|
The State of the TI Community
|
|
Posted on 14 April 1999
The following text was written by Justin
Karneges: Please excuse any bad writing and/or excessive commas. I'm a
programmer, not an English major. =) Ahh, the TI community. Just as everything gets
corrupted given enough time, now it's the TI community's turn. I remember back in the days
of the regular NES. I got it in 1988 and back then games were good. There were only a
handful out there and they were well-crafted. The emphasis was gameplay and design. The
NES set the stage for just about every type of genre out there. Then we reach the Super NES
which was half-full of innovative games and then many clones. By the time we reach the days
of the N64, Playstation, and high-end PC's, we don't have a whole lot. It's kind of sad
really, that with all off the new technology, most of the new games suck bad. Doom comes
out and then 30 Doom clones are released in the following month. Give me a break! What
happened to the creativity? It's turned into money-madness, clones, and who can push the
most polygons. Funny I play my SNES more than my N64 and Playstation. Now don't get me
wrong, not every game is crap that comes out. It's just that only a few are truly good and
show the inspiration of 1988. Metal Gear Solid (the third installment in the Metal Gear
series) is about the only original and truly well-done game in the last year that I can
think of. I guess you could call me a video game purist. I'm harsher than Roger Ebert
panning movies when it comes to me rating video games. It used to be that just about every
video game in a game magazine looked good. Now you pick up a GamePro and it's full of
look-alike games. Every other month you *might* see a cool game. What ever happened to the
good old days? You're probably wondering how I'm going to compare this to the TI
community. Well, I can tell you right now that I'm absolutely not going to bash the games.
The games and programs from the TI community are its best part! What I am going to say
though, is that just like the video game industry, the TI community is suffering.
When I wrote Joltima back in 1997 (released in '98), I was told that it was one of the
better games in a long time. I didn't really get ANY negativity since it was one of the few
RPG's even out there. Back when I worked on that, the TI community was a very positive
place. Sure there were probably site wars and such, but the community was very tame and
open to any contribution a programmer would make. But these days it's no longer like that.
When Don Barnes released Super Mario Quest for the TI-89, I scratched my head when I saw
that only a couple of the comments (thanks to ticalc.org's comment system) were praises
about the game. The rest of the comments were negatives, port requests, or other game
requests! Whatever happened to just being happy that you even have a game to play? Super
Mario Quest is a programmer's work of art. It took skills to make that and I wouldn't have
asked for anything beyond his first release. To the non-programmers out there: Assembly
programming takes work. Days, weeks, months.. That's right, months! What were you doing
while Bill Nagel was writing Penguins? Probably out having fun while Bill slaved away. Be
thankful when these games come out! No offense to Dimension TI, but the description of
Penguins should really be changed. It says something like "unfortunately you can't kill the
enemies." Huh? When *could* we kill the enemies? When Nagel followed up with Super Mario
86 then we could, but not beforehand. So not only do many users completely
unappreciate what these programmers are doing, but there's also been some other problems
with the community. If you look through the ticalc.org comment sections for the news posts
(the ticalc.org comment system is just about the only place in the TI community where how
all of us think and feel is seen), you'll see that most of them are completely off-topic.
Others are hostile. Then there's advertising. And flames. Where did all of this come
from? Everything is shown to get corrupted over time (as the books Brave New World, Lord of
the Flies, and even Revelation tell us), but I didn't think this could be true for the TI
community! I mean.. there's not that many of us. And come on people, these are graphing
calculators! I can see that the TI community is taking a toll for the worst, and I don't
know how/if it will turn around. I'm not knocking everybody of course. Thank ticalc.org
for giving me a place to put this. Thank Dimension TI for an innovative archive index.
Thank the TI-Files' friendly environment. Thank all the numerous programmers out there from
before and now that have contributed. I don't know if I really want comments to this
article. The TI community doesn't need another 100k+ comment page to sift through. All I
ask is that we clean up our act. I'd like to clean up the video game industry if I could,
but I think I'd have more of a chance with this one. -Justin Karneges [Infiniti]
|
|
|
Reply to this item
|
|
Re: The State of the TI Community (castlevania?)
|
randomperson 
|
|
While were talking about a lack of creativity, that brings me to an idea ive been trying to bring to fruitition: make a castlevania game for the 89 in TIGCC. I only just started learning C, so my knowledge of it is rudimentary at best. However, i persevered and tried to use the source for The Incredible Adventure, the only C platformer to my knowlegde.
