Congratulations to all the winners!

Though it's probably the least useful, I personally think the 81 one was the most interesting.

I agree--it's extremely fascinating to see ASM support discovered for the one calculator that appeared pretty certain to be entirely impossible... and a good two decades or so after it was introduced. Too bad it's not too practical in general, though it did allow us to obtain the ROM image. :-)

Every one of the featured programs released this year was really cool, though. This was one exciting year in the TI calculator programming scene, that's for sure. It turns out I was more involved with the POTY than any previous year. It was tough deciding what to vote for, but also a lot of fun!

Hi,
Where can I get support for Ti-86 and Ti-89 calculators? Thanks.

This site. Ask another question.

Are you looking for programs, or a place to ask questions? (The answer depends on what exactly you're looking for.)

You can ask here, as others have mentioned, though you can also try asking on IRC, detailed here: www.ticalc.org/ community/irc/ (remove the space). Usually someone on #tcpa is willing and able to help.

Unfortunately, there a rarely people there. We need to do something about that...

Mhmm doesn't #tcpa have like 50 users on normally?

He might mean a lack of community members capable of answering some kind of question.

That is totally not true. We always answer questions!

More like 60 now.

Sorry, excuse my inability to read directions...

Metroid looks neat.

It certainly is, it was very well done.

Metroid got my vote for the 68k's, and BBCBasic got my vote for the 83 line, though unfortunetly that did not win.

Metroid looks amazing, and somehow I don't even remember seeing it on the list of choices.

Congrats to all winners!

Indeed. I managed to vote only for losing programs... which I find amusing...

Yeah I did that a few times too in the past. Congrats to all the authors, while there weren't many choices as previous years, ~beyond~ excellent work guys! :-)

i wonder why pyuopyuo was not an entry...

it looked great!
a nice idea too!

one of the funnest games i have played...

If it doesn't get featured by the site on the front page then it's not an option for voting for POTY. That's the short answer.

this site is sooo very retarded...

i made many nice programs... but alot of them didn't get up loaded because of their stupid dumb babysitting policy...

the word: "Annoying" is considered to be offensive at this joint...

and alot of great programs dont get featured...
plus this place doesn't even have a damn forum!

i seriously can't believe that this is the only site for ti calcs... sigh...

We welcome pointers for programs people think should be featured--just email filearch@ticalc.org. The problem these days is that virtually no one sends suggestions, so it can be tough finding and recognizing programs to feature.

Also, there are countless other TI-calc-related sites out there--unitedti.org, omnimaga.org, calcg.org, cemetech.net, revsoft.org, just to name a few off the top of my head. You just have to look for them. Of course, there's always the possibility of making your own calculator site if you don't like any of the ones you find, too. ;-)

allow me to reword myself...

i mean to say: "the only ti calc site that is active/complete and up to date"

p.s. you should go consider puyo puyo... seriously...
IT IS REVOLUTIONARY! but w/e...

As the maker of puyo puyo, I will agree that its a great game and fun to play, but I don't think it was really "feature worthy". Featured programs, as I see them, are for those that do something very new and unique with a lot of effort going into them or programs that exploit the hardware/software beyond the known limits.

The only thing particularlly "revolutionary" about puyo puyo was the gamepad style play, although I'm sure someone has done that before, I just haven't seen it.

Glad you like the game though. :)

oh man!
if you say so... then i guess your right lol...

p.s. i am your fan lol! :P

Well it could be offensive to the good BASIC programmers who devoted a lot of energy and effort to make these games. I got time to see the program when you uploaded it, and the first sentence seemed more like a personal attack toward these people.

ok... i just made it all pretty rainbows.. happy? :P
sigh... what is this... Communism?

not even freedom of speech in my own programs!?

no offense there... just a joke...
(i reread what i just wrote and thought oops!)

Well, when you go on a website you have rules to follow most of the time. This is ticalc.org case. Our ability to upload games and comment on news articles/write reviews for them is a priviledge the staff give us, not a right. They have the right to decide what's allowed on their website and what's not. If I upload something it may suck that I have to limit the content but we do not own ticalc.org.

