Author Topic: Exodus Final Release  (Read 19845 times)

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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Exodus Final Release
« Reply #45 on: December 05, 2010, 05:03:56 am »
Oh I meant more that I was worried that former BASIC programmers who moved to Axe would start bashing people who don't learn Axe and decides to stick to BASIC and that newer programmers who went straight to Axe and barely did any BASIC would do the same as ASM coders did back in 1999-2004. This happened with 68K C, I think, but Kevin Kofler had a big influence on people back then...
« Last Edit: December 05, 2010, 05:04:39 am by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline calcforth

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Re: Exodus Final Release
« Reply #46 on: December 05, 2010, 06:17:46 am »
Oh I meant more that I was worried that former BASIC programmers who moved to Axe would start bashing people who don't learn Axe and decides to stick to BASIC and that newer programmers who went straight to Axe and barely did any BASIC would do the same as ASM coders did back in 1999-2004. This happened with 68K C, I think, but Kevin Kofler had a big influence on people back then...
Wow. It'll be quite suprising to see this attitude in Z80 world: all available languages are awful (just because the platform is so small and can not accommodate nice IDEs and rich libraries)... and this means the people who can do cool things with them should be truly great. It's easy to create attractive game using easy-to-use language (<a href="http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/">Flex</a>, or <a href="http://unity3d.com/">Unity</a>, for example), but people who can do something with TI-Basic, Axe or Assembler demand respect: it's kinda like "traverse from north slope". The end result is the same as even worse then when you use the car and highway, but you learn much from such experience - and can do more with "real tools" in the future too.

Actually the TI-Basic programmers are the most brave souls: because their tool is so slow and unweildy they must work a lot harder to poduce similar result... but they often win in program size since their tool is built-in and need not be installed first so it's not a total waste of talent.

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Exodus Final Release
« Reply #47 on: December 05, 2010, 03:46:21 pm »
Well said calcforth. I'm glad this attitude did not return in the community. Around 2006 there was also the anti-lib attitude: BASIC programmers who used ASM libraries to enhance their games were bashed because they were apparently cheating. To me it doesn't matter what is used to make a game, it's possible to create good games in any language, as long as the language has the fundamental commands/instructions to allow a good game (such as getkey or drawing tools, which Nspire BASIC lacks). Even with java and VB it's possible to create good games. I myself saw crappy ASM games and it's very possible to make crappy Axe ones. I even made one, although it was intended to be an inside joke.

Poor attitude like that usually causes programmers to not feel as recognized. It feels good sometimes to know at least one or two person like your game. Although it's best to program stuff we like, sometimes it can be discouraging if we get no constructive feedback. In long terms, the amount of people moving on to other interests can grow larger than the amount of people joining.

Another attitude I disliked was that when an assembly programmer tried something new and asked for help, other experienced ASM programmers took his ideas down saying it's impossible and they shouldn't bother trying. Result: Barely any new things (such as TI-Boy SE) were being made anymore. Few innovations can make people less interested in joining the community.

Now everyone tries all sort of new things, and look at how many releases there were since late 2009.

Offline Madskillz

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Re: Exodus Final Release
« Reply #48 on: December 05, 2010, 04:24:51 pm »
From an assemblers point of view, I didn't like all the crap that was being put out there BASIC or otherwise. Of which I am guilty of doing as well. It got to a point in the community where there where so many duplicate games ASM and BASIC that the bashing, I feel was because of the mediocrity that was coming out from everyone. I'm not so sure the attitude was preventing the beginning ASM coders from creating their ideas, it's just that there was so much that we didn't know. But you're right we should never try and discourage someone even if we ourselves don't know it's possible.

I started out learning BASIC and I know I always had a deep respect for the coders like Ztrumpet and Bryan who did what they did in pure BASIC. That goes for some of those great enhanced-BASIC games as well. When the developer spends the time to make something new they're going to get respect and admiration. As developers we have to push ourselves to do new things or make old things better. Nobody wants to see another falldown game unless you do something that makes us stop and saw wow that is impressive no matter what the language. That is what our community was missing in the past and that to me is what caused all the backlash. Quality always trumps quantity.

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Exodus Final Release
« Reply #49 on: December 05, 2010, 09:30:50 pm »
Yeah I remember back then we would see a Falldown or Snake clone coming out every few week. CalcGames even stopped allowing them in their archives at one point.

As for the "You should not try this" attitude, I think it had negative effects, because an ASM programmer who want to try something new will get told his idea is impossible for a calculator and to not bother and try something smaller. In the end, the person follows the other person advice so the new trick is not experimented with. Later, some people decided to try those tricks anyway and eventually the attitude got dropped, so other ASM programmers tried to encourage new ideas even if they may fail. IMHO, if you try something new, go ahead. It doesn't matter if it fails or not: at least you'll have tried. If you're new to ASM or BASIC, try to not start with too large projects, though, because the workload can be more discouraging than the coding difficulty.

And yeah quality > quantity. The large amount of crappy BASIC games versus the small amount of good ones is most likely why many people had a bad opinion of all BASIC games. Even today, there are people saying there are barely any good BASIC games out there. There are some, like Exodus and Contra 83, but they're rare.

I'm happy ticalc also split their game directories  by genre and type of games. Today, text-based RPGs even have their own category, inside the RPG folder, and I believe Casino games got a folder to themselves as well. Now all they need to do is add even more folders, for example for TI-83+ BASIC Shells that got the name Windows :P http://www.ticalc.org/pub/83plus/basic/programs/shells/
« Last Edit: December 05, 2010, 09:31:54 pm by DJ Omnimaga »