June BYOND Game Updates

With the end of another month, its time for another round up of updates.

While BYOND did have some moments of accessibility, It felt like most of June it was down with the ongoing DDOS attack, at this point I don't think I've ever known a site to suffer this long at this level of intensity. What this brought this month is just how many of my games hang while trying to access the online scoreboards, while usually it does give up eventually and continue down the code, the fact that the internet is on and the site technically is up seems to be causing it to get stuck in some games. With that in mind, I've made some changes that hopefully compensates for that. 

The games updated this month are:

Moving Mountains
Zetris 2
Reaction
Geekdash
Communism 2

And without further ado, the update lists:

Moving Mountains - 16th Anniversary on the 4th of June

This was a game with a basic concept that hadn't been fleshed out, the idea is you are monitoring a shepherd and the goal is to keep him alive. Getting lost, doing the same thing over and over again, makes him go crazy and give up. The original version had no endgame, it was either to get him in a suitable loop that he doesn't give up, or to last as long as possible.

Among the updates are a difficulty mode and an endgoal: The home of the shepherd is now placed on the map and its your goal to get him back there. Usual interface improvements for resolution and presentation of the game functions is the other updates.

Zetris 2 - 16th anniversary on the 4th of June

Apparently released on the same day as Moving Mountains, This was a much more fleshed out game of a tetris style game, but switched to a two player format for Zetris 2. The idea is that you clear a line, and the field moves towards your opponent, reducing their working space. This update makes the gameplay a little more playable with a bigger field, the blocks that appear are now weighted towards more simple blocks with more complex ones less likely to appear. There is also the addition of some modes, namely vs COM, which is very rubbish right now. Usual UI improvements to resolution.

v1.01:

* Changed block movement to not slide.

* Usual interface changes to allow bigger graphics on bigger resolutions.

* There is now a graphical change to the background to emphasise speed changes.

* Points is now listed in players online tab.

* Slight graphical bug on the T shape fixed.

* Prevented a loop issue that froze games.

* Block selection is now weighted.

* Beginning of a Computer player to go against.

Reaction - 20th anniversary on the 21st of June

I spread bet new games with ideas that were popular or trialled on BYOND and one of them was "Reaction". Click the circles in the time limit before you get game over. Usual UI improvements, but actually I improved the gameplay a bit too. Wifebloke2 suggested some other ideas like reducing points for a missclick, so thanks for that.

Added interface file

Switched circles to bound boxes

Adjusted speed differences:

* Level 1 is slightly slower.

* Level 2-8 changes are doubled to make change steeper.

* Level 9-18 are smaller increments, then the game stays at the same level as 18 forever.

A miss click causes a point to go down.

Geekdash - 20th anniversary on the 27th of June

One of my favourite games to play personally, though Geekdash3 is the preferred maxed out version of the game. Get from one side of the field to the other, with increasingly difficult obstacles. Usual UI improvements to resolution and information presented on screen.

Version 1.2

* Doubled size of interface and added anchors to allow for fullscreen. Increased size of text on interface.

* Fixed bug where things disappeared under squares (though does now show up players in corner when not playing)

* Added level to interface so that it doesn't spam text box with it.

* Modified code so game doesn't hang on checking server scores.

Communism 2 - 19th anniversary on the 28th of June

Another lame attempt at doing a game of every puzzle type and genre, this is a collapse clone. Don't ask why I called it Communism, I don't really know myself other than vague attempts to reference something in a teenage way with no real understanding of it. Click groups of blocks, he bigger the group, the more points you get. Honestly, I didn't do a lot with this one, other than UI update for resolution and changes to the score checking due to the outage.

6th version

* Asks to check online scoreboard. This is because it hangs if server is not available.

* Interface changes to ensure size is correct on higher resolutions.

All these games are available to download on Itch.io under this game listing, I've been slowly adding previously updated games to BYOND when outages have ended, but I don't remember the last time I have been able to access the site. I think the only May game to be reuploaded onto BYOND is Space Commander, and the updated games above.

Trench Wars has also been updated, but I haven't uploaded yet. It was part of the "Wargames Complete Pack" which I may release in a fashion on itch, I had hoped the outage of BYOND would be done by now, but it hasn't. Wargames 2 was also due an update which hasn't been finished yet.

July brings us new games to update including:

Dreamland Universe, the universe generator
Spod the chat program (ugh, do I have to bother with this one?)
SurviveThis! The zombie apocalypse defence game - tempted to update this with some pixel shooting code I'm using for a new game.

It is also the First anniversary of my Magnavox Odyssey port of "Duck Hunt"

August also has a small but significant group of games with Dream Shining Character, my shining force fan game which was the start of my BYOND development journey, hitting 22 years this year! There is also Pinky, a bejewelled clone and also RetroSpaceBattle, an abstract tower defence game that got quite a few updates in the past. It will also be the 2 year anniversary of my Submarine port to the Channel F.