BYOND Help

Configuring Windows Firewall to allow BYOND (Windows XP only)

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 08:02:23 GMT

Many of you out there are having issues with playing games. Most of you probably already know this, but just in case, I'll give you a small hint about Windows XP.

By default, Windows XP comes with a built in Firewall developed by Microsoft. This was given the wonderfully creative name "Windows Firewall". This firewall has caused developers and players of many programs a big, big headache for many years.

Now that we've established windows has a firewall. We're going to configure it to allow BYOND access. Any of you having issues with playing games due to pager not completing the login or Options and Messages freezing should take a look at this as well. It might help a little.

(For this to work, you must be the Administrator on the computer. If you're not, you'll have to ask the Administrator to do it for you. By default accounts on Windows XP are administrators.)

First things first, go to your Start Menu and open up Control Panel. Near the bottom of the screen, you should be able to see an icon for "Windows Firewall".

ScreenShot

Double click that icon and you should be able to see the Windows Firewall Control Panel. If Windows Firewall is disabled, read no further, the rest of this post wont be able to help you.

First and foremost, check to see if the "Disallow Exceptions" check box is checked. If this is the case, the first think you must do, is uncheck it. Once you have done this, click on the "Exceptions" tab up the top.

ScreenShot

Second things second, we need to see if BYOND is already allowed in the exceptions list. If you already see both "BYOND" and "Dream Seeker" stop reading here. This tutorial wont help you. If however, you see one or the other, read on.

ScreenShot

From that screen shot, you can see I don't have any exceptions for BYOND allowed. So now we're going to add them. Click on the Add Program button and another little popup should appear. This popup will be filled with commonly used programs found on your computer (most not in need of exceptions...).

ScreenShot

You'll have to add "BYOND", "Dream Seeker" and if you plan on hosting "Dream Daemon" to your exceptions list. "Dream Maker" doesn't need them, so we can ignore it.

After you have done so, your Exceptions list should look something like this:

ScreenShot

If you follow the above steps and you still can't get the pager to completely login. Then please read on. Note: Don't do this unless the above steps haven't worked for you.

Windows Firewall is pretty picky about allowing program exceptions as we have just learned. Sometimes, it really likes to mess with you, but luckily there is a method around that.

The next thing we're going to do, is allow a specific port for the BYOND Pager to connect to BYOND with. Click on the "Add Ports" button.

Now if you're behind a router, you'll have to have this port forwarded there as well. If you know an uncommonly used TCP forwarded port on your router, use that. If you aren't behind a router, do continue uninterrupted.

The "Add Port" window isn't all that flash. It contains two text boxes and two radio buttons. One text box says "Name". You can choose your own name, but for the sake of consistence, I'm going with "BYOND Port". And the other says "port". Now if I recall correctly (please correct me if I'm mistaken) the default port for the pager is 2000. So that's the port we're going to put in the port box. The selected radio button should be "TCP". We're going to leave that alone.

ScreenShot

From here, we press the "OK" button. Now the "BYOND Port" exception should also be listed in our list of exceptions. From here on, we press any "Apply" and "Ok" buttons we find until we have closed the Windows Firewall Control Panel.

Next we open our BYOND Pager and attempt to Login. If it works now, good stuff! Disregard the rest of this post. If it doesn't, we still have one more thing to do.

Click on the "File" menu, then click on the "Advanced" tab. From here, you should see a field called "Pager Port". This is where we're going to input our pager port from the Windows Firewall Exception.

ScreenShot

Press the "Ok" button. Right click the pager icon in the start menu and click "Close". Then relaunch the pager.

If all goes according to plan, BYOND should now be fully functional though Windows Firewall.
(Note: Windows Firewall might be only one of several things causing your pager to fail. This tutorial in no way promises a perfectly working pager upon completion.)

My BYOND version is out of date

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 05:50:37 GMT

I receive an error message when I download the latest version of BYOND off the website and try to play a game: "Dream Seeker is too far out of date. (Get the latest and greatest at byond.com.)". What can I do to solve this problem?

