Space Games Guild

How to... make games in DM

Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:19:18 GMT

Well it seems that these days too many games are just thrown together, with the programmers literally playing a hit-and-hope game to see if their game idea will be any good. I'm writing this small article today for the BYOND community as a little guide for new and perhaps even existing users. Call it a quick-start guide or whatever.

Registering
BYOND is an entire online programming and gaming community, and to use its software properly you'll need to register. Registering is simple, simple go to http://byond.com/register to register what we call a key.

Keys are the same thing as usernames, they're your identity throughout the community. You can create more than one for testing purposes, but we prefer you don't.

Once you've registered a key, you'll get an e-mail with an activation number, punch that into the provided link and you're all set!

Downloading
The next important thing for you to do is to download the program. You can get BYOND on Windows, Linux and Mac. However most features are available on Windows. To download BYOND, go to http://byond.com/download/ and pick your version!

Getting Started
This part is more of a warning than a guide. People on BYOND are more or less split into 4 main 'communities' which tend to keep to themselves. There are the oldbie-gurus who just hang out in BYOND chatrooms, play the odd-game here and there and are mainly just cynical and tend to be mean to new people; so don't mind them.

Then there's the DBZ/Naruto/General Anime category, who are basically just people who love Anime. A lot of these people are complete idiots, but some of them are actually quite decent guys.

Thirdly there's the game-machine community, who are just like a lot of people working on their own games constantly, give up and try another project. This happens a lot in BYOND and it'll likely happen to you without the proper planning. More on that later.

Lastly, there's the kids who don't fit in with anything else, they can't program, but they love the games. They mainly hang out in some of the popular games.

The difference between my interpretation of 'noob' and 'newb'

'noob' - A 'noob' is a new member of the community who does not have the motivation, self-respect or capacity to actually genuinly learn the programming language, tends to troll around and cause trouble because they have nothing better to do with themselves. Those who do 'try' to learn the programming language, tend to expect people to work for them, and give them full systems which they complain about if they don't 'plug and play'.

'newb' - A self confessed new member, the 'newb' tends to be interested in learning about the program, and all he can. He will search for information and learn. In the future the 'newb' (as opposed to the 'noob') will be a valuable member of the BYOND community.

Ready to go? Sure?

Well once you have registered, downloaded and installed BYOND, you can run the 'BYOND' program (the blue one) and then enter your login details. Once you're in you'll be greeted with your lovely BYOND Panel. That's yours. It's your source to playing games.

So what do you want to do? If you're here to play games, then go mad! Click the 'Find Games' button to search through the games available on BYOND (It'll open up a browser). If you're here to learn the BYOND Programming Language (DM), then the next part is for you.

Meet the Dream Maker

To give you a quick-fire taste of programming in the DM language, there are a few good tutorials you can use. The best in my opinion are Zilal's tutorials, or ZBT's, available at the links below. They are designed to give you a really fast introduction to the basics of BYOND. They're really helpful to get you started, and to find out if you really are interested.

If you're interested in making a Action/RPG game, use this link to get started:
http://www.byond.com/members/DreamMakers?command=view_post &post=36143

If you're interested in making a Board/Strategy game, use this link to get started:
http://www.byond.com/members/DreamMakers?command=view_post &post=36233

If you're interested in making a Text MUD game, use this link to get started:
http://www.byond.com/members/DreamMakers?command=view_post &post=36273

Once you've had your intro to the language, you should know whether or not you want to continue with the language. If it's for you, then you're gonna want to learn everything you can. The best place to learn everything is the DM Guide which has nearly everything. You can see the guide here: http://www.byond.com/docs/guide/

After that, you may be confused about some things, if so you can use one of the following resources to get help!

BYOND Developers Page - http://www.byond.com/developer/
BYOND Developer Forums - http://www.byond.com/developer/forum/
BYOND DM Reference - http://www.byond.com/docs/ref/
BYOND Chatters - http://www.byond.com/games/Xooxer/Chatters

You can't go wrong at any of the above links, I'm usually in Chatters and I'll be willing to help you out, the forums are full of people who are more than happy to help, the reference is great for getting intimate with the functions available in DM, and the developers page is great for general articles of interest and learning new features and interesting methods.

