more updates and ramblings

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ID:114127
 
Jun 5 2011, 2:03 pm (Edited on Jun 5 2011, 5:04 pm)
Tiny Heroes

I finally had a solid weekend to sit down and hammer down some of the details for Tiny Heroes and things are really starting to come together. I've had some special abilities implemented for a while and projectiles had the ability to hit things, but there wasn't anything computing damage values or keeping track of health. I've made a lot of progress on that.

I've also made a lot of progress on the interface. The bottom bar is a browser control which shows your location (and will likely serve an additional purpose in the future). It's been there for a while, it just doesn't get shown when I take a screenshot using F2. The HUD in the bottom left shows the key bindings for abilities.



I added support for displaying damage numbers on the screen but I'm not sure if I like it. From a theoretical standpoint I find it interesting to hide the numbers from players and have them try to figure it out, but in practice it's often easier to just expose all of the numbers.


Pixel Movement Update

A minute ago I posted a small update to the camera control and the handling of elevated objects (ramps particularly).

http://www.byond.com/developer/Forum_account/PixelMovement


Sidescroller / Pixel Movement Article

I'm working on two articles:

1. Optimizing your usage of pixel movement (applies more to pixel movement than sidescroller).

2. Creating AI in a sidescroller (applies more to sidescroller than pixel movement).

The first article will be fairly short. The Pixel Movement library already comes with a demo called "performance-demo" which demonstrates the techniques mentioned in the article. The purpose of the article is to explain the techniques in more detail and explain why they're necessary.

The libraries like F_Damage have given people the impression that a library is a bit of "canned functionality", it gives you a proc or two you can call whenever you need to. My Pixel Movement library is a different kind of library than what most people are used to. It's a completely new default movement system. It's not a proc you call here and there, it's something that passively permeates your entire project. That's something that a lot of people don't understand.

The second article is inspired by the work I've been doing for Tiny Heroes. With a simple state machine and a little knowledge of how the Sidescroller library works, it's very easy to make decent AI. The article, which I haven't begun to work on yet, would include an executable demo and a couple of examples (I'd probably copy some Mega Man boss AI for the examples).


Ideas about Improving BYOND

It's not likely that this will ever happen, but imagine if the staff did this:

1. Got rid of the community landing page. Posts related to game development would be screened for content and the approved ones would be displayed on the developer landing page. Unapproved posts would not be displayed publicly.

2. Displayed the developer home page inside of Dream Maker.

The idea is that the staff screens posts for content and approves quality development posts, ones about meaningful progress or an interesting project. The development posts that are light on content (ex: "production team looking for three coders and one artist", "check out my new title screen", etc.) aren't listed publicly.

By aggressively publicizing the approved posts you're giving every DM developer examples of what they should be doing and achieving. It won't work on everyone, but by showing every DM developer "while you're busy posting in Classified Ads about your production team, here's what real BYOND game developers are doing" (but without being overtly patronizing about it), some people will be pushed to achieve the same kind of progress that others are making. The people who don't take the hint to up their game will fade into obscurity.
Jun 5 2011, 2:27 pm
I approve of these two suggestions.
Jun 5 2011, 4:14 pm
I don't like the idea of unapproved posts not being displayed. Sometimes I like the random stuff that wouldn't really amount to anything of substance. They should at least be displayed somewhere, unless they break the current blog rules.
Jun 5 2011, 4:24 pm
You'd be able to see all blog entries by navigating to a specific user's site. Also, if you're a fan of a blog, you'd get alerts when a new post is made even if it doesn't become listed.

