Should we help BYOND?

[spacevoidagent]

With the ever-increasing threat of a BYOND shutdown, what can we do to help? Can we encourage players and others servers to introduce a donation/BYOND Member System? Here are some ideas.

- BYOND Donators gain access to a exclusive Species/Job.

- VIP Access to closed events?

- Colorful name in OOC?

These are just ideas. I'd really like to help BYOND, they can't afford to be free forever, and this game is the largest game on BYOND. We have a obligation to help them.

Please comment opinions and ideas below.

[Jboy2000000]

I think putting jobs and species behind a paywall would be a shite idea, but something like promised spots in events or colourful OOC names sounds alright.

But how would we even know someone donated to BYOND? BYOND probably won't give away donor information, I doubt players would give away the type of information it would take to prove they donated, so that would basically leave donating somewhere else, and then having someone else donate it in mass, but I highly doubt people would trust that either, or placing it on faith. I don't need to tell you why faith doesn't work.

[spacevoidagent]

I think putting jobs and species behind a paywall would be a shite idea, but something like promised spots in events or colourful OOC names sounds alright.

But how would we even know someone donated to BYOND? BYOND probably won't give away donor information, I doubt players would give away the type of information it would take to prove they donated, so that would basically leave donating somewhere else, and then having someone else donate it in mass, but I highly doubt people would trust that either, or placing it on faith. I don't need to tell you why faith doesn't work.

There is other games that gift the BYOND Members. Most offer exclusive items and such.

Also, it's not necessarily a paywall. It would be something Unique that Donators would receive. Something that would make other players possible wanting it, and thus, supporting BYOND. I think we can come up with something.

[FinalVerdict3]

I respect what you're saying, but the reality is not all of us can spare money. I, myself, have a career I need to spend my budget on and while I do love this server and Byond my personal life deserves more attention than supporting Byond. I know that there may be another alternative to keep the game running anyway, there's database files I believe which may or may not work(MySQL) if it supports such things.

Also, I wouldn't advise to lock roles behind a paywall. Games do this mainstream bullshit all the time and it's not only annoying but you're typically holding a piece of art at ransom. For games that you don't pay for and FTP games, I understand that FTP games need those to survive however many FTP games also follow the sterotype to have those roles be OP or essentially an almost god-like ability. Hell, I even remember one game prioritized your admin reports based on how much you donated, people who could afford to donate over $700 was granted with first class response from admins and ass-kissing. Definitely off-putting.

I like the idea of coloured names, what about a teamspeak group of your own? Or how about forum badges, special titles/ranks with certain permissions, etc. Those things are good, but they also have to be worth the buyers time, too.

My 2cents.

[spacevoidagent]

I respect what you're saying, but the reality is not all of us can spare money. I, myself, have a career I need to spend my budget on and while I do love this server and Byond my personal life deserves more attention than supporting Byond. I know that there may be another alternative to keep the game running anyway, there's database files I believe which may or may not work(MySQL) if it supports such things.

Also, I wouldn't advise to lock roles behind a paywall. Games do this mainstream bullshit all the time and it's not only annoying but you're typically holding a piece of art at ransom. For games that you don't pay for and FTP games, I understand that FTP games need those to survive however many FTP games also follow the sterotype to have those roles be OP or essentially an almost god-like ability. Hell, I even remember one game prioritized your admin reports based on how much you donated, people who could afford to donate over $700 was granted with first class response from admins and ass-kissing. Definitely off-putting.

I like the idea of coloured names, what about a teamspeak group of your own? Or how about forum badges, special titles/ranks with certain permissions, etc. Those things are good, but they also have to be worth the buyers time, too.

My 2cents.

I don't want to restrict any existing jobs. I was thinking adding a Donator exclusive job/species. As long as the job/species isn't OP or PAY-2-WIN material, I think it would be okay.

We aren't supporting the server, we are supporting the foundation. We would be supporting BYOND itself.

[Killerhurtz]

I'll be 100% honest here. Even if everyone pitched in, we're only what, 50 people? We most likely are not enough to support Byond alone. Reminder - in a single instance, there can be up to 500 players on Byond at once. Most likely in the excess of three thousand a day. Fifty players to support that is not enough.

