Air Mapster's site

Old logos

Sun, 15 Feb 2004 09:26:41 +0000

For anyone who may have missed old holiday logos, here you go:
http://www.byond.com/logos/

Eventually I'll link to it from somewhere on the site.

BYOND v.337 released

Tue, 10 Feb 2004 00:35:34 +0000

337 update (notes). This release fixes 2 minor bugs that were introduced in BYOND 336: a flick bug in the Windows client, and a file access bug in Unix. No other changes were made in this release. It's strongly recommended that everyone with 336 should update to get these fixes.

Some of you noticed that we actually posted 337 for Windows last week. That version is still current, so if you've already updated to 337, no need to do it again. The Unix versions were not posted until last night.

BYOND v.336 released

Tue, 27 Jan 2004 05:51:24 +0000

336 (notes)

This update contains a number of bug fixes as well as a few new features. It has been developed in parallel with BYOND 4.0, and does not contain any of the new interface changes planned for that release. After a long layoff, we are planning to put out regular releases of BYOND 3.x again, until 4.0 reaches beta status. Look for 337 just around the corner!

Of note is the fact that this version of BYOND now supports downloading hub zip packages from external websites. There is an option in My Hub to specify a web url instead of uploading a zip package. More information on this will be coming shortly.

This release also adds Mac OS X to the family of supported operating systems (text only).

The Full Install for Windows now uses a newer installer, so please report any problems in BYOND Bugs.

BYOND Sponsors GML Design Contest 2003

Mon, 04 Aug 2003 05:50:23 +0000

We are pleased to announce that we have agreed to become a sponsor for the 2003 GML Design Contest. Four lucky Special Award Winners will each receive a BYOND Dice Pack, a nifty little promotional package that we have put together.

What is the GML Design Contest, you ask? It's a contest for games created with the Game Maker system. The contest has already started, but the deadline is August 31, so there is plenty of time to submit an entry. We urge anyone who's interested to take a look and see what you can do! How neat would it be to see some BYOND regulars in the winners list?

Game Maker is similar in many ways to BYOND, and we feel that both systems complement each other's weaknesses. We are excited for this opportunity gain exposure to other game development communities, and we are happy to encourage you to check them out too. By working together, we hope that we can forge a mutually beneficial relationship to help provide the best tools for all aspiring game creators.

Sorry, Canada!

Tue, 01 Jul 2003 19:15:46 +0000

I had a nice Canada Day theme all ready to go, but the power went off before I was able to upload it last night! I re-created the developer logo over my lunch hour at work, so unfortunately that's all you get.

Happy Canada Day, anyway!

Anyone having login problems?

Wed, 21 May 2003 15:28:45 +0000

I had to reboot the Dantom server about an hour ago due to a possible hardware problem. Now I'm occasionally getting logged out of the site, and I'm not sure if it's my browser being flaky or a problem with the server. Is anyone else experiencing this? If so, I'll have to turn on debug messages to get it sorted out. Thanks.

Welcome BYOND, to the new site!

Thu, 13 Mar 2003 08:29:33 +0000

I'm sure it's pretty obvious to you that we've gone ahead and made the switch to our new website. If it isn't obvious, it's time to wake up! Our 24-hour beta announcement will give you some background if you haven't already read it.

We have a few notes about this site that may be of interest to you (most of these items are only of interest to developers):