1. compiling even the normal source doesnt even work- there are WAY too many bugs
2. that game is very buggy and tends to give an adress error when the area has too many things in it- too many being like 5 enemies
3. with all this i tried putting in castlevania sprites, but when i was finally done with that, it wouldnt compile.
Does anyone know of any other C platformers? Thanks.
And does anyone know of anyone attempting a castlevania C game for the 89?
|
|
Reply to this comment
|
9 June 2004, 01:53 GMT
|
|
|
Re: The State of the TI Community
|
|
musicdesp01
|
|
i agree with you and thats why the Grey Light tI-alliance is behind such a porposed revival or renewal of the ti- community
by keeping the standards of good programs high.
|
|
Reply to this comment
|
3 October 2006, 23:01 GMT
|
|
|
Re: The State of the TI Community
|
|
The_Untouchable_One
|
|
I think this is funny as he!! First were talkin bout the state of the ti community, now were talkin bout ti classes and risk processors.
I'm just commentin on how these articles develop into such huge conversations.
Now your thinkin, "what the heck his he talkin bout?"
Nevermind if you dont understand.
|
|
Reply to this comment
|
28 September 2000, 02:05 GMT
|
|
|
Re: Portable graphlink!!!
|
T:-:T
(Web Page)
|
|
It would be SO cool if I could make a device, using a small LCD screen, floppy disk drive, batteries, and a graphlink, into some kind of thing that would transfer 8x.p files to a calc via the graphlink, either w/ the LCD to select the files... (VERY HARD TO DO!!! SO DONT EXPECT THAT TOO SOON....) Or just auto send when plugged in!! WHO ELSE THINKS THAT WOUYLD BE COOL!!!???
Thanx. - Paul Edwards
|
|
Reply to this comment
|
9 November 2000, 21:43 GMT
|
|
|
Wish List
|
|
oh_jup
|
|
I'd like to see someone create
A web browser for a TI-92
hardware to connect:
RAM DIMMs (function like native RAM)
Hard Drive (function like native RAM)
Web-enabled cellphone (for keyboard of the calc)
|
|
Reply to this comment
|
27 July 2001, 10:38 GMT
|
|
|
Re: The State of the TI Community
|
|
David Childers
|
|
You know, they're coming out with a Voyage personal learning tool? They're supposed to be like the Ti-92+ except with some better apps and 2.7 megs of storage. Im thinking I might have to sell my ti-92+ and get a voyage =)
|
|
Reply to this comment
|
6 March 2002, 23:02 GMT
|
|
|
Re: The State of the TI Community
|
Glen Lawson
(Web Page)
|
|
The TI Community will diminish as more and more people accept the fact that HP calculators are superior to the TI's.
For people on the fence about whether to buy either the TI 89 or the HP 49G (The two most powerful calculators on this planet!) proceed to this website that gives direct comparison between the two calculators.
Once you have read it, you would agree that HP Rules!
Website: http://www.area48.com/49/49vs89.html
/HP RULES/HP RULES/HP RULES/HP RULES/HP RULES/HP RULES/
Some might argue that the TI is faster, and they're right, the processor in the TI is newer than the HP, personally I don't know why HP keeps using the same old processor. But the bottom line is that the HP was double the funtionality of the TI. TI is just a Highschool utensil, the HP is for college and the real world!
Please check this website I found, it sums it up the competition pretty well!
Thanks for reading this revelation!
HP_Fan
P.S. I own the HP 49G, and I've worked with the TI83 in Statistics AP. I've also seen and played around with the TI89.
|
|
Reply to this comment
|
6 September 2002, 02:38 GMT
|
|
|
Ti
|
|
g dog
|
|
All this time has passed since the ti-83+ was released and all those great games came to the rescue during class time. I was wondering if games can be made in assembly why cant there be like on the ti-89 a built in algebra system. where you could type in x+x and it would return 2x instead of what ever you stored as x. After all these games and all the time ti has spent on the other things it could put in algebra system or anyone willing to take the challenge. I hope that someone will read this post and pass it along till a sympathetic ear hears it and makes it real. I am no programmer but im thinkin it can't be that hard if someone can dedicate enough time to it like all the games. Well hope it sparks the fire.
|
|
Reply to this comment
|
12 April 2003, 21:37 GMT
|
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
You can change the number of comments per page in Account Preferences.
|
