well, I almost never even look at a game if it doesnt have a red, blue, or green icon. That being said, my most recent program did pretty well on downloads even though the screenshot wasnt there, so im not sure if that matters to other users...

And im curious, is it possible to track the hits each day from members and from non-members? I wonder how many visitors and downloaders have accounts, and how many do not.

I'm the same way, especially with BASIC games since they are more likely to be garbage than asm programs

i almost never look at BASIC games. I rarely play ASM games anymore, so i will only play a BASIC game if it is amazing, as in Manoir de Morteville (link above scroll down).

I have to say Manoir de Morteville looks intriguing. Unfortunately I'm one of those Americans who only ever learned one language.. I mean *really* learned one language, not the "oh, I took that in high school" type of learned a language..

Heh heh.

But anwyay I pretty much agree with most of ya, a basic white-page never gets a glance from me, and a basic w/a screenshot rarely gets one. An assembly game w/o screenshot will get a glance from me to check out the description and see if the archive has unposted screenshots in it, but I'm unlikely to actually download it. Now an assembly game with an awesome screenshot immediately goes into my "Calcolotrice" folder (that's where I try to act like taking that foreign language class actually taught me something) for transfer to my calculator at a later date.

I dont know French either, but I have tried Manoir and it is the most amazing BASIC program I have ever seen. Actually, a funny thing is I am supposed to be translating it... The author knows i dont know French, but I was using a combination of Google translate, my English grammar skills, and my friend who does know French...

Google translater is nice... It got me through Spanish 1.

I did a science fair project on Internet translators (Google, Babelfish, & freetranslation.com). Babelfish (link) was the best and Google and freetranslation.com had identical outputs.

Sorry, bad link the first time. Try again.

Nope. Try http://world.altavista.com/.

Now THAT is cool. To bad they don't have latin.

i don't know why, but I'm taking spanish 3 next year. i hate spanish and am not really good at it, but i guess i'm "supposed" to... man it would stink if college was declared illegal :)

There are a few funny games (text adventures) that do not benefit from assembly. In fact, they become to unstable if there not done in basic. Besides, ASM is too much work if its not a graphic game. A good example is pimp quest.

yeah, but graphical games are better, and asm is only too much work if you want it to look like basic. You could easily put together an awesome text-based game in asm that looks nice and not basic.

It's easy to do text no matter how you want it to look in basic. You can change pretty print, use Output instead of Disp, etc.

I've never played pimp quest, but I did have a game called Hic Quest at one time. It was in BASIC, for the 83+. The object was to get your blood alchohol level to a certain amount. I've long since lost it. Can anyone tell me where I can find it? It was the first calculator game I ever played, so it has some sentimental value. :-)

-TrumpetMan

Is this it? (See link)

Pretty much, same with me. For a while I didn't know how to make screenshots. I had three programs. Then I learned to make screenshots and updated one of my programs to have an animated one. Even after it got off the front page, it continued to get a lot of downloads. So to most people, screenshots must matter.

i'd say the thing that helps the most is to have a utility that's the /only/ program of it's kind. For example, although completely unoptomized and off the front page for months, my AASTAT continues to get 80 downloads a week. tir reports that it's my most downloaded file (second to Kill Harry Potter, a game i despise and cant figure out why anyone's downloading it) but it's leaving Kill behind fast. I'm guessing it's because it's the only program, BASIC or ASM, in the archives that can calculate mean, median, AND mode. It's also got to have one of the most comprehensive screenshots in the archives: a home screen shot of the prompting ?, the list entry, and the three return entry. it's linked above. btw, it would be great if someone could make an animated screenshot for my Wind Waker simulator.

i like to see screenshots because they show me what the program looks like and if i want to download it right away or not but i also like to read the documentation that comes with the program. i usually don't send the program to my calc, unless it's something i think might be cool, if it doesn't have a documentation with it.
anyways super mario v2.0 for the ti-83+ is available at calcgames.org for anybody still looking. this is the last time that i'm going to write this so don't freak out if you think it's annoying.

For me it needs a screenshot for it to recieve a download from me. Most good games have one. So I voted yes, its often the determining factor

I look at the screen shots to see how good of a job someone did with an RPG. I don't even look at other types of games. Maybe if someone out there were to finish a Zelda game for the 89...

Have you even CHECKED the source archives? there are so many unfinished zelda games and sdk's that anyone could finish one. Why dont you? it probably be the #1 game of the year and shoot straight to the top of the downloads list (A finished zelda game would not need a screen shot)

After I finish my star trek game (about 40% complete) and my Age of Darkness Revenge (about 90% complete). Then I might start on one of the Zelda games... After I learn some asm... lol