Justin, I've been wanting to write that for awhile. =) I agree, totaly. But, however, there are a few good companies/games out there for consoles now. Back to subject, I too am a 68k programmer. (Currently completing Zenith Saga) and I also feel that people are losing appreciation for the EXTREME amounts of time and work we put into these projects. As you said, SMQ is truly a work of art. (Mad props to Don!) And I would truly be upset to see someone make a negetive comment on that game. (Although it _is_ a beta) Also, keeping in mind that these _are_ graphing calcs, I think we're doing a damn good job in the gaming world. Really. And as for original games... some of us are still out there. Not to advertise, but ZS is something you guys have never seen before. But anywho, good article.

C'mon TI community! We can do it!

Raist

It's ticalc's fault that they have these comment boards to post bad things.

It's not ticalc.org's fault. Sure, because of them, we can publically display our negative thoughts. But doesn't that make it our fault for posting them? I believe it does. It is no single person's or site's fault, though we are all responsible, even if very little, for what has happened. We can overcome it though.

If President Clinton can overcome his trial and take down the rest of the world with him (WWIII on the brink?), then we can easily overcome this and take out the entire internet. (haha. joke. laugh.) Well let's just say we could if we reeeeeally wanted to...

quiet you. quiet. These comments are the ones screwing up the TI community.

well, not to be negitive, but if someone says something that offends someone or if they flame someone or something like that, just posting a reply sets a snowball rolling down a huge hill. i'm not saying if i think your post is in the wrong or that the post you replyed to is in the wrong. i'm just saying that if people just stop makeing things a big deal, that we wouldn't have this problem.
Well, that's my 2 cents.
Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Rob Smith

One thing I don't like about the TI community is that everyone thinks ASM games are better than BASIC games. I agree that some of the BASIC games are bad, but also quite a lot of the ASM games are rubbish. If I knew how to program well in ASM, i would make really cool strategy games, but because I only know BASIC, I can't do all the features I would like to...
I also like programming. I like making a game and releasing it, and a few days later someone emailing me saying it is a good, and they enjoyed it. At my school, not many people program on anything, so they don't know just how much effort we all put into these games.

Sorry if I've droned on, but I just wanted to talk to someone...
HELLO?

- VirusCOM (don't ask!)

Wow... you said what we were all thinking of in a whole.

Anyway, despite my lack of programming knowledge (i know TIBASIC for the 86, enough to do math progs) i do know the extreme amounts of time necessary to complete projects of this undertaking. I do a lot of 3d graphics and stuff, and when it takes 8 weeks (yes 8 weeks, but not the total 8 weeks...) to make a, get this, 30 second animation (30 seconds after 8 weeks would mean about 27 years to make a 1.5 hour movie...hmm, guess i need to do things quicker). Now 8 weeks isn't that bad, but considering its only 30 seconds long, its quite long. I know about how long i put into making it, so i think that one factor to put into the readme of all games should be the length of time taken to make the game (i know some readme's already of that), just to show us the hard work used to acheive the game/prog.

And Joltima is insane... took me a good 2 weeks to take care of it (of course having both calculus and physics with boring teachers and both being block classes helped...).

And can people stop asking for ports? Its not just annoying to us, it annoys the programmers as well...


yeoua

Especially those brainless twits who can't understand why no one wants to to a cross- language port. And then they keep asking, even after having been explained to, 'no, it is written in a different kind of assembly.'

I find it saddening

I find it challenging

You are absolutely right, Justin. The fact is that, nowadays, the people who use computers (and calculators) are not the same as in earliest years. I mean : in the 80's, people who had computers at home were somehow interested by these devices. Computers had a few mem space, "small" microprocessors and a BASIC programming language in their ROM (just like TI's calcs ;)). So these computer users, I like to call them "informaticians", knew what was and IS programming : spending so much time, and thinking it is wasted, to try learning a language, especially Assembly. I believe the kernel of the TI-Communauty is made of people like these, who know how hard it is to code a good program and who were completely astonished when they saw Bill Nagel's work on Penguins. Today's informaticians were born with GUI's (I mean PC's GUI's; I respect Amiga, Atari and the early Macs), million-colored games and the feeling that a computer is just mouse. Consider all the people using some kind of computer at this precise moment and ask them what is the stack in a processor; you'll see I am right (if not e-mail me)...
As a consequence video-games companies make games designed to please these people with more and more incredible graphics and... no new concept at all. Think about games like Midwinter, the first Space Quest game or even Lemmings. These were really entertaining with a maximum of 16 colors !
When I showed CLEM's Maze3D to my friends at the lycée (no U.S. equivalent) they just thought it was worst than a GameBoy game ! I thought the TI-Communauty was one of the last place where computer purists lived and I hope they will continue.
Long live Programmers !
Long live Coders !
(I am french and don't know english very well. Please excuse my bad writing.)

Bravo!

I couldn't agree with you more. The very first Space Quest game is probably the most influential game I have ever played. This game, with its "terrible" graphics and "ridiculous" text-parser interface is still my number one choice to people interested in playing a "good" game. Even now, if you search around the internet, people are using the space-quest interface to create their own games. When they have the choice to play Zelda64 or Metal Gear Solid or some pumped-up action shooter on their computer, they choose this old "dinosaur" game and it boggles some peoples mind. They just don't understand that a "good" game is one where creativity and originality are the only reasons people play them.

