Schnitzelnagler's site

'BYOND needs built-in pixel movement' - This easy?

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 15:27:31 +0000

Only just recently, there has been another BYOND needs built-in pixel movement demand (though different as it suggested monetary support). It's all too common, but each time somebody asks this, I wonder, what do they mean?

BYOND has the capability to move an icon by a single pixel, so this can hardly be the whole topic. Browsing some demonstration on soft-coded 'pixel movement', one can already find the real part behind the request, collision detection (and 'physics'). But people seem to forget is that there isn't just 'one' collision detection system to suite everybody. There are various very different systems, be it a bounding box (plenty of possible shapes!), sprite detection, or even more complex solutions. This is, not to mention the difference in possible 'physic engines' people want hard-coded as well.

I seriously doubt that anybody could find an easy to use system that suits every game people on BYOND could dream to develop.
Even then, you'd have to disregard all the other issues arising as consequences of such a system. If you want performance (something people never cease to complain about with BYOND), you have to implement this completely client-sided, but that opens a whole can of worms, cheating worms to be precise.
Not to mention the problems from BYOND's fully server-sided legacy!

In my eyes, the only viable option is a complete redesign that allows for advanced users on BYOND to customise the client (client-sided processing) and the networking protocol, which would allow for a multitude of libraries (simple as clicking a check-box) to feature 'pixel movement' the way everybody wants it.

The consequence of this thought is a complete redesign of BYOND.

As a summary, whenever somebody requests pixel movement, consider what it is that you really want and if you shouldn't be asking for client-sided processing and customisable networking protocol instead, which would mean that BYOND needs support!
Your support!

Searching likeminded companions and a MMORPG

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 08:51:37 +0000

Struggling in a new hostile environment is a lot easier if you can rely on friendly companions. So here I am, looking for those in the BYOND community that have some spare time between 10 to 18 CET on a semi frequent base and that would want to explore a new world. Please feel free to leave a comment and means of contact if you feel that cooperative team-play in a MMORPG is what you like to strive for.

As for the game itself, I'm looking for suggestions. But I'm rather picky, so to say. The game must be free to play indefinitely. If there is an item shop or any option to purchase goods, it shouldn't be game-breaking functionality. There would have to be a somewhat decent GUI (not graphics, mind you, but an interface like Daimonin is past acceptable and Gekkeiju is rather clumsy as well) and the game has to feature real time combat with the option of battling other players (no turn based RPGs). Decent quests (asides of the insane kill x y and collect z of y), player influenced story, the ability to evolve without battles and skills advancing by use instead of levelling your healing abilities by killing creatures would be much welcomed. Kudos to you if the game supports Linux.
If you know of such a game, please leave me a link!

Thank you in advance for anybody reading and hopefully answering my request!

Game design - Why is this Classified Ad posting deleted?

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 14:18:53 +0000

Should you have linked to this post after your Classified Ad was deleted and your description field consisted out of a single line of text, do not reply asking why it was deleted, but read through the following carefully and compare.

Please allow me to start by showing an actual (resent) example posting in Classified Ads:

'Project Name:
*removed*

Description:
My project is a Knight's Age RPG were anyone can do a variety of things like mining,have a house,learn magic,etc...

Project Goal:
Make an RPG that's free for anyone were they can do what they whant.

Skills Needed:
I need help with icons,codes,and all, i did a part of the game but the project it's to big for me.

Compensation:
The team will get Admin or GM depending on the work and will get access to all of the game things.

Contact Information:
Anyone can contact-me in my mail or instant message that is: *removed*

Sorry for the bad english.'

All this advert displays to potential customers and future employees is that the one seeking a team won't even put forth effort and time in creating a half decent post. How could you imagine that this would change when confronted with the task of designing and creating a game, something that easily consumes hundreds of man-hours?
What the advert should mention already begins with such essential information as the basic game style (Isometric/Top-view, Turn-based/Real time, On the map battles/Battle-Screen, Singleplayer/Multiplayer), followed by the games' unique selling proposition (yes, players are going to need a real reason to play your game instead of the thousand other clones out there). But that's only the very start. Describe the battle system in detail (detail means not just a few keywords, or a single line of text), elaborate on skill progression and how magic influences and interacts with your environment. Are the non player characters in your game going to be dumb minions that spend all their life waiting for interaction on a single place, or are you going to strive for more?
The better your reader can envision the project, the easier the decision if they want to be a part of this dream and the higher the quality of possible replies.
The general rule of thumb would be that the second somebody got to ask you for any further details, your advert already failed.