On top of that I think ticalc.org staff are doing a quite good job here considering they're not even paid to work on this website and that one person pays money to keep it online.

Every site has their own rules too. United-TI has similar content rules. Cemetech and Revsoft are more lax as long as you don't post shock sites or adult material. Omnimaga bans haters and MaxCoderz has no set rules (altough they still lock innapropriate content)

Everyone is entitled to their own opinions, though, and if you judge that you didn't break the rules you can e-mail the staff for clarification or complaints.

what you just said is the general case for all forums and sites...

modulators are obviously hired for free...
but what i mean is this site is simply too controlling...

for example... see my site! www.d3jsp.org
though it has nothing to do with TI calculators the way the site works is quite general... and if you go any where more, it becomes a baby site...

i mean... look at the general people who uses this site... it ranges from highschool students, university students to geeks who are just interested (me)...
dont you think adults can handle a few offensive comments???

As for profanity, I don't care and I'm sure the staff don't care, but they want to make sure this site won't get blocked by too many schools filters or parent computers filters. As for comments towards people or group of people, some people are more sensitive than others and you have to not be narrow-minded and accept that each person is different.

If for example you say "I am tired of all these stupid annoying basic programmers who don't get their games to clear all temporary variables on exit" or "programs that are more than one file sucks" it can be discouraging for the author of these games, who spent enormous amounts of time working on these games, and these authors may just tell themselves: "why would I bother spending so much effort writing calc games with enough features under such limitations when people thinks my work is a waste of time? I'm just gonna quit and move on to other stuff.". The result is what happened in 2007 and 08: fewer and fewer calculator programmers, so the TI community goes near death.

You should maybe try writing something like Final Fantasy: Tales Of Magic 2 or TI-Boy SE yourself. You may understand what I mean by the amount of work.

i know what its like to be put down like that...

but personally i just dont care... and only take in the positive reviews... (everyone is a critic)

currently i only know languages on the computer such as c# and stuff... i am trying to learn assembly at the moment for TI-83 & 84.

There will always be people who dont like your program... and sometimes its good to know these opinions... otherwise how can we ever improve ourselves!? silencing these comments and review will simply hinder us... (i seriously dont think the decline in programmers in 2007 and 2008 is caused by rude comments... as in there are ALOT more factors in play... an example would be that graphing calculators are not allowed in University... so ones the programmers and users in highschool go on to university they no longer use calcs anymore...)

how do we better ourselves if we dont know what our mistakes are?

what i am trying to say is that i think as long as its a simple complaint or suggestion it should be alright... even comments as what i said should be alright... but hate mails and email spamming such as on youtube is obviously prohibited... but why would anyone do that in the first place? hmm?

Well what I mean, basically, is that destructive comments are not necessary. I believe people should criticise (negatively, positively or both) to help people improve, not to discourage them. In other words, constructive criticism, be it negative or positive, and making sure to be realistic in our suggestions (for example, not trying to make a programmer fit his 20 hours long RPG that has 800 maps in one file under 48 KB) so the person can even use your suggestions at all.

On my side if someone posts his guessing game on my forums, my post will tell I am glad he's starting TI programming, followed with better projects suggestions (for a beginner), while other members scan his program for optimizations (I suck at this x.x).

To add on my previous comments, I believe ticalc reviews works this way too.

If someone just writes that "this game sucks don't download it" or "this game rules! Download it now!" I don't think they will accept it. It has to tell why it sucks or why it rules and if possible, provide suggestions on improvements even if the review is positive.

no...

i actually think the staffs are just damn lazy...

if they think the application the reviewer is reviewing is unimportant (such as a random basic program among thousands) they simply delete it with out reading it at all....

or if there are already many reviews for a popular program... they delete it too...

i have reviewed about what... over 20 programs?
and each of them were paragraph sized reviews that get straight to the point... (nor did i say anything as you meant) and NONE! I SAY NONE! OF THEM showed up at all.... (just look at my profile... ITS EMPTY!!!)

