All we have to do to get the experience is try; that's all he did too. Some may take longer than others depending on how much time they can put in, but anyone with the capability to read and the determination to stick it out through everything has the ability to design and release games, as well as the potential to become a good and/or successful game designer like Silk.

I use NEStalgia as a source of motivation on a regular basis, because in my opinion it is a good example of how to handle game development around here. The way they got a lot of their fan base and art is a prime example.

More people need to stop using well known IP's, and get out there and make their own well known IP like Silk did. BYOND putting in the time and push to motivate people into doing exactly that is what I feel is the biggest change around here, and it is a necessary one.

2D is perfectly challenging enough, the problem is that both the IDE and the language sucks and there are no attempts to resolve that by the powers that be.

Instead the focus is on a Flash client. Flash may not even be prevalent anymore by the time that client is feasible enough for me.

JBoer wrote:

2D is perfectly challenging enough, the problem is that both the IDE and the language sucks and there are no attempts to resolve that by the powers that be.

Instead the focus is on a Flash client. Flash may not even be prevalent anymore by the time that client is feasible enough for me.

Then go use something else. Seriously. No one is forcing you to use our crappy language and IDE. Just GTFO if it's such a hassle.

I'm going to be deleting further anti-BYOND BS on this site. It's completely disrespectful and I expect better, even from your entitled generation.

Tom wrote:

Then go use something else. Seriously. No one is forcing you to use our crappy language and IDE. Just GTFO if it's such a hassle.

IMHO you're burying your head in the sand and pretending that my issues don't matter at all. I've posted these issues because I would like to see them resolved, but instead of marking them as something other than "Open" so I know that it has been looked at you're raging about it.

I'm currently working on a SS13 modification, which is a game written with this language. Porting that entire game over to another language isn't feasible to do for us in the same way that introducing 3D to BYOND isn't feasible to you.

But I'm not asking you to introduce 3D into BYOND. Nor am I asking you to implement the requests I've made so far, even though some of them are fair and I am a paying member. All I'm asking for is a way for us -- the BYOND developers, the ones you should be catering to the most -- to be able to see what you guys are working on. A projected timeline of changes, so we can at least have a guesstimate on certain features.

I'm going to be deleting further anti-BYOND BS on this site.

If you consider my posts "anti-BYOND BS" then you must not use other languages very much. The Dream Maker IDE is nothing compared to other IDE's, like Eclipse for instance. The language is missing features that a lot of common languages have, but instead of biting the bullet you guys are keeping your distance from the language itself out of fear of breaking something, even though there's already a bunch of stuff that's broken already.

It's completely disrespectful and I expect better,

Be glad you're not running a BYOND game then. You can find much worse there.

even from your entitled generation.

Your product is aimed at my generation. Do you honestly think that projects led by 15 year olds are going to take off?

I'm used to better, but I stick around because despite the flaws I'm pointing out BYOND is still very nifty. I'm just disappointed that my issues are being ignored and I have no insight into the future of BYOND because you vehemently believe in keeping a "don't ask don't tell" policy.

After you made it clear that Dream Maker wasn't going to receive anything like a complete overhaul I started working on this Eclipse plug-in. I hate the fact that I'm never going to get any help with it from BYOND Staff even though they have the design specifications I'd need to build my own map editor/skin editor/icon editor.

You just demotivated me from working on that project, since I'm expecting to be banned any time now because I went "too far" or something. Because I replied to a post titled "Where BYOND went wrong" with my own opinion on why I think this place is going to hell.

If there's anything I'm guilty of it's caring too much about this. I paid for a couple of gift memberships and other BYOND-related stuff (like domain names and servers). I even gave you access to one of my servers so you could fix a bug, one which caused BYOND servers to crash and wasn't caught by any error messages I could do anything with.