Obviously, the color scheme has changed. We know that some of you have used certain graphics or font colors in your hub entries that assumed the old black background. You may want to check your hub entries (access Your Hub by clicking Publish Games to the left, or Your Account up above when logged in) and change them as necessary. From now on, just assume that you don't know what the colors may be and try to plan accordingly. We may, at any time, change the entire site color scheme, and a possible future enhancement may be to allow users to view the site with their own preferred colors. Keep this in mind when updating your hub entries.
Wherever possible, the site uses easy to remember canonical urls. For example, my people page is simply http://developer.byond.com/people/AirMapster. No more messy qd=hubIndex;hub=blahblahblah urls! (well, not as many, anyway)
For the Games front page, we've added a new icon size of 32x32. If you have any hub entries, you may recall that icons were previously sized at 64x64. Now we have large icons (64x64) and small icons (32x32). For best results, we recommend that you upload both a large and small icon, each optimized for its pixel size. Otherwise, either one will be used in place of the other if one is missing, and sized in the browser. Sometimes this looks ok, other times it looks pretty bad.
If you have any publication channels in your hub, we have a few new options for you. You can now choose to show a "Now Featuring" section on your channel page, just like the main BYOND Games page has. And you can also choose whether you want to allow non-subscribers to view your channel's contents at all.
Tutorials are no longer housed on the BYOND hub. Instead, find them over at BYONDscape. This is also the place to go if you want to submit a new tutorial.
The login process has changed slightly, as noted in our previous announcement. However, we believe it should work properly in the vast majority of (if not all) cases. If you do have problems logging in, however, please try resetting your browser cookies first. Help for IE 6 users can be found here.
We are actively seeking feedback on this new site. Anything from stuff that doesn't work, stuff you really like, or suggestions for new features. We do have several more features planned for the near future, and we hope to start rolling them out soon, as time permits. This is going to be an exciting time for BYOND!

Please post any feedback about the site here.
We want to make sure that as many old links to www.byond.com as possible still function properly. If you come across any link that does not work, please let us know at the above feedback forum.

Thanks for listening, and enjoy our new site!

BYOND.com gets a facelift

Wed, 12 Mar 2003 06:37:14 +0000

For the past couple of months, we've been hard at work updating the BYOND website with a new look and some new functionality. Finally we're ready to do a public beta test of the new site. If all goes well, we'll make the switch in another day or two (those of you who may not check the site between now and then may be in for a surprise!). In the meantime, we'd like to ask anyone who is interested to check out the new site and report any problems you may find.

First, a brief list of changes and added features:

BYOND now has two sites: BYOND Games and BYOND Developer Central.
Games site is geared towards players, people who come primarily to play games and (hopefully) pay for them too! There are some fairly obvious links to the developer site, but other than that, it removes all developer content to avoid confusion people who are not interested in that.
If you're reading this, you'll probably spend most of your BYOND website time at BYOND Developer Central. All current developer content is there, and hopefully a little easier to find. One item of note is that all hub publishing is done through the developer site (indeed, a player would not want or need to publish; only a developer would).
Additionally, these forums are only available at the developer site. These are the developer forums, after all. Eventually we'll add some general game forums to complement the individual game hub forums.
Completely new layout, with new, brighter color schemes.
More useful and neat information, such as total games live and players live at any given moment!
Internal changes to the login system. It will work essentially the same to you, but it could cause some minor glitches during the beta test period. When we do away with the old site, everything should work seamlessly. If you have any trouble logging in or out during the beta test, try this link to clear everything. Then login again.

Please report any problems at this forum (or this link at the old site in case you have login problems at the new site). Include as much detail as possible, including the approxite time (BYOND Standard Time), the key you were using (if different from the key you post under), your web browser version, and any detail about the situation. What happened, what went wrong, what exactly did you see on the screen, etc.

Colors! We still need help with the developer forum colors -- they're just not quite right. Please also post any suggestions at the above link. They need to go well with the new developer site color scheme which uses #f0f0f0, #cccccc, #0017b2, and #000060. We need colors for message header background, message header text, message background, message text, link color, unread message color, and admin color. Hex values are most appreciated. We may even throw in a little prize for anyone who suggests a good set of specific colors, and you'll definitely get into our credits page if we use yours!

And now, finally:

http://games.byond.com/
http://developer.byond.com/

The sites are fully functional and connected to the live database, so have fun! If you find that everything works well, you can begin using the new site in place of the old right away.

I should also note that we have a number of new features planned for the new site as time permits. For now it simply replicates the functionality of the old site with a few enhancements. If you have any suggestions, please also post them at the above feedback link. Thanks!

Re: GAZOOTs! <3

Fri, 24 Jan 2003 10:37:24 +0000

Nadrew wrote:

What has Tom been telling you, there's no such thing as a flying saucer cult. Geez..

http://www.clonaid.com/

Macs are sexier

Mon, 18 Nov 2002 19:43:52 +0000

http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,56409,00.html

No wonder I like mine (all 3) so much!