Have you tried emailing the reviews editor to ask why your reviews get rejected?

That's not how it works. If you write a negative review explaining that a program doesn't work at all and give a very precise technical explanation why, or one explaining that a program is obsolete, pointing out that it hasn't been updated for 5+ years, giving a list of known unfixed bugs, detailing missing interoperability with current hardware/software and providing a list of more recent alternatives, they'll reject it (I know, they rejected at least 2 reviews I've written because they were of that type). If you just write "This program rulez! 11/10 AAA+++++!" they'll approve it immediately (I've seen lots of "reviews" of that type). Basically, write whatever you want as long as it's positive, nobody cares about boring technical details. :-/

what the!?

i thought your a staff!!!
since you know sooo much about this place...

damn... i hate these stupid staffs...

number 1... THEY ARE NOT GEEKS! so why are nongeeks running a geek site!?

number 2... LAZY BASTARDS SHOULDN'T BE MODING AT ALL!!
on my site "www.d3jsp.org" or other large forums, lazy mods get removed IMMEDIATELY!!!

god damn it!!!

If you have any questions or concerns about how we run this site, feel free to e-mail filearchive@ticalc.org or my personal address nikkys@ticalc.org. I would be more than happy to address any concerns you may have.

Can you give any specific examples of reviews that say “This program rulez! 11/10 AAA+++++!”? I've never seen any. If any exist, they probably were approved by mistake and need to be deleted. That's one of the reasons we have the "report file" form at the bottom of all the file info pages. I've seen plenty of both positive and negative reviews on the site, however.

Astrid already offered to you once before (as well as to anyone else who has questions or complaints regarding the rejection of their reviews) to email him to find out exactly why your reviews were rejected, but you never seemed to follow up on the offer. I don't understand why you're complaining about it on a message forum where the rules specifically say “Don't post general feedback or criticism about the site. Instead, Contact Us through email.”

what?
afraid of a little publicity?

don't want the world to see what is really going on?

either a forum should be added or a detailed explanation should be made in the f.a.q. regarding this subject...

"as in: blah blah blah... your reviews may not be approved because of so, and so... blah blah blah"

> what?
> afraid of a little publicity?

It has more to do with the fact that a) it's irrelevant to this news article, and b) there's no guarantee that any of us will see and be able to keep track of those comments. The email addresses and feedback forms make sure it gets sent to the appropriate person, and they actually have a record of it until they do something with it. There could be other reasons, too, but I'm not the one who made up the rules.

> or a detailed explanation should be made in the f.a.q.
> regarding this subject...

You mean like the explanations on http://www.ticalc.org/help/faq/67.html and http://www.ticalc.org/help/faq/69.html, the detailed instructions on the page where you write a review, and the fun article at the Web Page link of this post that gives some pointers of what not to do?

yes.. that...
its not really enough... since i followed the exact format and footstep like a tracing a drawing and it still got rejected some how...

so ya... not enough... plus some people might want to know who is actually reading these reviews...

"and every rejected review should have an email saying why it was rejected like how when an application or program is rejected..."

If you would check your inbox, I actually sent you an e-mail which addresses your reviews!

yes.. i have just replied to you...
thank you for your concerns! :)

That is one area I will agree that we need to improve on—the system has a mechanism for automatically sending people emails when a file they upload is rejected, but not when screenshots or especially reviews are rejected.

Being around 14 years old, ticalc.org is a *very* old site by Web standards, and too many parts of it have fallen into disrepair. Although it's not visible to the general public, the behind-the-scenes administration interfaces we use to maintain the site are impressively ancient, arcane, and tempermental. :D Because all of the staff have always been so busy with their real lives, jobs, school, etc., nothing much has changed in the last several years.

We have been discussing the possibility of some major overhauls for a long time now. It would be a huge amount of work, so it's not something that is going to happen very quickly. But we've always had many ideas people have given us over the years as well as our own on our minds all this time. We're planning on working toward some renovations eventually, though, one small step at a time.

I for one like FA.