questions about the state of BYOND

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ID:121499
 
Dec 1 2011, 10:58 am
In mid-October I saw a post from Tom about site changes that were in-the-works that would change how the blog feed is displayed - users would see a feed of blog and forum content from sources they're fans of. This could be a huge improvement to the site. Instead of having to wade through stupid posts on the front page that are shown because nearly everything is shown, groups of users can create their own community within BYOND. If I'm fans of blogs of people who are fans of me, we'll all be able to better focus on each other's posts and work together to improve our own creations and, in turn, improve BYOND.

Unfortunately these site changes are taking forever. They've been in development since October (possibly longer). At the risk of sounding arrogant, starting from October 1, 2011, here's what I've accomplished:
In that same time span, Tom has made zero posts on the BYOND blog, zero posts on his blog, made 43 posts on BYOND's developer forum, and posted two new BYOND builds. There's no easy way to count how many comments a user has made on a user's blog or on a feature request, but I'm pretty sure those numbers would also show that Tom is rather inactive in that regard too.

The point isn't to show how much more *I've* done - I'm sure if you make a list of what you've accomplished since October 1, 2011, you'll have the BYOND staff beat too. Why is this the case? How are hobby game developers, in their spare hours, accomplishing more than the people who are working to improve the BYOND software itself?

What the Heck is Going On?

Many users actually care about BYOND and are interested in its development, growth, and potential for success. Having BYOND developers who are so absent and can't be bothered to post on feature requests doesn't help to inspire people to use BYOND and help it grow. I know very little about Tom, the BYOND staff, and how they view this project and devote time to it. Because I don't know any better, all I can do is observe that BYOND, as a software project and user community, is horribly neglected. It's hard for us to give a crap if the staff isn't going to give a crap either.

1. Is there a reason why staff activity is so low? Was there a death in the family? Elaborate but not-widely-publicized court trial of FUNimation vs. Tom? Kidnapping? Coma? Awesome 60-day vacation? Terrible 60-day vacation? Obsidian Gaming feels obligated to let people know that he'll be away for a couple of weeks (which isn't obnoxious, I'm sure that some people care), why does the staff vanish for weeks or months and not think people will notice? Is the staff quietly working on updates and just not posting about them? What features (from the feature tracker) are in the works?

2. How much time do BYOND staff members (Tom and Lummox JR, primarily) try to devote to working on BYOND? I work 40 hour weeks and still find some time to volunteer to BYOND projects. The level of neglect BYOND gets seems like it must be due to active avoidance rather than simply being too busy with other things.

3. What can BYOND users do to help? If the BYOND staff doesn't have time to devote to working on things, making improvements, or deciding how things should be done, leverage the community you've got! It could take a long time to figure out how to improve the site, but it takes very little time to put together a blog posts that asks the community "how would you improve the site?".

4. Is there anything the BYOND user community can do to restore the staff's interest in BYOND? It's always struck me odd that BYOND is a tool for developing games and, as far as I can tell, Tom has never used it to make a game - maybe we should all pitch in and make a game together.

It'd be nice to get BYOND moving in a good direction but without having some support (or presence, at the very least) from BYOND itself that'd make things difficult.

Note: I completely expect the long-awaited site update described in the first paragraph will be revealed within hours of making this post, or maybe it was revealed while I was writing this post.
Dec 1 2011, 11:05 am
Tom just showed me a preview of the new site yesterday and it could be here very soon. He just doesn't blog.
Dec 1 2011, 11:09 am
I think F_A is one of the only non-volunteers that truly gives a damn about BYOND. If this website was a political standoff, Forum would be the head of the executive branch. Just saying.
Dec 1 2011, 11:10 am
When Expixel finishes his damn IDE is when I'll start developing. And don't you have a video tutorial you should be making ;)

But I agree, I was just telling someone on msn a few days ago that the lack of interaction with the community makes this place feel dead. It doesn't matter how far a long he is with the changes. It is still always nice to feel in the loop so you know that they are in fact being worked on.

I think you kiss ass too much Darwin. Just saiyan.
Dec 1 2011, 11:11 am
You're not my fan. :(
Dec 1 2011, 11:15 am
Ah how I wish there were more BYOND Central posts! I love hearing about the future of BYOND, even if its small updates or just ideas about what might happen.
Dec 1 2011, 11:18 am
4. Is there anything the BYOND user community can do to restore the staff's interest in BYOND? It's always struck me odd that BYOND is a tool for developing games and, as far as I can tell, Tom has never used it to make a game - maybe we should all pitch in and make a game together.

I've always thought it would be fun to have an open-source game being developed with BYOND.