Generally when you see this error message, it's always good to go to the download page and re-download the latest version of BYOND, just in case there was an update you were unaware of. However, if you do this and you still receive out of date messages. It means the world was compiled in a newer beta version.

Beta versions aren't yet placed on the download page because of their inherent instability with trying untested features. If you receive this message with the latest version from the download page, it means the the creator of the game has updated to a beta version. In order for you to play this game, it means you'll have to do the same thing.

Beta versions are located in a specific announcement post in the Announcements Forum. If you ever receive the outdated message it's always a good idea to check out the BYOND Builds post to see if it has been posted there for public download: http://www.byond.com/developer/forum?id=626234

How do I install BYOND on Linux?

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 18:00:46 GMT

In this article, we will look at installing the command-line version of BYOND on Linux.

The command-line version of BYOND is suitable for hosting servers but not for playing games, as it does not come with a graphical interface.

For your information: This tutorial uses PuTTy and Ubuntu Linux

Before we start, you will need a copy of GNU Make. GNU Make comes pre-installed on many Linux systems, but not all.

Tip: Users of Debian-based distributions (such as Debian and Ubuntu) can type apt-get install make at the command-line to install GNU make.

First off, you need to grab the latest version of BYOND. To do this, we assume you have the 'wget' command.

wget http://games.byond.com/download/byond_linux.zip

Once you issue this command, your terminal should look something like this:

Next, we need to unzip the file. We will use the 'unzip' command to do that. In your terminal, issue the command:

unzip byond_linux.zip

Your terminal window should look something like this:

Next, we'll use the 'cd' command to go to the 'byond' directory that we extracted.

cd byond

If you want to install BYOND on the whole system, you will need root access. To do this, issue the following command:

su -
make install

Tip: If you are using a Debian-based distribution, you can just type sudo make install

This is what your terminal should look like:

If you do want to install only on your user, issue the following command instead, as your user:

make here

Your terminal should look like this:

And you will need to place the /source line in ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile, depending on your shell.
At this point, you are done with your installation. To test it out, issue the following command:

DreamDaemon --version

The output should look something like this:

BYOND 4.0 Beta (Version 400.960)

If it does not, refer to the troubleshooting selection below.

Troubleshooting:

During the installation process, some problems can occur. Some common problems are:

Help, I get an error about libstdc++ when I type "DreamDaemon --version"!

Luckily, this is a simple problem. You will need to download libstdc++.so.5, which is provided for us here.

If you have wget, simply type:

wget http://www.byond.com/download/gcc/libstdc++.so.5

If you installed BYOND on the local user, you will just need to place this in your byond/bin folder.

If you installed BYOND on the whole system, you will need to assume root and move this file to your /lib directory. This can be done by issuing the following command:

sudo mv libstdc++.so.5 /lib

Help! I installed BYOND system wide, but I get an error about about some .so file, but it's right here in my byond/bin directory!

Before running DreamDaemon, try running the following command:

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/path/to/byond/bin

This will tell your OS to check for libs in your byond/bin folder as well.

Other Questions

Ask on the forums, and we will try to help you as possible.

Troubleshooting Firewalls

Fri, 03 Aug 2007 14:32:56 GMT

Troubleshooting Firewalls

Windows Vista / Windows XP built in firewall

Your Windows Firewall could be blocking DreamDaemon / DreamSeeker

Go to Start -> Control Panel. Double click on the "Windows Firewall" icon, as shown below:

On Windows Vista, you will arrive at this page:

Simply click on "Change Settings" to get to the next image.

On Windows XP, you will arrive at a page like this:

Ensure that your main page looks similar to mine. If the "On" radio button is not selected (Point #1), then move on to the next section, third-party firewalls.

Next, click on the "Exceptions" tab (Point #2). You will be brought to a page like this:

Click on the "Add Port" button. This page comes up:

Next to "Name:," write in the name of the game. For the port, put in the port that you would like to use for DreamDaemon, and click OK. Click OK, and try to host again. If this does not work

How do I make my game appear on the website when I host it?

Wed, 01 Aug 2007 16:10:14 GMT

In this article, we find out how to make a hub entry, and have our game listed when it is being hosted. If you have already created a hub entry, but when you host your game it doesn't show up, skip down to the Troubleshooting section.