Making Games - Hit and Hope?

As I mentioned above, most games today on BYOND are thrown together, like a hit-and-hope game of pool. The chances are it'll turn out crap, but some don't. Don't take the risk, save our sanity!

Everyone can learn to make games. It's easy. Making GOOD games however, is an Art. It takes effort and commitment to make a truely addictive game on BYOND. It just doesn't happen overnight. Those of you who think it does, you're either a genious or a fool. I'm betting on the latter.

So how do you make a good game on BYOND?

The first thing you need to do is think of a good original idea. You can't rip people off. Not only is it not right, but if you do, the entire community will boycott your game. Apart from the DBZ guys. They do the whole 'not original' thing al lthe time. :D

So you have your idea. Sit there, brew it up in your mind for a few days. Think about how you can do certain things, think about how you're going to 'balance' the game, how you're going to make the player hang on the edge of his/her seat, sit up playing your game all night. What makes gamers tick?

Once you're sure what you want your game to be about, you need to write it all down. Not programming, design! You're not ready for programming yet!

Design Documents
With Game Development, most developers have HUGE design documents detailing every single option and condition within the game. BYOND makes things so much simpler with it's Built in Graphics/Movement system with DM. Not only do you need less documentation, but implimenting your ideas becomes about 10 times easier with the correct design.

You'll need two documents for your game design, which'll evolve as you program the game. They're never 'finished'. They're workable, but not finished; The Concept, and the Specification.

The former is not required, but it makes writing the specification much easier.

The Concept
The concept is a design document in which is usually about 2/3 pages long. You write down a brief 'setting' or 'story' to engage the reader in the idea, describe a scene within your game. Next you'll need to write down the overview of the game. What type of game, what it's going to be called, how many players it's gonna use, what features you need to include, what features would be nice but not required, etc. This document exists to aid you.

The Specification
You're going to need to list everything you're going to include in the game. That may sound like a daunting task now, but believe me, if you just start programming your engine, putting in everything is going to get annoying when you suddenly realise halfway through your 'movement' system, that you've forgotten to define some variables, forgotten to provide some vital figures, and you're off on a hunt to get that sorted which CAN at times take all night.

List the following things in the Game Specification:

- Game Overview (List of features, type of game, etc)
- Players
-- All player options
-- Player Creation - How does it work?
-- Player Handling - How will you handle players?
-- NPCs - Are NPCs required? Artificial Intelligence? Describe it.
- Items
-- What items are you going to need?
-- How do you pick them up, drop them?
-- How do you use them?
- Administraters
-- How are you going to control your players online?
-- How many options will you give yourself and other admins?
- Icons - What icons are you going to need?
- Sounds - What makes a noise? You need to describe the sounds you'll need.
- Other - Anything else you think is relevant.

Starting your Game

Once you've finished the Specification you should take a break for a day or so, get your energy back up. But after that, you're ready to go! Full throttle! Yeah! ... and stuff.

The first things you'll want to do is set up your variables, define your objects, make your icons and set up player handling (savefiles)

After that, you'll need to prioritise the other features depending on your specification. Are you going to re-write the built-in movement system? How?

Work through the specification making sure everything you've written down is programmed into the game. As you go along, and reach milestones, like, you finish a certain system, make sure you test it. Compile often, and test often. There's nothing worse than writing a whole game, hitting 'compile' and watch about 900 errors pop up at you. (It's happened.)

Once you've reached the last page of your specification, you should be done. But you're not.
There's always the last minute changes, the last minute balancing. Maybe a certain weapon is too powerful, tweak it a little to damage less. Maybe you forgot to program the hair-styling system. Double check everything. Make a tick-chart! Cool!

Testing & Debugging
Debugging is the best way of finding out how bugs occur. After every stage of a procedure that you believe is bugged, add a line of information to output to the world informing that the previous statement was succesful.

That way, the last message you get means the next statement after that is your problem. Then you find out exactly what's wrong.

Easy!? Yep.