Consider how long BYOND has been in development. I'm not sure what kind of revenue the staff gets from the project, but after at least 11 years, perhaps the project is getting stale. I first encountered BYOND in 2001. BYOND now has features that I never dreamed it would have, such icon sizes greater than 32x32, skins, and alpha transparency.

However, I do feel like the staff could be more active, especially if BYOND is providing them with any kind of relevant income.
Dec 1 2011, 11:50 am
Recently Lummor jr has suffered with shingles, As Byonds Main and mostly "Only programmer" for the site and Byonds engine, Things may have slowed down due to that.

Tom is not a very active blogger, as he never really has been.

Byond's not doing amazingly financially and in such ~Lummox is possibly the only paid Byond employee, with people like AcWraith doing their best to post news about what's happening within byond, Stephen doing a fine moderating job, and Various other unpaid volunteers helping out.

This Site update is getting done, but slower than anticipated probably due to Lummox's illness and Tom's lack of posting, They seem to like letting us wait and wonder, even though they tried to be a bit more open with us about how Byond is doing, but it's still a far cry from what people desire.

Byond could do with another member on the production team, wish you could somehow get yourself employed, you are very competent and capable after all.
Dec 1 2011, 12:02 pm
3. I'm not Tom, and I don't pretend to have any special insight into Tom, but I'd like to make a suggestion about a big thing you could probably do to help.

Now, I say this from the point of view of someone who has worked 40 hour weeks while also being engaged full time in creative pursuits, as someone who has been a wholly self-supported crowdfunded author, and as someone who has gone from towering heights of productivity to the darkest, deepest pits of Can't Get Stuff Done. Sometimes it doesn't matter how much time you have when you're engaged in intellectual or creative labor... sometimes the cylinders just aren't firing.

And hold whatever retort you're going to have about how much you manage to get done regardless of what problems you have, because all that means is that at the moment you're not in that pit. Maybe you never have been yet. Maybe you have been but you didn't register how it would look from the outside, you code your problems as being actual problems and everybody else's as excuses. Or because you're not seeing their problems, you assume they don't have any. It's basic human nature.

Anyway, this thing you're doing here, this post you're making... it probably isn't helping. If there is an "avoidance" problem, a lack of motivation, a mental stumbling block, or even no problem at all but a dearth of energy when it comes to communicating what's going on with the fan base, this post and any other well-meaning but (yes) arrogant "IF YOU ASK ME THE PROBLEM WITH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BOOTSTRAPS BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH" post is just going to feel like a kick right in the teeth.

Offer your help, but if you really want to help, if you are sincere and passionate about your sincerity and passion: hold the editorializing. At best it's not going to help, and at worst it could be the proverbial straw bearing down on the equally proverbial camel's back.

As paying members of BYOND, we are entitled to the benefits of being paying members of BYOND. That's it. And we're getting a huge bonus on top of that. We're using a program originally intended to make scripted graphical GMUDs to make... whatever we feel like. All these features that are being thrown our way to make the program better and more powerful... we didn't sign up on a $15 a year (holy crap, is that all we're paying) contract with the promise that they'd arrive on a certain date.

We aren't even owed an explanation. Basic human nature means that if all other things were equal but there was a post up from Tom saying that his lymph node exploded and the scent of the lymph had attracted an angry, lymph-eating monkey and he had to be quarantined, you'd have made the same basic post only you'd be listing the constraints you're operating under and decrying his excuses.

Tom's been engaged in this work for more than a decade. I would hazard the single most important thing that he needs from anyone right now (apart from money, which isn't called "what it takes to get along" for nothing) is gratitude.

Thanks, Tom.

And thanks, Forum_account, because I'm using the heck out of your libraries.

Bottom line: enjoy your productivity streak, celebrate it, feel proud of it... but resist the urge to draw comparisons to others, or conclusions about them. It's not a race, and none of us are even on the same track or heading towards the same goal.

Dec 1 2011, 12:03 pm
I am glad you are active on BYOND, and I think making games & libraries is the best thing anyone can do to contribute to this site.

We are working on this, and have been for some time. I am not full-time on this project because it simply doesn't make enough (basically zero) money for me. I do try to work with Lummox for a a few hours a day to guide our various projects. He is full time and works well over 40 hours a week at an extremely low salary to cater to the whims of the users here.

The site revamp was supposed to take a few weeks but turned out to be enormously complex, but it is mostly there now. We are trying to improve on the pager/instant-messaging system as a part of that. I planned on doing a writeup so we could preview these changes before releasing, but so many things changed while we were working on it that I didn't want it to be so ambiguous.

So quantity-wise, maybe this is lacking, but I hope the improvement in quality will make it worthwhile.