The idea is that the staff is not only promoting developer news, they're promoting the kind of developer news they want to see. It seems like they spend a lot of time wishing and hoping that the community improves but not a lot of time doing things to improve the community. It might be a little drastic, but it might also get the gears turning.
Jun 5 2011, 4:28 pm
They can promote the developer news, in fact, they already do. Point is, you won't necessarily find these non-developer blogs if they aren't listed somewhere. I think they should all at least funnel somewhere. I think members blogs in general would lose a lot of their worth if they weren't listed without breaking any rules. So, of course, if the staff can think of something else to perk the usual BYONDer's interest into buying a membership, that'd be all fine and dandy. It's all about money. It's always about money.
Jun 5 2011, 4:38 pm (Edited on Jun 5 2011, 4:43 pm)
You can find the unlisted, non-development-related posts by finding a developer through their listed development-related posts, then browsing through the rest of their blog. Once you're on their blog you'd be able to see the unlisted posts. If a person isn't making good game development posts they'll be hard to find (you can still find their blog by clicking their name in comments and forum posts of theirs), but it's a benefit of the system that those kinds of people will be invisible.

It's all about money. It's always about money.

Unfortunately it seems like that's the reason why nothing is ever done.
Jun 5 2011, 5:23 pm
The vast majority of people won't make good game development posts, ever. That's where this idea fails, and that's where this idea completely destroys how nice of a perk the current blogs are for spending 18 dollars on a membership.
Jun 5 2011, 5:45 pm
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean the idea "fails" in that it wouldn't work because the BYOND staff would lose out on membership revenue, and the lost revenue is a bad thing? Or do you mean that it fails because it would be a bad thing to remove this membership perk because you believe that $18 should buy people the ability to plaster the BYOND website with whatever nonsense they see fit?
Jun 5 2011, 5:52 pm
The $18 should give me something. Having a blog is a good perk to have. I don't post on it all that religiously, but it's a nice thing to have at my disposal when the time comes. I'd rather not lose that just because I'm not posting as much as, say, you.
Jun 5 2011, 8:33 pm (Edited on Jun 5 2011, 8:38 pm)
1. Got rid of the community landing page. Posts related to game development would be screened for content and the approved ones would be displayed on the developer landing page. Unapproved posts would not be displayed publicly.
2. Displayed the developer home page inside of Dream Maker.

I very much agree with this, and recall bringing it up myself in past discussions with fellow BYONDers. The main issue seems to be, indeed, how not to get members pissed off or, better yet, how to replace memberships with a more gaming-related source of revenue. I've always thought the like-facebook-but-worse marketing model was an odd choice (though I do sometimes enjoy plastering nonsense on the front page, it's mostly all I do around here!).
Jun 6 2011, 12:52 am
Fugsnarf wrote:
The $18 should give me something. Having a blog is a good perk to have. I don't post on it all that religiously, but it's a nice thing to have at my disposal when the time comes. I'd rather not lose that just because I'm not posting as much as, say, you.

Members would still have blogs. To use your blog as an example, your Fugsnarf's Developer Report 16 post would be listed but The Nintendo 3DS wouldn't. Your development updates are shown to everyone because they're relevant to the developer community. You're still more than welcome to make blog posts about what you ate for lunch, those posts just won't get the same exposure. If you *only* want to make posts about what you had for lunch and are disappointed that you won't have a captive audience because none of your posts will be publicly displayed, sign up for Facebook instead.

The problem is that the BYOND community has developed a miserable culture and there's not much the staff can do about it. If you pay $18 you get to contribute to the development of the culture whether your contributions benefit the community or not.

Toadfish wrote:
I very much agree with this, and recall bringing it up myself in past discussions with fellow BYONDers. The main issue seems to be, indeed, how not to get members pissed off or, better yet, how to replace memberships with a more gaming-related source of revenue.

If this change pisses off a member it's because they aren't making positive contributions to the community. If they get mad and leave, the community benefits. The problem is that revenue, in the short term at least, will drop. The system is poorly set up (essentially, people pay to ruin the community) so I'm not sure it can be fixed without some cost.
Jun 6 2011, 1:57 am
Tiny Heroes is starting to look beast BTW.
Jun 6 2011, 2:20 am
Forum_account wrote:
Members would still have blogs. To use your blog as an example, your Fugsnarf's Developer Report 16 post would be listed but The Nintendo 3DS wouldn't. Your development updates are shown to everyone because they're relevant to the developer community. You're still more than welcome to make blog posts about what you ate for lunch, those posts just won't get the same exposure. If you *only* want to make posts about what you had for lunch and are disappointed that you won't have a captive audience because none of your posts will be publicly displayed, sign up for Facebook instead.