First thing you must do is create the hub entry. To do this, click on the "Your Account" button at the top of the developer page.

Tip: If you click the "Your Account" link from the hub you may not have a "Your Hub" link on your account page.

At the top of this page, you will see a box of links to different account settings. The important one for today is "Your Hub"

Now click the "New Hub Entry" button. This will take you to a hub entry creation wizard. Follow through it. It is pretty self explanatory. But to provide you with a little info:

In step 3, you can enter any name, this is what will show up pretty much everywhere on the hub. It does allow for spaces and most punctuation. The spaces and punctuation are stripped for URLs, but do remain when being displayed on the pages.

On step 6 you can enter both Info URL and Info Text. An info URL is great for things like a website for the game or perhaps your website, so that others can see more of your work. The info text is useful for describing your game in depth. Great examples of effective info text are Flick's Mano A Mano and Unknown Person's Ultimatum. But don't fret, a plain text description is enough for most people.

On step 8 you should pick the most relevant to your project. Don't worry, people normally aren't normally scared of by the words Alpha or Beta, and those who pay attention may actually like your game more, because they know you are not yet finished, so they can expect it to get better.

And finally, step 9. This one may not be relevant to you. If you plan on allowing others to host your game, then you will need to find a file host to host your files. This is up to you to find. However, BYOND does offer a file hosting service that comes with being a paying Member. Membership does cost money, so not everyone will be interested, but it does have a lot of benefits. However, if you are planning on hosting the game yourself, you can ignore this step completely.

Once you click "Continue" on step 9, you end up with a lovely little summary of everything you just did. As you can see, any settings you set before can be changed. There are also a few options not offered in the wizard. The most important of the new options are "Hub Password" and "Hub Version". The hub password prevents other people from listing their game under your hub entry. This prevents many problems, and it is highly recommended that you use it. We will cover how to use it further on down. The hub version is very important too. This tells your users and the BYOND software when you have made an update to your project. I recommend you update this every time you reupload your hub file, if you are distributing the hosting files. There are a lot of other settings in here, but they are outside the scope of this article.

Tip: Don't use your account password as the hub password! These are different types of passwords, and should not be the same for security reasons.

Alright! You have your game, and you have your hub entry, but how in the world is the hub supposed to know that your game belongs to that hub entry? Well, this is quite simple. Simply set the world hub and world password to your hub name("DanialBeta.Testworld" in my case) and your hub password. In my case, it looked something like this:

After that, whenever you host your game, it should show up on the hub, under your hub entry. Yep, it's that simple.

Troubleshooting

Problem: I've followed all the steps in this tutorial and my server still doesn't show up on the hub!

Solution #1: Check to make sure that the world hub and password settings are the same as the hub path and password. These are common mistakes.

Solution #2: Make sure that you are hosting on public and that your router and firewall aren't blocking DreamDaemon or DreamSeeker. Sometimes your firewall or router might block the signal going to the hub to report that it is there.

Problem: I can't seem to find my hub entry on the hub, what's going on?

Solution #1: The link to your hub entry is formatted like "http://www.byond.com/games/hub/[YourAccount]/[YourGame]" There is a link to this on the hub settings page.

Solution #2: Although your hub entry may exist, nothing would link to it if you don't submit it to a guild. The submission process varies from guild to guild, but in general, if you have a BYOND Membership you can go to your hub page, then click "Submit to guild" to see a list of guilds you can submit it to. If you are not a Member, you should contact the guild leader of the guild you wish it to be listed in.

Solution #3: If your hub entry does not have distribution file or is not being hosted, it will likely not be listed on any guilds, because a player would not be capable of playing.

Problem: I've double checked my settings on both my hub entry configuration and in my game and my server still doesn't show up on the hub.

Solution: Now's probably the right time to get some personal help. You can try the BYOND Help forums (this is non-live support, so it might take hours or days for a reply) or find an active chat environment in BYONDCasual. Between these two someone should be able to iron out any problems you might have come across.

Tip: BYOND doesn't have an official chat environment, so the one you join could be unpoliced, and will not be officially supported by BYOND.