By the way, the site change isn't exactly compatible with the what you have noted, as we're basically doing away with the blog-concept entirely and instead integrating content so that everything runs through the forums (either main or individual hub entries). However, it should be much easier to follow things you are interested in without having to jump around.
Dec 1 2011, 12:09 pm
Tom wrote:
I am glad you are active on BYOND, and I think making games & libraries is the best thing anyone can do to contribute to this site.

We are working on this, and have been for some time. I am not full-time on this project because it simply doesn't make enough (basically zero) money for me. I do try to work with Lummox for a a few hours a day to guide our various projects. He is full time and works well over 40 hours a week at an extremely low salary to cater to the whims of the users here.

The site revamp was supposed to take a few weeks but turned out to be enormously complex, but it is mostly there now. We are trying to improve on the pager/instant-messaging system as a part of that. I planned on doing a writeup so we could preview these changes before releasing, but so many things changed while we were working on it that I didn't want it to be so ambiguous.

So quantity-wise, maybe this is lacking, but I hope the improvement in quality will make it worthwhile.

By the way, the site change isn't exactly compatible with the what you have noted, as we're basically doing away with the blog-concept entirely and instead integrating content so that everything runs through the forums (either main or individual hub entries). However, it should be much easier to follow things you are interested in without having to jump around.


Hire FA
Get more free time
????
Profit

And I hope you understand most people got there membership for the blog so removing the blog is like biting the hand the feeds you. Of course I don't know what's in the update so you might have something else planned for members or I might just be misunderstanding. I don't care as long as this site gets a new color palette. Current one hurts my eyes.
Dec 1 2011, 12:24 pm
Tom wrote:
as we're basically doing away with the blog-concept entirely

Dec 1 2011, 1:37 pm
Enzuigiri wrote:

I think you kiss ass too much Darwin. Just saiyan.


I try not to. I'm not as active as I'd like to be, so I kiss whatever gets in my face.
Dec 1 2011, 2:12 pm
Tom's reasons are his own, but if I were him I wouldn't be communicating everything that I was working on with the community here either. There are two major factors to consider:

1.) Tom is busy.
2.) The BYOND community is retarded.

Communicating to a bunch of retards that you're working on improving things isn't a particular fulfilling or useful way to spend your time, especially when you're busy.

In my personal experience, interacting with even the NEStalgia community on any type of regular basis makes me want to kill myself... and they're the one of the most mature groups of online users I've ever encountered. I can't imagine being responsible for a beast like the BYOND community and having to put up with all of the nonsense that comes along with that.

I think that the sooner everyone stops pretending that there are lots of great developers in the BYOND community, the better. Who is Tom going to make big announcements to at this point: the groups of kids on "teams" arguing over who stole who's source code, the pissed off anime kiddie saying not to play x game because the mods are mean, or the bored outsiders who drop in once a year to complain that things haven't changed?
Dec 1 2011, 2:34 pm
Silk. Your comment was deleted(Apparently not, just an error when I tried to quote you popped up, so I assumed delete. But I'll not edit out what I said, because it's true). Because you're the retarded one. Perspective is everything. I would expect someone as mature as you would try to be intelligent and less egocentric when posting on a serious thread, but I guess even people like you have little to no self control.


Anyways... life. Tom has a life. Doesn't really have time to please a community that has a majority of wannabe-gokus, narutos, and pikachus, along with some furries and trolls. There are very nice people here such as various developers and common bloggers... but, when looking at the average amount of people (Let's say (6,000 - 7,000), you will notice that almost half of them are ignorant to the political side of BYOND. All they want is a fun game to play. So... give them that. Fun games to play. Then bitch as Tom to work faster.


Just my opinion.
Dec 1 2011, 2:36 pm
Here we go.
Dec 1 2011, 2:37 pm
You just insulted me for what I wrote, and then rewrote the exact same thing in your own words. Exactly what I'm talking about with people in this community being worthless.
Dec 1 2011, 2:40 pm
Can't we all just get along? Tom said he's doing away with blogs. That's like, the greatest bit of news I've heard since native pixel movement. We should all be breaking out the Patron and celebrating the good times right now.
Dec 1 2011, 2:53 pm
SilkWizard wrote:
In my personal experience, interacting with even the NEStalgia community on any type of regular basis makes me want to kill myself...

Woah. Let's back up a little bit. From what I understand, you receive income from NEStalgia, and have even bragged about it. You are obliged to keep your fan base updated.

The BYOND staff does not brag about their income. They may be somewhat slow on development, but they are at least humble and polite. I wonder how your fan base would feel about your public display of resentment for them?
Dec 1 2011, 3:00 pm
@NefariousDevelopment: It's not a secret. The difficulty of dealing with the community has been expressed in the official NEStalgia podcast.
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