I like the idea, but there are still a ton of members of this community who have no interest in developing a game. Therefore, it would be rather pointless for them to even buy a membership unless the ability for non-members to post was removed. As you said, it could be a loss of revenue for a short time, that is, if BYOND eventually does catch on with the masses


The problem is that the BYOND community has developed a miserable culture and there's not much the staff can do about it. If you pay $18 you get to contribute to the development of the culture whether your contributions benefit the community or not.

While I developed games, I would make a post documenting the progress or even releasing the project. I would return just hours later and notice that my post had been nearly pushed off the front page due to the non-development posts. I've made this suggestion before and I'll make it again, the development posts need to be more noticeable. They cannot simply be thrown into the social mess with a [Game Articles] link at the top, and expect to garner more attention.

As shown here, development posts are shown right when you hit the members page, the only way for them to be pushed off is by having more development posts. The social related posts can still be seen, but they shouldn't have any affects over our developer's posts.
Jun 6 2011, 3:15 am
The problem with posts getting pushed off the front page by the tons of social posts isn't that the posts are getting pushed off the front page, the problem is that there are tons of social posts. If your game development blog post was pushed off the front page because 20 quality development posts were made shortly after yours, you might be annoyed, but if the community was getting that many quality contributions it would be in a lot better shape than it is now.

And by displaying the developer landing page in Dream Maker it'll get more hits, so no matter how quickly or slowly its knocked off the front page, more people are bound to notice it.

EmpirezTeam wrote:
Tiny Heroes is starting to look beast BTW.

Thanks. I'll try to post another video of it some time this week.
Jun 6 2011, 11:57 am
What's wrong with the developer articles and game articles pages? Beside maybe sticking a link to them in the head bar (Developers > Articles, Games > Articles), I think they serve their purpose just fine.

My real concern is that there aren't enough developer posts being made to create any sense of "activity" on the site. The BYOND website is already running a bit short on user activity. Remember the last time we tried to segregate what little activity there was with the guild system? It just made the place look dead.
Jun 6 2011, 12:16 pm
There's plenty of activity, it's just not related to game development. I think that if this change was put into place, some people who don't actively post about game development would think "oh, we're getting serious now" and they'd become more active. Being more selective about what gets displayed sets the bar - this alone will be enough to motivate developers to make quality posts.

I think a lot of BYOND's developers, even the decent ones, play down to the level of BYOND. So many people make absolutely terrible games that you feel accomplished by making anything that's better than the absolutely terrible games. People will naturally try to create things that are on par with their peers' creations (or a little better). This is a way of leveraging that to say "here's what DM developers are doing, try to one up it". This behavior is currently happening, it just takes very little to one up most people.

I'm not sure if a dead community is better than a terrible one. If left alone, there's a chance for a dead community to become active. A terrible community isn't likely to pick itself out of the gutter.
Jun 6 2011, 12:21 pm (Edited on Jun 6 2011, 12:27 pm)
Forum_account wrote:
I think that if this change was put into place, some people who don't actively post about game development would think "oh, we're getting serious now" and they'd become more active. Being more selective about what gets displayed sets the bar - this alone will be enough to motivate developers to make quality posts.

I think this is the source of my disagreement. I don't believe there are active developers being "demotivated" to post development news just because one of the areas their post is shown (they still have the developer articles and game articles pages to themselves) is being shared with more "social" postings.

Also, while I would like to believe that the only thing keeping BYOND games at the level of quality they are now is a lack of competition, you also have to keep in mind the reality that many of the developers on this site are just kids, with no programming background outside of BYOND. There's going to be a limit to what they can accomplish due to their inexperience.