What do I get in return? I get to see a bunch of mistakes being made (the release of the new website, the "obviously-untested" bugs that pop up after every release), and when I ask any question related to BYOND development I'm ignored unless it's part of some arbitrary list of things that are going to be worked on this <s>week</s> month. I find bugs that shouldn't be there. I get a server that freezes up randomly, and even though world.loop_checks=1 the loop isn't being stopped. No log messages. No explanation.

Most of the time when you encounter a bug you'll have something to go on. An error message or exception. At least a stack trace that points to where in your code the bug is happening.

I've had a couple of bugs which had no error messages. No explanations whatsoever for them occurring, and I had to find out by myself through trial and error, using a compiler that took 1-2 minutes between compilations and wasn't allowing me to change anything in the interim because someone arbitrarily decided the compilation process would be running on the same thread as the GUI.

But you're right. I do feel entitled to something more. But after 6 years, who wouldn't be feeling the same way?

EDIT: By the way, I wrote this post in time I should be doing other stuff.

What you and so many others don't get is that we are working as hard as we can given limited time and an extremely limited budget. Everyone has their own idea for what BYOND needs and if we don't get to your particular requests, it's not because we're lazy or incompetent or don't like you-- it's just that we have to prioritize what we think is best. And I'll even make the occasional exception, eg the recent foray into improveing the IDE a bit even though I think it's a huge waste of time.

Crying because a few things break when we do a software or website update doesn't help anyone. This is how we test-- by doing releases off the pager-- because I can't afford a testing team. It's nice that your expectations are so high but you have to be realistic too.

If BYOND is an unpleasant experience or you don't respect the development pace or progress, then there is a really simple solution: don't use it. If porting your existing BYOND project to a better language isn't feasible, then your choice is to give up that project or stick with BYOND and its flaws (which may include the incompetent development team). Complaining isn't an option and I'm not going to tolerate it anymore.

Something like "run the compiler in a separate thread" is a feature we could do and it would probably take a day (multithreading isn't that hard but our code makes assumptions about interaction with the IDE so those would have to be tested). The problem is, we have hundreds of things like this, so when we don't do YOUR request you can't take it as a personal slight.

You have to understand that this is a HUGE project. We have to maintain a very complicated piece of software, a very complicated website, an unappreciative community, and three servers (with no IT staff). I would love to work more on it and hire more people, but we make almost no money and I haven't had an income from this in over a year. So I'm not going to apologize for doing the best we can.

Our recent priorities have been to try to provide tools (the standalone and the flash) that will bring more exposure to games here, because we can derive income from that and hopefully start to make some money we can pour back into the project. Until that happens, you will probably have to wait on a bunch of features that affect very few people.

Tom wrote:

The problem is, we have hundreds of things like this, so when we don't do YOUR request you can't take it as a personal slight.

The thing is that I'm not the only one who would like to have the compilation process running in a separate thread. If implemented a lot of people are probably going to be very grateful for it, albeit silently as they don't spend much time on this forum.

Tom wrote:

We have to maintain a very complicated piece of software, a very complicated website, an unappreciative community, and three servers (with no IT staff).

Wasn't Mike H the IT staff?
Also, clear solution: Find Dan. Tell him to forget his wife and kid. BYOND is clearly more important than the Large Hadron Collider's Condor software stuff.

It would help if people would use more tact.

Comments like these:

It's not really making profit (or so we are to believe)

both the IDE and the language sucks and there are no attempts to resolve that by the powers that be.

...are unnecessary, and only serve to alienate Tom from the community. And don't call it "tough love"--you're not his mom.

I never said we were a one-man show. But those duties do fall on just two of us, and bringing volunteers in (which we've done in the past) presents its own problems (mainly that volunteers come and go and it is really hard to work with that given that these projects are long-term).

To the contrary, I think the real power of BYOND is in its users and that's why I am always imploring people who want to help to make and promote their games. Having successful games is the only way we will ever be a successful platform. If you don't think the existing software can be used to make a successful game, then I suggest leaving because it's just naive to think it will change much in the short-term. And I'd prefer people to leave than to complain.