DvK87's site

Advertise on OpenGameArt.org

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 03:51:59 +0000

I can't think of a single website which would have a higher concentration of BYONDs target market than this site. Right now they are running test ads and aren't even charging money for them: http://opengameart.org/content/advertise-with-opengameartorg

Give it a shot Tom/Lummox.

What makes the sandbox fun?

Mon, 10 Sep 2012 15:28:02 +0000

I love sandbox games. Absolutely love them. However it is extremely difficult to explain why that is. The games I am referencing include minecraft, terraria, harvest moon, hell even CowRP is a low budget guilty pleasure. So what exactly makes a sandbox game so much fun despite the fact that there is usually pretty limited content?

I want to solicit opinions from the community on what they think is the key fun factor of a sandbox game, my personal opinions are below:

- Unfettered creativity, the ability to visualize and completely create a unique environment based on your ideas. Even if this is limited in some way, the ability to create your own home/town/castle/kingdom leads to obsession for me.

- Cost and economy. If creating things was free and easy, the game would lose my interest quickly, there needs to be a cost associated with building, such as in minecraft when we spend hours digging or chopping to get stone/ores and wood. It doesnt even need to be complex to be enjoyable, but the accomplishment felt in building something needs to be anchored with some sense of value, and trading and accumulating wealth is always something that gets me very interested and obsessed with a game.

-Cooperation. I love playing these games with my friends, in fact if griefing could be controlled I would love any game in which the player-count and interaction increased and my feats and creations were appreciated by a wider audience. Of course the concern is how to moderate griefing which is extremely difficult in creation games.

So what are your thoughts?

Fantastic

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 19:04:17 +0000

So easy to implement, I was an hour in to designing a similar system when I decided to look for a library to save me some time, this worked very well and I love how easy it was to integrate.

Maptext font-style is always italic

Sun, 19 Aug 2012 23:55:55 +0000

Code:

mob/proc/update_descriptor(o as text)
    if(src.descriptor)
        src.descriptor:overlays=null
        var/image/I = new
        I.layer=FLY_LAYER
        I.maptext_height=224
        I.maptext_width=192
        I.maptext="<span style='color:white;font-family:arial;font-style:normal;font-size:8pt'> [o] </span>"
        src.descriptor:overlays+=I

Problem description:
I am trying to display text in an inventory menu on screen. I have no trouble getting the text to appear, however nomatter what I set font-style to be it always appears to be in italics and looks like this: http://imgur.com/SsoeV

In this instance all I passed to this proc was "TEST" and as you can see it is italic. The most bizarre thing is that maptext appears to change between italic and non-italic between server re-compiles without any change to the above code. It is starting to really drive me crazy.

Rebrand Byond 500 and kickstarter

Fri, 27 Jul 2012 17:15:35 +0000

I would love to see BYOND bring in a bit more money, seems to me that BYOND lacks two things: (1) effective advertising and (2) Any money whatsoever.

Once flash deployment is ready for launch, why not rebrand the platform? Come up with a more marketable name, shed the low quality tile based game reputation that has followed for years which have been addressed with interface/large icon flexibility and other new features and re-release the platform and change the site branding as well.

The point of this is that, go on www.kickstarter.com and say that you are working on an online game making platform for 2d games that can be run as a standalone exe, flash game or on a community site and just see how much interest pours in. You could raise some much needed capital AND get serious advertising and then re-launch and get both an infusion of new interest and some project funding to keep Tom and LummoxJr from perishing from Ramen Noodle malnutrition.

It is just an idea.