My best bet would be finding a way to make the server/game work without Byond. Sure, it would mean the end of growth via their thing - but if we can pull it off, we can start increasing visibility elsewhere.

[jackfractal]

My best bet would be finding a way to make the server/game work without Byond. Sure, it would mean the end of growth via their thing - but if we can pull it off, we can start increasing visibility elsewhere.

 

That would involve rebuilding the entire game from scratch, as well as a new client and a new server. The Baystation branch of SS13 we're working with has 282 528 lines of code in it. Depending on team structure, the average coder can write about 500 lines of code per week. That's 565 weeks of labor, or roughly eleven years to replicate SS13.

Add in the server and client, which could easily end up being as much or more code then the game itself, and you're looking at, lets just round it off at two decades of work?

Industry standard for programmers is starts at about $80 000 a year, so lets make that an even $100 000 per coder with licenses and supplies, totaling that all up and you're looking at a budget of about two million dollars. Hire ten guys and we can be at roughly where we are now in about two years.

Anyone have a spare couple of million laying around?

[Killerhurtz]

You're thinking too big.

All we need is to emulate Byond protocols. In a sense, "crack" Byond (or request, from them, the source code so that we can host a mini-Byond for accessing Aurora).

I mean - if your solution was the only solution, people who crack games couldn't make execs smaller than the game. MMO private servers wouldn't be a thing.

By your logic, N64 games would have to have been redone from scratch... yet we have browser-based emulators for them.

Hell - I'm not 100% certain, but I've hosted private Aurora servers (as in, by myself). Let's say... I'm about 85% certain that all the Dream Seeker needs is an interface - because from what I can see, Byond initiates a connection with it's own protocol and plugs it into the Dream Seeker, which remotely loads the assets from the given server before launching the client game code. And from our experimentation trying to get rid of the furry spamming, a while back, this definitely holds up - you need Byond to launch the game, but can safely force-quit Byond after that and safely stay connected - and reconnect between rounds - with your CKey in the Dream Seeker. Which means that the Byond software, overall, is three things: a pager/chat system between players, a server host listing and a connection interface for the games themselves. Cutting the first two features out should make the Launcher possible.

[jackfractal]

All of your examples are illegal. If the byond team released their source then we'd be able to do as you suggest but without that, you aren't going to be able to do it without breaking the law.

Past the legal implications, it seems sort of rude to do that to the byond team, who are already treated rather badly by the SS13 community as a whole.

[Conservatron]

whats this about a threat of shutdown?

i don't read the feeds very often so how is it ever increasing?

[Killerhurtz]

Fractal, it's not technically illegal if the company cannot defend it. And it's not illegal because it is merely bypassing a product to access another. If Byond had stakes in Aurora directly, it would be another story.

And it's rude, yes. But do you HONESTLY believe we should let Aurora die if Byond cannot sustain itself?

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Fractal, it's not technically illegal if the company cannot defend it. And it's not illegal because it is merely bypassing a product to access another. If Byond had stakes in Aurora directly, it would be another story.

And it's rude, yes. But do you HONESTLY believe we should let Aurora die if Byond cannot sustain itself?

 

No, it's illegal. Not being caught doesn't make it any less illegal. That's not how the law works. The moment they filed a lawsuit against us or our host, even if we did this, we'd die anyway because I for one aren't paying for an Aurora legal team. You won't even let me implement lawyers IC.

[Guest]

If you want to support BYOND, donate. I donate $15 a month from my PayPal in support of it.

 

Fractal, it's not technically illegal if the company cannot defend it. And it's not illegal because it is merely bypassing a product to access another. If Byond had stakes in Aurora directly, it would be another story.

And it's rude, yes. But do you HONESTLY believe we should let Aurora die if Byond cannot sustain itself?

 

No, it's illegal. Not being caught doesn't make it any less illegal. That's not how the law works. The moment they filed a lawsuit against us or our host, even if we did this, we'd die anyway because I for one aren't paying for an Aurora legal team. You won't even let me implement lawyers IC.

 

What he said. Unlike crimes committed physically, which are arguably a lot easier to get away with compared to digital/internet crimes where you can be backtraced, you face a lot of risk for that, and you can get in a lot of financial and legal trouble.