All about favorite games and BYOND game ranks

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 05:37:18 GMT

BYOND games are organised into guilds, both official and unofficial. Each game within a guild has a Guild Member Rank. This rank is determined by the favourite games of guild members.

Games within a guild also have a Guild Staff Rank, which (as the name suggests) is set by guild staff. This is less important than the Guild Member Rank; in fact, in some guilds the Staff rank is chosen quite arbitrarily. When someone talks about a game's rank, they will usually be talking about its Guild Member Rank.

To contribute towards a game's Guild Member Rank, first join that guild. Then add the game to your list of favorite games. The higher you place a game on your list, the more points you contribute towards that game's rank.

Only paying BYOND Members can join guilds and have a list of favorite games, so only BYOND Members can affect Guild Member Ranks. If you're not a BYOND Member, become one today to gain this privilege along with a bunch of other features.

Why doesn't my game have a Guild Member Rank?

If nobody has listed a game in their favourites, then it will not have a Guild Member Rank.

I added a game to my favorites and its Guild Member Rank didn't improve! Why not?

There are a few possible explanations for this:

Sometimes there will be a delay before game ranks are updated all over the site. Wait a few hours and look again.
If you have more than 10 favorite games, games that come after the first 10 do not contribute towards rankings.
If you're not a member of a guild which lists the game, then your vote will not count towards the game's rank within that guild.
Your vote alone may not be sufficient to improve the game's ranking. For example, if 30 people have ranked Game A as their #1 favorite game, and 20 people have ranked Game B as their #1 favorite game, then Game A will still rank above Game B even if you rank Game B at #1.
Did you add the game to your favorites properly? Look on your Members page to make sure the game is listed there.

How do I rank a game (add it to my favorites list)?

First make sure you're logged in, and that the account you're logged into has a BYOND Membership.

The easiest way to do this is to visit the game's hub page. You should see a link entitled "Add to your favorites". Click it and the game will be added to your favorites list.

How do I remove or re-order my favorite games?

Edit your Members site. Your list of favorite games is shown on the left hand side of the page.

To remove a game, click the "remove" link next to the game's name.

To re-order a game, use the drop-down list of numbers next to the game's name to choose its new position.

How do I use BYOND on a Mac?

Sat, 05 May 2007 21:54:46 GMT

...for playing games?

Currently, the Mac OS X version of BYOND (like the Linux version) is text-only. Most BYOND games are graphical, so you won't be able to play them using the Mac OS X version.

If you want to play graphical BYOND games on a Mac, what you could do is run the Windows version of BYOND under Mac OS X by using an "emulator". If you have an Intel Mac, you can use Parallels along with a genuine copy of Windows (you'll have to buy them both) for this purpose. VMware Fusion is another option for Intel Macs. If your Mac is PowerPC, your best bet is Virtual PC, but it is extremely slow.

There are also free programs out there such as qemu and bochs, but they don't tend to work very well yet - though they are improving.

...for hosting or making games?

The Mac OS X version of BYOND can compile and host games without any problems, provided you don't mind working with the command line. See the included documentation.

If you're not comfortable with the command line (or don't know what the command line is), then we recommend using the graphical Windows versions of BYOND's game creation and hosting tools via an emulator, as described above.

Hosting -> How to host

Fri, 04 May 2007 05:04:09 GMT

BYOND games can be hosted either through the main BYOND client, Dream Seeker, or through a dedicated hosting utility called Dream Daemon. Hosting through Dream Seeker is easier at first, but Dream Daemon is more stable and powerful. We recommend using Dream Daemon in most cases.

Note: This article covers hosting using the Windows version of BYOND. To host using the Linux, BSD, or Mac OS X command-line versions, refer to the included documentation instead.

Hosting with Dream Daemon

Dream Daemon can be found on the Start menu under BYOND. Click Start, then Programs (or All Programs on Windows XP), then BYOND, and finally Dream Daemon.

Alternatively, you can run dreamdaemon.exe in the "bin" folder inside the location on your hard drive where you installed BYOND.You should see a window like this one:

At the moment, there is no game loaded. We need to locate the game's DMB file in order to run it. Pull down the File menu and choose Open, or press Ctrl-O.

