BYOND Strategy Tech Tree: 152

After my failed attempt to gain all of the human friends during my first run of Radiata Stories, the non-humans have been quite easy.  Of course, I now find myself not wanting to actually hang out with most of them...  And what's with forcing Ridley on as my love interest?  Romaria has been fighting by my side for ages and is a fine healer.  Ridley can't even style her own hair anymore!

Tech Tree is a list of links about developer activity in BYOND Strategy, a guild run by unpaid volunteers on a game/development portal and software engine called BYOND.  Those curious about notes or YouTube videos I've cut out can view the original version.

Saya has been handling the server that Neus/Devourer of Souls hosts his website on.  However, he is now stepping down to teach.  Neus has been offered his own domain with a year of hosting.

It was also announced that the old forum database will be restored next week.  More recent content will be lost, but I'm happy to see the community's bug reports for Witches' Chess coming back.

Remember when I told Calus CoRPS/172.16.0.1 that I'd suggest some interface changes for his featured tactical battle, Fortay?  No?  You're forgiven.  It was months ago.  This week, I finally did it.  Calus CoRPS greeted the post with the news that he hopes to release an update soon.

Nickr5 announced and released an early version of a bot-scripting game called Automata.  The project is based on a scripting library he released in October.  It's now listed in the guild.  A download is available.

Ganing updated his BYOND RPG-inspired defense game, Seika SE.  After my comments in last week's column, the help file has been reformatted.  I'm tempted to press my luck with another rant, but my recent interface tips column covers part of it...  The space wasted on the title and tag-line in the top-right corner still confuses me though. ;)

Geldonyetich released a library called Easy AStar.  While other pathfinding libraries have been released on BYOND, Geldonyetich's goal has been ease of use.  It's likely to be incorporated into his game projects.  While we wait for them, we shouldn't lose track of the real news that Geldonyetich frelling released something! ;)

Acebloke is making progress on the next version of his economic/military simulation, Wargames.  Army recruitment has been limited, three new buildings have been added and the help files for buildings now display their resource costs.  The popularity system might also see some changes.

An official server could be available in a couple weeks.  Until then, the old version is available for anyone to host.

EGUY posted his plans for the next version of his tile-laying game, Deus Rex.  Along with fixes and new tiles, custom tile creation could be coming.  However, nothing should be expected for another week.

D4RK3 54B3R left this enigmatic post in the comments of last week's column:

I'll bite.  What's Belligerence?  Does it have anything to do with the picture posted earlier?

I updated the interface and graphics of my bot-crashing, scrap-collecting game, Gears & Peers.

Meanwhile, I've been simplifying the rules in my lab of mutants, Genetic Fork.  For instance, diagonal tiles used to be removed from some movement and effect rules.  Now every neighbor is an option so there's no artificial boundary to keep track of.  It makes measuring ranges easier as well.

I've also started exercising after years of sedentary life.  Perhaps the chest pains mean I'm a bit late.