously it is isn't world.export is an alternative ...
Feb 26 2012, 2:37 pm (Edited by moderator on Feb 26 2012, 5:37 pm)
Judging by the number of games online and the number of players online being the same as it's been for the past year or so and the number of new faces posting in the developer forums, I'd say you're wrong. Just because you don't like the changes doesn't mean BYOND is dying.
Feb 26 2012, 3:20 pm
i'm still wondering when 494 is coming out. it's almost march, and the only word i can find is that it was supposed to come out in January.
Feb 26 2012, 3:21 pm
We did a few website iterations since, so I'd wager they delayed stuff a bit. But we'll see what Tom says, eh.
Feb 26 2012, 5:54 pm
Developous wrote:
Frankly, I am thinking that byond died the moment it forced people to become a member just to get the games public.

I compleatly disagree with what you're saying. As I've seen it, starting from the point BYOND had the site update, people have been more compelled to post comments and messages using this all brand new and awesome forum system. And I have to add this... most developers are BYOND members, and have been members for a long time... so, maybe you're saying BYOND is going to be dead because of them leaving... but, hey, nobody has left!! I haven't seen developers stopping their work because a BYOND membership is a few buck "expensive".

And nobody's leaving just as Popisfizzy said. Get your facts right because this update is and will be better and good for all of us...and who knows... probably for our following generations.
Feb 26 2012, 5:55 pm
Although it's not visible, everyone just assume there's a moderator tag next to my name. I now point you to #1 of our posting guidelines which reads "Don't be a jerk". Pretty basic stuff fellas.

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Developous wrote:
Frankly, I am thinking that byond died the moment it forced people to become a member just to get the games public.

Any comments on this?

They don't force you to become a member to get your games public. They simply took away an expensive aspect of BYOND which got abused and taunted regularly by everyone, and asked that if you're going to take advantage of this, that you curve some of the costs. It's perfectly fair. XNA doesn't give me a free website to advertise my games on (that I'm aware of), why should BYOND?

*Also, they should have told people in the first place about that addition!*

They gave everyone at least a good months warning this was going to happen. The price increase and whatnot wasn't out of the blue.

I am talking about submitting games for view.
But apparently, you wont talk about it so it seems.

This falls under my second paragraph. I'll happily discuss and debate it if you want. Give me a list of pros and cons and I'll go over them with you.

Developous wrote:
Ah, your right, advertising on that level should be a privelege or given only to those who are worthy. Nothing saying others can grant such....

I'm going to point out that as far as advertising goes, the hub isn't exactly the single one-stop-shop. It says it gives you access to thousands of users, and although true to an extent, how many really go from game to game looking for something to do? I see the occasional new player here and there in all my normal hangouts, but otherwise, nothing. Zip. Nada.

The single best place for advertising your BYOND game is surprisingly enough, not BYOND. Because there are far more and far less cynical people out in the world wide web who might give your game a shot instead of disregarding it because of any stigma that haunts your reputation.

I was pretty popular back in the day. Being one of the first people to actually go out of his way to produce a decent looking interface with the earlier iterations of 4.0. Still, no more than 60 people ever bothered to check out my creations. Silk Wizard got a few hundred with a couple of emails. He put less effort into his original advertising strategy and did more for his project AND BYOND than I ever did.

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A.T.H.K wrote:
I think the BYOND hub allows for more statistics on each game ..
Like the amount of players per server medals etc etc.

You are correct. Statistics and medals and whatnot are built into the language and directly connect to the hub. But just because they're there doesn't mean they have to be used. client.IsByondMember() is there and is almost completly ignored.

Although its easy to pull the info if the hub is existing, obviously it is isn't world.export is an alternative ...

You're right. I imagine if the BYOND world isn't connected to the hub, any communications regarding player count and whatnot are ignored (this is just a guess, for all I know the Unpublished stuff is still in there).

Either way, making a score board, medal system and what not is entirely possible using world.Export(). And in come cases, actually allows more freedom to the programmer. Then again, ripping that data from the hub is also fun. Though I don't think you can rip whom has what medal and any scoreboard data that might be available from text mode. I've never seen them in any of my tests, anyway.

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Mista-mage123 wrote:
i'm still wondering when 494 is coming out. it's almost march, and the only word i can find is that it was supposed to come out in January.

Due to all the website-foo, I imagine that it has been delayed for a bit. With a bit of website "hackery" however, you'll find there is a beta for 494 sitting in the BYOND Build directory.

They don't go out of their way to hide betas any more. They just keep them out of the public eye so if there is a major bug or whatnot in there, the masses don't flock to the forums complaining. Feel free to give it a try if you want. Though documentation will be lacking until they do officially release it.
Feb 26 2012, 5:57 pm (Edited on Feb 26 2012, 6:03 pm)
Using world.export or MySQL I should add..

[EDIT] Actually .. I retract my whole post you can do all of it without the hub .. it'll just use more bandwidth updating constantly or *when ever something exciting happens* and be a whole lot slower.

Unless of course the server is hosting on localhost along with the website and MySQL .. not an option for all.
Feb 26 2012, 6:00 pm
In response to A.T.H.K
A.T.H.K wrote:
Using world.export or MySQL

You'd want some way to store the information on your appropriate server, unless you only want local scores on a per-server basis. In which case, world.Export() would be completely unnecessary.

You'd definitely be wanting MySQL or another database variant to store the data you send with world.Export().

A simple scoreboard could be written up as easily as:
data_represent varchar(50) NOT NULL,
user_score int NOT NULL,
user_id varchar(20) NOT NULL


With data_represent being the type of score data you want to store and the other two being self explanatory.
eg: INSERT INTO scoreboard VALUES('Shortest Time', 25, 'Tiberath');

That'd give you all you need for the most basic of basic score boards.

I should add..

You should be able to edit your own posts. ;)
Feb 26 2012, 11:30 pm
In response to A.T.H.K
Assuming you can host in trusted mode, you can write and use a DLL that will let you offload the interaction if you can afford to make it asynchronous (like say, posting a new score or rewarding a new medal). You can also then tailor a protocol for your own mechanism, and really just devise your own server for managing this data, and add centralised saving, account management etc etc etc

Although I'll be honest, MySQL latency over the internet is not too terrible provided you keep the result sets returned from the DB very small, so remotely hosted MySQL DBs (on a good host, not one of those odd free-hosts) may well service you in safe-mode as it is.
Feb 27 2012, 5:18 am
Or you just could learn any other language (C++?) make your own game and publicy it around the world. There's no point on staying here if you don't like this.
Feb 27 2012, 5:37 am
While that /is/ true, I don't think it adds much to the topic. in itself. Developous' initial point would presumably be that this has in fact happened, and that is why it seems 'dead' to him ('quiet' may be a better phrase).

I'm not really sure in itself that the topic offers much discussion anyway. It's basically "I think X is the case, what are your thoughts?", which being mostly engineers/technical types, will vary from "I agree" to "I disagree and you're a spastic for thinking that".
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