And this is only for the advert seeking assistance!
As a programmer or artist, you're often confronted with the phrase 'I've all planned it out in my head'. That's great, but no use for anybody else, unless somebody actually develops a mind reading device.
The first step of a designer is to write your concept down. Everything. In detail!
Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about the strange two pages design documents with a couple of keywords thrown at you, but a real design document, which can easily get in the hundreds of pages for a half decent game.
The profit you get is incredible. Not only do you really have to rethink your design in detail while writing it out (and you'll be astonished how often you shake your head over ideas you had), but your employees won't have to assume, or ask you for every little decision forever on. Which already implicitly explains how detailed a design document should be, as the programmer acting on it should never have to ask a single question. Whatever the player should be able to do, whichever choice she can take and whatever consequences arise, it has to be outlined (see functional specifications).

If you take the time and effort to actually meet these requirements, you are a valuable assert to any team.
It's just that hardly anybody ever does around this community, which resulted in the misconception that you meet everywhere.

Edit:
I feared that I might come off as too negative, but I decided against it, so I'll add on a bit more of the tricky parts where a lot of people stumble around design.

Frequently, you're going to see a reference to a feature implementation in another game (e.g 'we want to create a Final Fantasy XII battle system), or a TV show/film/Manga/story. As descriptive as this may be, it is bad for two reasons. First of all, not everybody played the games you played, so you restrict yourself on potential help. And, even worse, it is likely that you didn't put enough thought into this feature, or rather why your game would benefit from it's implementation. A game should be fun to play, but a random mixture of features and functionality isn't automatically going to be fun, even if each single feature might have benefits, they would have to interact and harmonize, in order work out in a game. If a game you love lacks this feature, there might very well be a reason that the developers didn't want to implement it.

And to everybody (like me, I'm very guilty and bad here as well) who tries to write part of the design document in actual pseudo code, or even worse real code, that's bad. The programmer(s) should translate your proper English into the language your compiler can understand and interpret, which is tricky enough. If you can not explain your design in real English, you haven't put enough thought into it. Which is true the other way round as well. A programmer worth the money (if you're going to offer a real compensation other than 'GM') should always be capable of translating her work back into proper English again. This can lead to funny consequences as you can see in a recent posting on the developer forum. When you translate the code snippet that was shown there back into English, you'd get something along the lines of... 'Get a reference to this tile. Get a reference to the same tile again. Compile a list of tiles between these two tiles (the tile and itself, logically resulting in a list containing this single tile again). Now, for every tile in that list, take this action.' As one might guess, the real solution should have looked a bit different, like 'Get a reference to a tile fulfilling these specifics. If such a tile exists, take this action, else report the failure'.

Seeking RTS with special co-op mode

Tue, 25 May 2010 14:25:48 +0000

Greetings.
I wonder if any of you knows a real time strategy game which allows for two players to control the very same fraction/tribe/what have you, meaning that both players can actively command the very same unit. This mode should be accessible via the internet.

The Settlers 1 has such a feature, but as far as I recall it did not support internet access.

Any help and suggestion would be welcome.
Thank you in advance.

Coder vs Programmer, the importance of terminology

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 18:03:57 +0000

Around BYOND one is often presented with people marketing, or comparing, their skills especially while browsing the Classified Ads forum. But are these 'advanced coders' and these 'expert coders' really capable of delivering implementations worth the money you'd have to invest? And why do some of them use the term programmer, while others call themselves coder (or artist and iconner, for that matter)?

So far, in most every case that I encountered the ones actually referencing themselves as programmer would not only provide a more accurate self-assessment, but try to apply the basic concepts of object-oriented programming.
The 'coder' however already displays a lack of proper terminology, as s/he only ever learned to/by editing foreign source code, instead of working through the basics. They get lost when you try to explain that the reference to the instance of an object is not properly passed on as argument and struggle when confronted with challenges they have not seen realised in source code before, despite the 'expert' tag that they like to assign to themselves.

