K'ros Trikare's General News Blog

Every so often I seem to stop back in here, take a look around, see what there is to see. I'm impressed by whats happening here in a lot of ways, and since I've still got this subscription (and will continue to renew it, for reasons I'll explain here) I'm going to go ahead and make a post discussing my appreciation of BYOND.

I created my first BYOND key in the summer of 2001, I believe it was just before I turned 12 years old (I am now 18) and I was like a lot of 12 year olds on the internet. Very immature, horribly illiterate, unappreciative of a lot of things but, I really liked the idea of making games.

So, I jumped into it, bought the Blue Book when it was still being published, tried to learn things, got into some projects. Eventually I got into Morte (known as Tara'ka now, discontinued) and did my very best to become part of their staff.

This got me into thinking about my use of language and my ability to act as a mature, respectable person in an online environment. That went so-so. The game went through a lot of stages and I think overall I learned a lot, matured a lot, tried to code a lot.

Same sort of thing happened with the original Dragon Ball Zeta (thats what it was called...right?). I wanted to impress the owner so I improved my grammar and spelling and all that jazz.

It was stupid at the time, doing all those things just to get a position of power. In the end, what matters is that those habits stuck with me and I was much better off because of it.

Most importantly though, BYOND opened up the door to programming. I had been interested in computer programming for years prior to BYOND but, where the heck does a 10-12 year old get a step into that kind of thing? Apparently by building dreams.

I am now an intern at Intel, coding tools for them in C++. I'm starting down the road for my B.A. in CS this Fall.

Anyhow, I'm incredibly grateful for all the hard work the staff has put into keeping this project alive, and I hope that other users can get even half as much out of this as I did.

Thanks BYOND.

(Pre-Emptive Strike: "lol u totaly say u r gret at grammar and stuf but u made " - I never said I was perfect, there are some habits I have that I can't seem to break. Such as terribly long run on sentences and a few other dumb syntax errors. I think I'm doing okay.)

To those of you writing reviews,

Perhaps it might be best that you pick games less well known to review first? Games that are ranked 1 and 2 in their category obviously are well liked games, otherwise they wouldn't be there.

Reviewing games that are further down the list will draw a little more attention to those games (maybe) and your review will probably mean a little more than saying "Yep, this game deserves its rank"

My two cents.

Hey guys n' gals,

Wanted to kick out a quick discussion post that some of you might find worth talking about. Once again, it has to do in part with Tara'ka, which I'm going to go ahead and say will be a trend for this blog.

Our discussion topic this time around has to do with meshing roleplaying and rollplaying. The majority of us RPG fans know the difference between the two, and I'm not really into the idea of going over it again. Google is your friend.

In Tara'ka, I'm very interested in supporting both styles of play, preferably to the point where each player is doing both either at the same time or switches between the two regularly.

Most around here would say its more than easy to influence someone to rollplay, but to encourage someone to roleplay? How do we do that?

In order to do this I've implemented a system where my GMs (Game masters, the game's equivalent to dungeon masters) can reward "RP EXP" to a player for doing well at roleplaying. A player can then take this RP EXP and cash it in for various special/rare items or stat boosts. Thus, not only do the exceptional roleplayers get a chance to stay on level with the people who power game, but the folks who are mediocre at roleplaying get encouraged to participate.

Has anyone tried this before? Seen it work? Any comments on the system? Flaws? Input in general?

I'd like to hear thoughts.

-K'ros

Hey folks,

Just renewed my membership. 420 days to go. =P

Hope everyones doing well, and once again, Tara'ka is still looking for testers.

-K'ros

Hey guys n' gals,

First of all, I guess its kinda self-centered of me to believe that even 5% of BYOND's current populace knows what Tara'ka/House of Morte is, and I keep making posts about it acting like its god's gift to BYOND. So, since you, faithful reader, probably don't know what the hell Tara'ka/Morte is, I'll clear that up.

Tara'ka: Carpe Noctem was originally known as House of Morte (or just Morte). It was one of the first BYOND RPGs to see some success, and has seen a plethora of staff changes, deaths and revivals since its creation in...'99?

I've recently stepped up to try and bring it back, and I'm making a decent amount of progress. I intend to have some stress tests going in the next week or so, but I'd prefer having some testers on a closed server rather than letting everyone go wild on it.

I've setup a forum on my website to compliment the game, and I'd greatly appreciate it if you took the time to check it out and possibly apply (its just to weed out the incredibly lazy, its hardly an application process) for a testing spot.

Link: http://taraka.krostrikare.com/index.php

Heres to hoping BYOND is still interested in an original RPG.

Thanks,
K'ros