Polishing & Publishing
Ready to let your game be ripped to shreds by the community? Make sure you have fixed all the bugs you can find, and then host it online! Hosting is easy.

When you Compile and Run your game, you can see the the 'File' menu. Simply click that, click 'Options and Messages' and then set up your hosting from there. A good port I'd reccomend is 6001, as that's the port BYOND likes to use to connect to the hub. =] Speeds things up a bit.

Dealing with Complaints, Suggestions, and Admin Requests
It's going to happen. Complaints come and you're gonna have to deal with them. Take them in your stride. Most complaints are either given because something is genuinly bad, in which case, oh well, you tried, or because they're jealous of your work, in which case, just laugh. Suggestions is obvious. If it's one you think would help the game, add it! Admin requests.. Well let's just say unless you think the guy is trustworthy, don't even think about it. :|

Anything else?
I don't think there's really anything else to be covered really. If you have any questions I'll be in Chatters mostly, or just ask on the Forums.

Enjoy BYOND guys, and welcome!

End & Beginning

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 02:37:21 GMT

Well it's the end of the tea and biscuits guild, guys. You all may have noticed you've been removed from the guild and the change of the blog name, so yeah. No more tea or biscuits for us. Sorry.

I have now started the 'Space Games' guild, a guild where space based games are submitted, reviewed and pooled for any space-enthusiast to easily find a decent game based in space without having to seach a billion different keywords individually like 'space' or 'ship' or 'alien' etc.

We're accepting applications and will be adding games shortly.

Beyond The Rave

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 05:08:46 GMT

Hey guys, one of my posts from last year mentioned I was going to be working on set for a movie called Beyond The Rave, and there is now a trailer and website for the film, which can both be found at http://www.beyondtherave.com :)

I'm not in the trailer, unfortunately, but I'm an extra in a few of the scenes, but I mostly worked behind the scenes on graphics, as 3rd AD, and some other things I forget. :P

Muchos love

History Channel: Battle for the Pacific

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 07:36:03 GMT

This my friends is a review on the yet un-released game produced by the History Channel games company, called Battle for the Pacific.

The game is an FPS WWII based game, where you take the role of a foot soldier named Davinski (or something similar). I can't really say much to introduce anything other than - if you pay money for the game, you will be disappointed.

Battle for the Pacific starts by launching you straight into a raid on Wake Island, where Japanese 'Zeroes' are bombing the hell out of the trenches, followed by a beach-landing assault on your base. This whole process starts with a rather rigid looking radio operator who seems to have a broken radio on his hands, so your job is to fetch the three missing pieces to repair the radio. Along the way (and out of the first part of the trench) you're greeted by Japanese foot soldiers who proceed to attempt to shoot you. These are easy to get past - but you have to consider the aesthetics for the game. Not only that, the whole engine. It's poor. Everything about the game is poor. It's a lame attempt at Medal of Honour: Frontline but with the Japanese attacking the beaches of the Americans, with you playing the Americans.

All I can say is as you play through the game, you'll encounter Japanese soldiers falling standing on each other's heads, very poor storyline, lame AI, and bad aesthetics.

My rating is -4, if you buy it, you're throwing money away.

My Birthday ...

Sun, 11 Nov 2007 05:34:22 GMT

Oh god, on the 17th November I'll have lived two decades, I will officially be 'old'. *cry*.

Yes, guys, on the 17th I shall turn 20. I celebrate 20 years of my life. And I think all of you, should send me like, a dollar, so I can sell things on e-bay. (Y)

Space Station 13 - Review

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:53:26 GMT

Space Station 13
Review by BluLogic
I suppose it is kind of ironic that the game we base our main Game Development project on is one of the games we write a review on, but it does need to be done; for new players and old players.

Space Station 13, set in space in the future, on board a space station, where disasters continuously occur to the displeasure of the crew. The ability to knock down walls, build new ones, and almost completely reshape the station (with the exception of a few things), is very appealing to strategy/roleplay gamers, and especially appealing to online gamers; due to the game being online-only and round-based.

When you join a server you're greeted with a window asking you to input some data about your character, then after saving server-side, you'll be able to join the game - assuming the host of the server hasn't locked new joiners out. (we hate that, a lot)

"Don't judge this game by it's graphics, or you'll just miss out on a hell of a game!"