Now, what is a programmer and how do you rate one?
This is actually a very tricky question, but one might get an idea when looking at a mechanic.
While people often think that producing a 'working' (in their limited test scenario) functionality for some game grants them the tile 'coder', we would hardly call somebody who can repair a bicycle a mechanic.

And do you really need to know confusing terms like encapsulation, inheritance and so on and so forth when all you need to do is write some source code? Soon as you talk to programmers and soon as you realize that there are more quality marks for an implementation than 'working', you are going to find yourself forced around these terms. It is, again, the very same with a mechanic. What would a mechanic say if you could not provide this specific tool to him when requested, because you simply didn't know the name? Terms for concepts allow easy communication, because they save the hazard of describing a concept in detail.

I'd be eager to hear some opinions on this and I actually think I struggle on expressing myself properly here, which is ironic, given the subject at hand!

startup modifications (taking zip and download link)

Mon, 14 Dec 2009 18:11:04 +0000

I would like to suggest that startup properly handles both a zip file and a hub link as file argument, since there is already similar functionality around BYOND (Dream Download and the ziplib).

Furthermore I wonder how feasible it would be to add a resource limitation to startup (e.g. a max CPU/RAM/bandwidth value).

Seeking a Dutch BYOND member to help with translation

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 17:49:26 +0000

If you speak both Dutch and English fluent enough to warrant a decent communication, could you assist on helping a poor soul over at the BYOND Help forum?
I'd need you translate my questions to Dutch and his replies to English.

Help would be much appreciated.

Open source MID (Mobile Internet Device)

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 11:39:33 +0000

Currently, I'm only aware of two semi-decent commercial portable media players that work as mobile internet device, Apple's iPod Touch and the Archos 5 Internet Tablet, yet nothing open sourced like Pandora.

I dislike the fact that the commercial products are rather highly branded (with their own stores and restrictions) and lack support for functionality I'd like to use.

The product should contain:

Touch Screen
WiFi
Built-in speaker and microphone
Power adapter/charger
GPS (as add-on, or pre-installed)
USB-port
Video out/in
Freely edible OS
Support software for run most common file-formates (e.g. VLC)
Webbrowser with Flash support (pref. FF)

I do not need a portable (gaming) console like Pandora, though I'd certainly enjoy being able to play (best with the iPod's shake feature) some games.

I'd greatly appreciate any hints or directions.
Thank you in advance!

Official contact for realizing site-wide contests and polls

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 10:47:10 +0000

As have been stated by the administration of BYOND, increasing the activity of BYOND's members on and around the web appearance through contests and polls would be appreciated.
The problem I see and encounter is lacking support and communication. Thus, I would like to see an official guild dedicated to ease the process of communication with BYOND's administration and gaining access to resources in a structured environment.

The official guild should contain guidelines and details on what sort of contests/polls BYOND would like to see (on a site-wide scale) and what criteria have to be meet in order to get what kind of support. There should be a forum to discuss and suggest your ideas, together with requesting the help/resources you need. The guild master(s) would require either the complete trust of the BYOND administration (I'd like to suggest Tiberath, Stephen001, Iain Peregrine,...) and thus get access to resources like announcing BYOND news and awarding rewards (such as memberships, money, ...), or decent means of interaction with the BYOND staff (to suggest the best proposals for review).

Thank you in advance for taking your time to consider the proposal.

Collaborative effort on creating decent art

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:21:10 +0000

The recent discussion on cooperation between programmers and artists combined with the actual lack of showcase artwork around BYOND got me to wonder if there would be some trustworthy aspiring artists who would like to be founded with software to help them create amazing art.
Considering the new isometric support for BYOND, a utility like World Creator 2.5 would seem rather promising.
The cost of £39.99 might deter one person alone, but what if four programmers combined monetary resources and funded an artist to create such beautiful graphics ?

Do you think an idea like this could work out?
Would you be an artist to look out for such an opportunity, or would you be a programmer in dire need of art work?

I'd be glad to hear your opinion!