As to letting the community die in the chance that it will be reborn, that's a call for Tom alone. Unfortunately, I think BYOND has lost too much of its edge to other game making suites to risk dropping its community at this point, and expecting a new one to develop.
Jun 6 2011, 12:24 pm
Forum_account wrote:
I'm not sure if a dead community is better than a terrible one. If left alone, there's a chance for a dead community to become active. A terrible community isn't likely to pick itself out of the gutter.

If the community dies, you can say goodbye to BYOND because Tom and his buddies won't be making any money. I would certainly rather pay for something better than have to pay for the BYOND software, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Thus, Tom gets his money from social perks.
Jun 6 2011, 12:36 pm (Edited on Jun 6 2011, 12:42 pm)
A lot of developers are doing things that are like game development, they're just being very lazy about it. For example, a developer will post a screenshot of a randomly generated map. Just a single image, almost no text. There's no indication of what type of game it might be a part of (so it's not a game update post), no explanation of how it was generated (so its not an educational post), no questions (so they're not asking for help). Still, for some reason, the developer felt enough of a sense of accomplishment to make the post.

I suspect that these developers feel a sense of accomplishment because, even though they only made a single randomly generated map, compared to the slew of garbage other people are posting about, their accomplishment seems more significant than it actually is. I can't say for sure that this is always the cause, but I suspect it often is. It's not a decision that the developer is actively making, it's just something that happens.

To think about it a slightly different way: Suppose you and I had a contest to see who can lift the most weight. We give ourselves six months to work out. Every day I skip my workout and tell you "I can lift 60 pounds", after six months, how much can you lift? Suppose that instead, I workout every day and give you regular updates on how much more I can lift, how much can you lift then?

If every day I'm telling you that I can't lift much, you're not going to have much reason to work out. You'll be satisfied as soon as you can lift more than 60 pounds. If instead I work out regularly you'll be motivated to keep up. It's a little more literal than what's going on here, but it's a similar idea.

As to letting the community die in the chance that it will be reborn, that's a call for Tom alone. Unfortunately, I think BYOND has lost too much of its edge to other game making suites to risk dropping its community at this point, and expecting a new one to develop.

I'm not suggesting to let it die. The amount of game development activity would only increase. The people who would be upset by this change and leave entirely are the people who don't ever make meaningful contributions (aside from their membership fee) to the community. Losing these people won't make the community completely dead, it'll make it appear less active, but the amount of game development activity will remain the same.
Jun 6 2011, 12:47 pm
Forum_account wrote:
If your game development blog post was pushed off the front page because 20 quality development posts were made shortly after yours, you might be annoyed, but if the community was getting that many quality contributions it would be in a lot better shape than it is now.

We'll cross that bridge when/if we get there. Right now we barely get a quality development post a day.

There could be several answers as to why we do not get these posts:
1) Not too many people are developing games. We have more gamers than programmers.
2) Developers have nothing worth posting.
3) They have a bad habit of not finishing projects, so why bother?
4) The Members page is a deterrent.

I doubt number four is the source of the problem. If it were, instead of removing the member's perk of having their post on the front page, just go with my suggestion. The development posts would be the first thing you see when you enter the members section. Therefore, developers would not have to worry about their post getting lost in the social web. But the real solution is that we simply need more developers. To get them, we need to grab their attention.

I will tell you what attracts me to programs such as Unity and Game Maker, the numerous developers who have created a basic game and have either gotten it published or made a decent amount of cash. Just to name a few games: Spelunky, Desktop Dungeons, Iji, SuperCrateBox, and the list goes on. Now if you're an adult looking to create a game in which you can make a profit, what would you choose? Game Maker, which has proven to produce quality programs, or BYOND, a program which is still struggling to produce a quality product (a flaw with the program or a flaw with the community)? We have relied on the "we can easily make online games, so pick us!" notion long enough. Truthfully, it is easy to create an online with other engines too.
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