Justin, your article is exactly what I have been thinking these past couple of months. It seems that people are more concerned about turning this community into an online version of Jerry Springer. Thank you for speaking honestly. Hopefully this is the first step towards turning this community around.

Jake

I agree with you. Personally, today's games and programs have mostly disuaded me from looking into programming. Everything is so complex, it takes years and years of experience to even be able to create a program anyone would appreciate. Back in the haydays of computers, people could start up in there own homes, programming what we would today consider simple but entertaining games. In fact that is how many of today's big game companies and game developers started out (sid meier, maxis, ect...). Unfortunately, today things are different. One can hardly just go to his/her pc and teach themselves to program fantastic programs. The ti programming however, continues this early trend now long gone on cpus, allowing people with an interest in programming, just starting out, to create programs that people will enjoy. Ti basic and assembly revives an era long gone.

I absolutely agree with your statements. I feel that the TI-Community today is overly influenced by the standard of programs they see in the "real world". Hence, flawed (in terms of gameplay) programs are churned out quite frequently. The other issue is that a great majority of users have no understanding whatsoever of asm, which serves only to compact the problem. Rather than aiming to produce tight, elegant code, programmers are writing inefficiently, since their source is not likely to be scrutinised.
This is one reason why the TI programming community has developed along contrasting lines to that of the early 80's hobbyists. There is no "scene" as such in the TI community. Nobody writes exceptional demos, showcasing new approaches and algorithms they've been working on because they know their work will go unappreciated.
What I propose is a new category of TI "program" for some of these archive sites; demo code. Basically anybody who feels that they have produced an exceptional piece of code should not feel alienated when uploading it to a site, just because it's not a full game. I think this sort of approach to expanding the TI community would be helpful in a number of ways. Firstly, those whose hard work would otherwise go unnoticed get some form of recognition or validation; a reason to take the code further and, perhaps produce something worthwhile with it. Secondly, the notion of creativity would be promoted by such a scheme. Thirdly, I think it would a great way to share these new ideas with the rest of the community. More than this, though, I feel the level of friendly competition this would introduce would be beneficial in increasing the overall quality of code released.
I know, personally, that I get a lot more satisfaction from writing fast, original code than merely repeating what has been done many times before.
If anybody has any ideas regarding this, I'd appreciate some email.
Thanks

It's the same with Tetris (the original, of course!). It's a game so intuitive, you pick it up and just know how to do it. Even with my million color N64 and Goldeneye and whatever, it seems I play my Game Boy more. Are there really so few games that can compare, with their high-tech 64-bit cards and Pentium processors, to a simple old z80 chip with a grayscale screen?

It really is sad.

I completely agree, espically about your references to Huxley's view of corruption. But now the question remains... What to do to ensure that new innovations occur in the Ti community?

Yep, the ole high school reading list there.

I've beaten Joltima 3 times (twice on an 82, once on an 83) and this game rules! It's the best RPG, with its simple plot and excellent graphics use on the limited hardware. It even uses the same efficient type of compression used in Dragon Warrior 1's overworld map, (I made a ROMhacking tool that does this) RLE.

There have been too many crappy games in magazines, I agree on that. I play on a NES emulator more often than a SNES or N64, but emulation is a gray-shaded legality scene. TI gaming is like emulation in that the games are great and the hardware is limited in abilities.

I am an experienced Basic programmer, I made Stratego 82/83 and am currently programming DragonQuest on my 82. I think that harassing programmers is wrong, even lowly 82 TI-Basic programmers. I would like to see ASM libs for TI-Basic progs, high speed scrolling, no 10-second wait for redraws, and sprites! (7up rules too!)

I think the scene is deteriorating, but many other scenes are too.

Negetivity and 300+ comments pages full of flames are bad, jerky postings should be deleted, legitimate replys should be moved to different threads.

The Home Page link is to my DW editor page.

Just to be picky... "You can't kill the enemies, but it's still pretty fun anyway" isn't anything like "unfortunately you can't kill the enemies." I went to go change it.. but there was nothing to change.

Adam was just stating the facts about that review. It is pretty unfortunate that you can't kill the enemies.. he was just telling that to people before they got it... and, did you see what the mario review was?

"A very nice Mario clone by Bill Nagel, enemy killing, level compression, and more. Pretty cool!"

There, he appreciates the new Mario with killing too. Don't criticize people when they don't deserve it.

I realize this really off topic, but i dont know where to go with this. well here is the question.
What if some one made an excite bike game?
Iknow this would be a long project but it would be the best for the TI-89 or TI-92. Sorry is this bugs anyone.
Now to the subject,
Justin is totally right. I have just started to program and its hard, everyone should give congrats to all the authors out there.

Excite bike is my all time favorite NES game! I LOVE IT! it has a level editor also! and even though the graphics are not Zelda 64 and the music isn't mozart, it was a really fun game. sometimes lack graphics are over powered by the quality of the game.
look at QUEST for the 89. its in BASIC, the graphics are all text, but it's a fun game. we ned more of those.