BYOND and Within #1 & 2

The name and time changed.  That means I can put two columns on my resume, right? ;)

The BYOND site has been redesigned with tag-based navigation.  Rather than hiding news inside a guild that lost its traffic, I've removed the genre restriction from my digest efforts and begun submitting my posts to the BYOND Central blog.  Once there, they are forwarded to BYOND's built-in pager.  It should lead to both more content and more exposure for the projects listed.

Gamasutra readers may also notice the inclusion of non-BYOND links.  I had been hiding them since they were often available on the sister sites anyway.  Speak up if they're too redundant...  Or if they're not.  I feed on the empty promises of warm fuzzies. ;)

This edited version of BYOND and Within comes to you from a game/development portal and software engine called BYOND.  The column focuses on recent developer activity as seen by an unpaid volunteer.  For play suggestions...  Well, those are kind of in flux at the moment.

Within BYOND

Silk Games' NEStalgia MORPG has received multiple updates in the past few weeks.  Version 1.33 brought guest key access and improved graphics handling.  Version 1.34 adds 8 save slots for subscribers.  Version 1.35 introduced set gear that increases bonuses when matching equipment is worn.  Tournaments are held regularly and participation earns "Colosseum Emblems" that can be used to purchase rewards.

The BYOND site redesign resulted in a surge of players for the team-based action of Decadence.  Unfortunately, it appears to have occurred at the same time as the loss of the team's master server.  Three updates later, the server listings are back.  More interestingly, some of the hand-holding mechanics have been removed after it was determined that they were obstructing play.  The full patch notes can be found in the forum.

IainPeregrine has been keeping busy with updates for multiple projects.  His retro single-player RPG, Regressia, received a fix for a progress-ending bug.  His cooperative action title, Casual Quest, received its own fixes and balance improvements for many of the classes.  Later updates then provided an anti-griefing measure and... a secret?

Acebloke's abstract strategy game Exploder and shooter Exodus recently received an update.  Unfortunately, he was too ill to provide a blog post with the changes.

Feeling better now, his economic/military sim Wargames offers a long list of improvements.  The selling points are a new attack selection method and rocket research that can lead to claims on the moon.  The latter grants players a medal.

Acebloke also updated the demo for his Spore-inspired graphical MUD, Dreamland Universe.  Enough interest has been expressed that donations can now grant advanced access.

F0lak has announced that he'll be returning to his (BYOND) Game In A Day 2010 entry, Ninja Team.  It's a cooperative action title that tied for second place.  Expect random dungeons, new enemies and more in the next few weeks.

Forum_account is making plans for his platform action titles A Miner Adventure and Exordium & Terminus.  Much of the former has been merged into a new framework with with upgrades, elevators, building abilities and medals on the way.  For the latter, he is attempting to complete a story and showing off more of the game's lovely art.

The Sidescroller library used in both projects has been updated.  More demos are a possibility.

Inspired by Rudra no Hiho, DivineTraveller has announced and created a Google Code Project for an RPG with a robust spell creation system called Mantra.  A tech demo is available and the recent screenshots of the interface confirm his feelings of progress.

A poll was recently held to help determine the method of learning spell syllables.  It appears players will have to pay a lot of attention to NPC chat.

Twin II has provided another screenshot of his tactical RPG.  Finding a cluttered UI in both his own project and others in the genre, he redesigned it in a manner which should allow players to plan their actions without wasting too much space.  Details on the rest of the game are still scarce, but an arena for both cooperative and PvP battles was mentioned.

Fantasie Productions are threatening to take over the world with felines in their self-titled RPG Fantasie.  "Meos" have been implemented.  Players will first meet with Medikittens that can both heal and manipulate the minds of those around them.  Later, Medicats will summon minions and cast debuffs.

Solid details on the party and quest systems have yet to surface.  The team is polling their audience.  Hopefully the mechanics will receive at least as much attention as the world.

Inspired by the old BBS game Infinity Complex and a request from a gaming parent, Asellia has begun work on a procedurally generated team-based action RPG called The Box.  The overall goal is to capture a majority of the map, but there's much to do in the meantime.  A global quest board and a class system were recently added.

Me likey procedural generation.

Asielen has updated his action title Snow War.  First created for a contest sponsored by Lummox JR in 2008, the decision was made to polish it into a finished product.  A quick glance at the clean interface and help file make me think the game is a candidate for featured status, but I have yet to play it.

Speaking of Lummox JR's contests, the BYOND staff programmer has once again extended the deadline for the BYOND Cartridge Classic II.  Entrants now have until April 1st.  That's roughly two more months to create a game within 8192 bytes of source code.

Feel free to join in.  Bandock has taken advantage of the extra time to provide a bug fix for his SkyDrop Delivery entry.  D4RK3 54B3R is back to work on his second entry after stumbling with a strategy RPG, a dungeon crawl and some form of zombie game.  After resigning, IainPeregrine is also back... and utilizing his Casual Quest updates to distract D4RK3 54B3R.  Oh, that's dirty! ;)

I finally got around to creating a video for my rhythm action game with procedurally generated music, Fused Finale.  I would have preferred to cut it down into a more exciting trailer instead of a long gameplay video, but my editing software kept changing the resolution on me.

More recently, I returned to implementing my racing combat board game, StarScurrier.  I was going to ease myself in with some sound effects, but I jumped into the code.  Apparently I still had a lot of the Trade phase to implement.  I'm now playing past the first round and fixing a bunch of bugs as they pop up.

My birthday has come and gone.  The Gift Me Games Deal is over.  Thank you to all who participated and I hope you enjoy your lifetime subscriptions to my multipass, Fooldom Come.  There were not a lot of unique customers, but most of those involved bought more than once.  Overall, I'm calling it a reasonable success.  However, I will have to *gasp* advertise any future deals that I actually intend to make money.

Speaking of Fooldom Come, I've added a download to the hub page that includes various resources.  Right now it's just the music tracks from my games.  I hope to keep updating with more, but I'm not quite happy with the older graphical assets I have to offer and the newer ones tend to have raw textures that I'm not licensed to distribute.

Beyond BYOND

I tend to end with a YouTube video on the BYOND site, but I'm not sure how to embed one here.  The last video I posted was part of Paul Schneider's developer commentary for GunGirl 2.  I had originally intended to present it as a reasonable way for BYOND's recently suppressed fangame community to incorporate references to unlicensed content.  Later through the playlist, I realized that the more subtle hints could be ignored in favor of the direct names and ripped sound effects...  It's still fun to get inside the developer's head though. ;)

Congratulations to NakaTeleeli for reaching 10000 subscribers to his playthrough channel and to Brigitte Dale for becoming NextMovie's DVDiva.