After anti-drooling over the amazingly un-advanced pixel-graphics, you'll want to find out why there's a huge fuss over such a lame looking game in the first place. Well, to any potential player, we'll say this: Don't judge the book by its cover, or rather, don't judge this game by its graphics, or you'll just simply miss out on one hell of a game!

Within the game lies a very carefully planned *cough* dynamic system which circulates air, gas, liquids and even objects in a vacuum. The lack of explosive decompression is of course a downside, but it's quite comical to watch objects move slowly towards a gaping hole in the side of the station - assuming you're not already outside and suffocated.

The ability to hit everyone with almost anything is a plus-side, for days you'll see people running around with screwdrivers, pens and even shoes, attacking with them - our weapon of choice however always has been, and always will be, the ToolBox. You'll see why.

We supposed that the community also plays a huge part in the game, because without other players, you wont have people to roleplay with and where's the fun in mindless non-roleplaying violence? Unreal and Quake were such boring games...

"It kicks the shit out of Eve Online!"

This game does have a few bonuses, it kicks the shit out of Eve Online. It's free, lasts a few hours (You wont get addicted!) and ultimately at the end of the day you can rest assured that you'll be able to sleep and dream of floating around a space station with an oxygen tank strapped to your back, defying the laws of nature and not eating, drinking or using the toilet.

All in all, this is a sweet game, even if it doesn't look like it.

Rating:	68%
Pros:	Really Dynamic Community Based Hours of fun!
Cons:	Relies on other player's intelligence Poor graphics Lag. Lots of lag.

Prototype Suites

Fri, 28 Sep 2007 03:15:50 GMT

Hey guys. I'm looking for a few decent prototyping suites for a 3D game heavy on physics & dynamics; it *needs* to be prototyped in 3D in order for us to get a good idea on how to progress.

So I'm calling on you to share your ideas for any decent prototype software we could use.

At the moment we are still going ahead with our plan to use the Source(TM)(See Half Life 2) engine, as it is the most sophisticated around.

Please share anything you may know.

Amendment to the previous post.

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 16:20:50 GMT

Dracula does not approve.

-- Lore

'Beyond the Rave'

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 07:52:31 GMT

Hey guys. Just to let anyone who cares (aka, no-one) know that I'm not going to be around much for about 18 days, as I'm working on a film called 'Beyond the Rave' which is being produced and released by a company called 'Hammer Horror'

Hammer Horror (if you google it and find out) used to be very popular back in the day. They released a slurry of horror films in the 1960's and 1970's, however in 1987 they stopped making films, and now, after 20 years, they are making an attempt at a come-back, by making a film called 'Beyond the Rave' - a film based on vampires killing off patrons of a 'secret' rave. I have read the script and it has a very creative storyline. I think it will be a good film. The film will be internet/mobile release, as they don't think they have the popularity any more to release in cinema or on DVD. But depending on income from internet/mobile release, they might eventually re-release on DVD.

I started working on set last Thursday (the 6th September 2007) and I was originally called in as a Runner. (Runners do odd-jobs, like making tea, carrying equipment, helping with camera work - anything that needs doing)

However, apparently, they are going to be getting me to do graphics and art work for the props department, I have two assignments already to make some images for props, and the producer has spoken to me personally to design some potential logos for the film as well.

Before people say "lol b-movie", it's actually being filmed on 35mm and 50mm film - and is very high budget.

It's fun, I get my own laptop and everything. =]

Tribute a Fake

Mon, 10 Sep 2007 07:44:09 GMT

Well, the entire tribute was fake. My grandfather is not called Ed, and he is not dead. He is a bit nuts though. But still.

This was posted to find out how many assholes there are on BYOND - and congratulations to you people who really do have no lives.

There is a lovely ED entry on the BYOND page detailing how I'm a lolcow and thinking people would care about my 'dead grandfather'.

The image was simply googled.

I made the rest up. Didn't you think it was fake. His last moments, haha.

Well, the assholes know who they are, so. laterz.