If you downloaded the game in the standard way described above, then it will have been hidden away under a special folder called Application Data. The location of the Application Data folder varies depending on your operating system.

Windows 2000/XP/Vista: You guys have it easy - just type %appdata% into the File name box and press Enter.
Windows 98/ME: Type C:\WINDOWS\Application Data and press Enter. If you installed Windows in a non-default folder, type the path to that folder instead of C:\WINDOWS.

Inside Application Data is a folder called BYOND, which contains a folder called MyHub. Navigate to the MyHub folder.

Inside MyHub, you'll see a list of folders named after game authors. Inside each of those folders you'll see a list of games made by that author. Open the appropriate folder. Continue opening folders until you see a DMB file. Select it and click Open.

We're nearly done! But before you go ahead and start hosting, there are a few other options on the Dream Daemon interface that you may wish to play with. These options can usually be left at their default values.

Port. This is only relevant if you need to use port forwarding, which is covered in the Hosting Troubleshooter (to be written). Ignore it for now.
Security. This controls how much you trust the game. The recommended setting is Safe. The other settings are for special circumstances; see the Dream Daemon help file (pull down the Help menu and choose General) for more details.
Visibility. If you want to invite the whole world to play your game, use Public. Only Public games will show up on the BYOND hub. If you only want people listed as friends on your pager to be able to play your game, use Private. If you don't even want your pager buddies to see it, use Invisible. You'll probably want to leave this on Public almost all the time.

When you've looked over the options, press the green GO button to start hosting! Now anyone should be able to join your game.

Leave the window open for as long as you want to keep hosting the game. When you want to stop hosting, click the red STOP button, or simply close the Dream Daemon window.

Connection failed? If people can't join because of a "Connection failed" message, see the Hosting Troubleshooter (to be written).

Hosting with Dream Seeker

Hosting using Dream Seeker is straightforward, assuming you've already downloaded the game you want to host.

Open the BYOND Pager (the main BYOND application). If it's already running, double-click on the little blue atom logo near the system clock (usually in the lower-right corner of the screen.
Pull down the My Hub menu.
Choose Games.
Choose the game you want to host from the list. Dream Seeker should start up.
Click the Host... button near the lower-right corner of the Dream Seeker window. The following window appears:
Choose the appropriate options. The defaults are generally OK unless you know you need to change them.
Click OK. You are now hosting the game.

When you want to stop hosting, close the Dream Seeker window.

Connection failed? If people can't join because of a "Connection failed" message, see the Hosting Troubleshooter (to be written).

Back to "How do I host a game?"

Hosting -> Downloading the game

Fri, 04 May 2007 04:57:04 GMT

Before you can host a game, you need to download it. You only need to do this once for each game.

Note: You need BYOND installed to download BYOND games. If you don't have BYOND installed yet, start here; or download the client directly if you already have an account.

To download a game, visit its hub entry, the web page where live games are shown. Then look for a "Download" link.

Click the Download link. The BYOND Pager will start up and download the game. Once it has finished, Dream Seeker should launch with the game in singleplayer mode. You can close it for now.

Note: Not all games are available for download. If there is no Download link on the page, this means you have to wait until someone else hosts the game before you can play it.

Next: How to host

Back to "How do I host a game?"

How do I host a game? Or, I'm having trouble hosting.

Fri, 04 May 2007 04:43:33 GMT

This article is about how to host BYOND games. If you already know how to do this but you're having problems (for example, people can't connect to games that you host) then skip down to the Troubleshooting section.

To host a BYOND game, follow the steps below. Each step links to an article which explains how to accomplish that task.

Troubleshooting

Still to be written...

In future, this needs to cover:

Firewalls

Built-in Windows XP/Vista firewall
Third-party firewalls

Port forwarding
- If asked to choose between TCP and UDP, choose TCP. (BYOND doesn't use UDP. You can forward UDP as well if you like, but it won't make any difference.)
- "What if this doesn't work?"
Port-blocking ISPs
If you give up: How to find people to host things for you.