I went ahead and looked at the following sites (And some more that weren't worth mentioning):

HaXe
GameMaker: Studio
SproutCore
52Framework

I think each of those has elements that can be learned from.

HaXe
HaXe is delightfully simple. The huge-icon, bullet-point features are well-written and elaborative enough that they're slightly more telling than one-liners, but don't take up enough space that they're bothersome to the design.

It also has a common theme we'll be seeing, namely a top menu bar with 1-click access to a few key things: Documentation, Download, Community, and Reference.

GameMaker: Studio
I actually don't like most of gamemakers pages, because they're very uninformative. But the Studio page has a really important more-elaborated technical view. It includes some key things:

- A bullet-point longish list of features which almost anyone can understand, without prior knowledge of GameMaker.
- Screenshots of good-looking games.
- A list of supported operating systems
- A more elaborated version of what HaXe has with the feature icon bubbles, that lets you know enough to decide whether to use GameMaker or not, solely based on this page.

Collecting all of this on a single page is really key, because it lets you know:

- What can I develop. How will it look. How does it look in realtime? (The showcased games have trailers)
- What are the restrictions of the language (What operating systems does it support, does it require or use any key frameworks or system components?)
- How does this system/language help me work effeciently towards what I want, as an indie gamer / small software house?

And its very short and to the point, even though its a large page. Very few wasted words, and it never assumes what you want to do or how, it merely provides an overview.

SproutCore
SproutCore is an MVC JS framework for web development, not a game suite. So obviously its a bit different. But I just absolutely love the simplicity of the page you meet when you go to sproutcore.com. Again like the others, it does a similar thing: 1-click get started right in your face, a slightly elaborated visually pleasing list of key features, and some snazzy HTML5 to make you give the page an extra view. Notice the key named links at the top.

Dinner calls, so I don't have time to mention much about the last site yet. But mostly more of the same :)

I don't know what makes you an expert Alathon. I've never seen you market anything. Your wall of text is rendered invalid. Good day to you sir.

Indeed. No one's interested in suggestions at this point. It's basically just 4 or 5 people yelling "y u negative?" at FA.

inb4 thread lock.

Every thread Forum_account participates in degenerates into the same contrarian nonsense, and I'm ashamed to have fallen for his trolling once again. For the rest of you:

BYOND has a lot of flaws. Some are fundamental to the way we initially designed things, and some can be corrected over time. The list of things to correct is enormous, and it is up to me to decide which things we should focus on. If people think we are choosing the wrong things or that the pace of progress isn't up to their liking, I can't really say anything because it is what it is. We're doing what we can given the time and budget we have. A large percentage of the stuff we work on isn't even directly related to the software or the website-- boring things like PCI compliance and maintaining database archives. These are things you never even anticipate when you start a software project.

Threads like these can be constructive for both us and our users. If we look at this and say, "hey, we really do need a bullet-point list of features for prospective devs to see", then we'll note the idea and get around to it. We're not going to drop everything we're working on to jump to an unrelated project (and while it may sound like "one little thing", these website features have a way of spiraling out of control). Furthermore, even when we do implement these sorts of things, they are never satisfactory for some users, and that adds an air of negativity to the community that we just don't need.

Some of you need to just step back and look at the big picture. This whole system is pretty amazing, and I hope you think so too or else you wouldn't be here. I believe other users and developers would feel the same way if only they were aware of it. And that is a wholly different problem than adding some documentation or changing the layout yet again. It is a problem we must rely on our users to solve, because, ultimately, they are the ones are going to bring us traffic.

Everything's amazing and nobody's happy!

@Toadfish and ET: Thanks for having a realistic view of things!

Tom wrote:

Some of you need to just step back and look at the big picture. This whole system is pretty amazing, and I hope you think so too or else you wouldn't be here.

I agree completely, which is what makes it a shame that other people won't see how amazing it is when they look at BYOND (because the site and software don't convey it - it's there (mostly), they just don't convey it). When you ignore 99% of what I've said here, the previous sentence should be in that 1% =)

SilkWizard wrote:

Forum_account wrote:

The difference between is that I'm not trying to make a living from this, it's just what I do in my spare time.

You spend a *ton* of time on this site harping on Tom's every move, so acting nonchalant about it is a total cop-out. If what you do in your spare time is to relentlessly criticize the owner of a business that you claim to have no stake in, then that says a lot about you.

That's not a cop out. If you were going to evaluate someone's cooking and you knew they were trying to become a professional chef, you'd evaluate them a certain way. If they, instead, only cooked three times a week to make dinner for themselves, you'd evaluate their cooking differently. That's just how these things work. Because of the BYOND staff's position they're held to a different standard. It happens to not work out in their favor here, but that doesn't make it unfair or untrue.

Silk: What I'm annoyed at is the implication Forum_account is somehow trolling in this thread. Maybe he's had a bad attitude, maybe you find his argument style somehow wrong or annoying (although I don't think it is, myself), but he definitely is not deliberately trying to piss people off. As the project leader, Tom represents, you know, BYOND. He shoulders extra responsibility to come off as respectful and mature in these discussions. It doesn't sit well with me that he's falsely accusing someone like FA, who, let's face it, has done /a lot/ for this project, of being a troll.

Now, maybe you don't mind this sort of attitude from Tom, don't see things my way, or whatever. That's fine - I'm simply voicing my own negative impression here, not forcing it on someone else.

I think FA is a nice individual, who is also quite talented and knowledgeable, and who for some reason garners an awfully bad response in these forums. I really don't see why myself - maybe you do, but I don't. In any case, whatever you might think of him, I believe we would all like him to stick around, given his constant contributions. And for this reason I'm disappointed when people don't show him more respect. If you don't like his style of argumentation, you can just... ignore, you know?