Caged Birds Don’t Sing

One of the very first bits of advice I was given on my BYOND page was a snarky remark based off of a recent advice post which basically said, “If you announce what you’re working on, you’re going to be robbed of the motivation to do it.”
I scoffed at that on the grounds that I [...]

Learning BYOND #11: The Power Of Modular Programming

Though I think of it as being a couple weeks off, this is in mostly counting minor dabbling: the actual amount of time I spent away from hardcore BYOND development is more like a month.  I’ve spent the pretty much the entire weekend (in which I had four days) hammering BYOND, and I think I’ve [...]

Crunch Time: The end of the Learning BYOND series

So ends my ‘Learning BYOND” series (though I’ll probably go back and edit those entries – for brevity, if nothing else). Ten days of “Learning BYOND” is probably enough to say that I’m past learning it, and am now simply using it.
What does use of BYOND produce? If the title [...]

Learning BYOND, Day 9: Purposeful Toil

With the focus placed on my Graphical User Interface from Day 8, I’ve pretty much created the game. The GUI is the game, after all. At least that’s what I quoted yesterday… but, I have to concur from personal experience that once you’ve got the basics of the GUI ironed out, the game [...]

Learning BYOND, Day 8: Is The Game

It’s hot and it’s a Saturday, but I don’t care. I’ve only got another 9 days until the school semester starts. Plus, I’ve developed a relatively good design in my head, now it’s time to see it through. Back to work, slacker.
Today, the Graphical User Interface was on the agenda. A [...]

Learning BYOND, Day 7: All About Image

Seriously, today really was all about the image for me… the BYOND image object and how it is used, that is. It turned out to be a rather long and agonizing day: I wish I had known now what I did when I started. Sit back, read, and enjoy the butter without [...]

Learning BYOND, Day 6: Open Heart Surgery

I’m probably going to go back and severely edit those “Learning BYOND” entires. Right now they’re a somewhat rambling collection that probably contain a number of inadvertent lies said out of code-newbie innocence. I’m not sure anyone finds those entries particularly interesting… at the very least, I should throw in some helpful diagrams!
Oh [...]

Learning BYOND, Day 5: Vital Misconceptions

Edit: This has once again been modified both because of correcting my own earlier ignorance and thanks to Zac’s helpful comments.
Yesterday was good practice to get familiar with coding in the environment. Today, I largely took my advice from yesterday and did a whole lot of RTFM. I went from chapter 7 to [...]

Learning BYOND, Day 4: Early Vestiges Of Awesome

Am I really only on day 4? The human brain is a remarkable device – that which seems hopelessly impossible to understand yesterday is implicitly understood and being done today. Where is the tangible difference? In the individual’s perspective, it is as though a part of reality was completely redefined, and yet [...]

Learning BYOND, Day 3: Armed and Dangerous

Today, I found that my brushing up on the fundamentals helped quite a bit. BYOND’s differences from the programming languages I’m comfortable with are beginning to melt away. I’m able to define classes of objects and place them intelligently in the game, as well as allow players to pick up and drop things. [...]