About 6 months since the PRIZM was released and not many threads?

[flarn2006]

How big is the PRIZM hacking community compared to that of, say, the TI nSpire? Or the TI-89 a similar amount of time after that was released?
I don't see many threads in this section of the forums; there's only 2 pages. And there also aren't many games available. Does anyone have any idea why this is? I just bought my PRIZM today, so I may seem like a noob.

[JosJuice]

We've come a lot farther with the Prizm in six months compared to what was done to the Nspire - it took years before code could be executed on it! Also, some of the activity has been on other forums and IRC, which is why you don't see a lot of topics here. Most of the things that we've been focusing on is opening up the Prizm, not actually creating games and programs for it. The game development is probably going to bet a boost during the summer (at least I hope so...)

[AngelFish]

The Prizm hacking community is rather small at the moment because the calculator is still "new." As for the number of threads, there are several reasons for that. One is that only about half of the Prizm coders are actually on Omnimaga. Another reason is that what's going on is mostly background work to document the Prizm, which doesn't make very good thread material.

Also, games are perfectly possible on the Prizm, but they haven't been made largely because there are too few coders to do everything, so the people who do program the Prizm spend their time documenting it or writing utilities so that others can program it more easily. Games will happen in time, but they're not the priority for most coders at the moment.

EDIT: Also, if you want to come on IRC (you can't access the site's native IRC client until you have 40+ posts), try something like Mibbit. Just go to EFNET in the dropdown menu, enter a username in the name box, "#omnimaga" or "#prizm" in the channel box and join 

[flarn2006]

We've come a lot farther with the Prizm in six months compared to what was done to the Nspire - it took years before code could be executed on it! Also, some of the activity has been on other forums and IRC, which is why you don't see a lot of topics here. Most of the things that we've been focusing on is opening up the Prizm, not actually creating games and programs for it. The game development is probably going to bet a boost during the summer (at least I hope so...)

Oh, okay, that makes sense. I don't think Casio actually tried to lock anything up or prevent third-party development though, as TI did, so that's probably why the nSpire took so much longer to hack. (Why would TI want to do this, anyway?)

[JosJuice]

Oh, okay, that makes sense. I don't think Casio actually tried to lock anything up or prevent third-party development though, as TI did, so that's probably why the nSpire took so much longer to hack.

Yes, that's true.

(Why would TI want to do this, anyway?)

They want complete control over all of us, just so that there won't be any teachers complaining that kids are playing games on Nspires... They also want to make sure that we can't use programs to remove their restrictions, such as Press-to-Test mode.

[Munchor]

We've come a lot farther with the Prizm in six months compared to what was done to the Nspire - it took years before code could be executed on it!

Maybe because it was blocked? Maybe because TI, besides blocking it, did not provide any SDK for it like Casio?

I think you guys have gone far, but comparing it to the Nspire is unfair.

[JosJuice]

Maybe because it was blocked? Maybe because TI, besides blocking it, did not provide any SDK for it like Casio?

I think you guys have gone far, but comparing it to the Nspire is unfair.

Yes, the Nspire was much harder - I agree that the two shouldn't really be compared like that. I was just trying to answer his question.

Casio hasn't released an SDK, but the programming is incredibly similar to older Casio calculators and there is a file format ready for creating add-ins, making it pretty easy. (Once the Casio guys started helping, that is. Fishbot, z80man and I had no idea how to draw to the screen. )

[DJ Omnimaga]

The problem is that TI has a monopoly almost everywhere and out of 10 people, there may be only one with a Casio, not to mention  the Prizm is new and came out outside of the school restarting period. That said, the fact it's more open than the CX might attract some people.

Also where I live, Staples now sells Prizms for $149.99, only $2 higher than a TI-84 Plus, but they got no TI-Nspires Touchpad or CX. I don't know if they'll have CX calcs in time, but the retail price over here will be $184.99 for the regular and $199.99 for the CAS. Not sure if many people will want to pay this much for a calc. Just $149.99 is a lot, but maybe the color screen will attract people more than the monochrome 83+ and 84+ (unless where I live they once again do the $89.99 or $99.99 TI-83 Plus sale)

Hopefully maybe more coders will arrive in the future.

[AngelFish]

We've come a lot farther with the Prizm in six months compared to what was done to the Nspire - it took years before code could be executed on it! Also, some of the activity has been on other forums and IRC, which is why you don't see a lot of topics here. Most of the things that we've been focusing on is opening up the Prizm, not actually creating games and programs for it. The game development is probably going to bet a boost during the summer (at least I hope so...)

Oh, okay, that makes sense. I don't think Casio actually tried to lock anything up or prevent third-party development though, as TI did, so that's probably why the nSpire took so much longer to hack.

I'd say that Casio didn't try very hard. The few measures that are in place don't bring up "corrupted file" warnings, so security probably wasn't their biggest concern.

[ben_g]

The prizm community will probably grow a lot in september, when students at some schools have to buy one.

I only have an 84+ becouse my school forced me to buy one. If this wouldn't have happened, i wouldn't be programming z80. I think this is how most of us got started with developping calc programs and games, and to many students the same will happen.

BTW: I think the prizm comunity will grow faster than those of any ti calculator, mainly becouse casio doesn't hate the calculator comunity, unlike TI.

[DJ Omnimaga]

Another issue is that Casio doesn't seem to do much marketting for the Prizm.

[JosJuice]

Marketing can be hard to notice, because there's both marketing to students and marketing to teachers... We don't know what the teachers see, but TI is probably advertising more than Casio, like they always do.