And about the off-topic lawyer comment: It's partly because lawyering is a very foreign and complex concept to just about everyone here. Not many people have a degree in law here. We'd see more people doing it wrong and causing drama than what it's actually worth in-game.

If you had a suggestion out for what they could do and what they couldn't do and etc, then we could discuss it more in-depth.

[FinalVerdict3]

Look, just let me have a blue suit with a red tie, gelled slick back hair and let me yell "OBJECTION!" Every time the judge tries to talk, yhat's all the law degree I need.

I suppose we could create a handbook as a guide and people can use that for the lawyer job, people will still neef to make their own decisions based on certain situations, the guide would just help them to get familiar with the concept of their powers/what's expected of lawyers.

[Killerhurtz]

I looked into it - and it doesn't even look like doing that infringes on their TOS (but then again it might be because they haven't had anyone try it).

I sent the Byond staff a message about it though.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I looked into it - and it doesn't even look like doing that infringes on their TOS (but then again it might be because they haven't had anyone try it).

I sent the Byond staff a message about it though.

 

It would be appreciated if you didn't include any insinuation or statement that this was an official question from aurora staff or developers.

[Killerhurtz]

Aurora isn't even MENTIONED directly (the closest to a reference there is is "my community", and it was a reference to how we're all sad that Byond's having trouble). Byond staff could probably snoop around and figure it out - but from my message alone, I'm the only bearer of this message, and whatever downfall there will be I will pick up.

As a side note, I have gotten a reply. Here's the contents:

 

BYOND isn't in financial trouble, and dissolution is not currently on

the horizon. (I've heard similar concerns recently, and my only guess as

to why is that Tom's "I'm weighing the options" posts from months and

months ago are simply echoing in the rumorsphere.) We could always be

doing a bit better, and I would encourage your entire community to not

only help support BYOND but to encourage new people to join, but BYOND

is not going away in the foreseeable future. If the worst were to happen

eventually, Tom and I would come up with a game plan to manage the

transition so that games were always accessible.

In the event the hub were to ever disappear, it would still be perfectly

possible to connect to games. The main downside is that authorization

would no longer be possible, so each game would have to make provisions

for this itself and turn off hub authorization.

-- Lummox JR

 

So, people - just keep contributing to Byond and they'll take care of it, even should it come to the worst.

[mrimatool]

Just a note, back when me, sphere and chaz first started aurora the BYOND team were VERY supportive in our efforts, often being who we went to when Aurora was DDOS'd again and the like. Disregarding them just to keep SS13 alive is not only incredibly difficult but downright rude. I am however in favour of anything that does support them such as exclusive(new) roles for BYOND donators and the like. They deserve that much considering without them Aurora wouldn't be a thing, nor space station 13.

[Killerhurtz]

I only suggested disregarding them should it come to the worst because Aurora alone most likely cannot uphold Byond. But it is a moot point as per above - the Byond team is just as supportive of it's player base as you make it out to be, and I trust them entirely. I'll be donating when my budget allows it myself.

[TechnoKat]

no, we shouldn't help byond.

if it shuts down, our addictions to this spessmen game will probably go away and we'll be able to do something like cure cancers and end world hunger- lol fuck that.

The only way we can help BYOND is just donate pocket money, sure you won't eat for some time, but it helps at least, hey.

[Xelnagahunter]

I recently got a 3 month membership. $10 wasn't too big a hit, and this is coming from a guy who hasn't been able to pay his rent on time for a few months now. ((Yes, I am doing my best to fix that.))

[Guest]

Food & Drink > Shelter > Clothes > luxury items. Pay your rent!

On another note, if you want to donate to byond, go ahead no one is stopping you (unless you don't have items 1, 2, or 3 above, then I might try to stop you) but I won't putting anything on the server behind a paywall. It breaks why I started to help this server and and feels slightly wrong to ask/make people pay money to something when it was built on a donation setting. At that point it's not a donation but a payment for the benefits.

I will also not accept donations to keep the server running. I know the problems that can arise from it, the accusations that can happen, and the distrust it can bring when money becomes involved.

If I for some reason am unable to keep this place running without taking a single rial (That's Iranian currency IRR 24,567 = $1 last I checked) then I will most likely be handing it over to someone who is able to do that.