Omnimaga
Omnimaga => News => Topic started by: DJ Omnimaga on November 25, 2009, 08:30:12 pm
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As most people who have been part of the TI community for a long while are aware, the global interest toward the community seemed to slowly decrease since the TI-84 Plus craze in 2004, according to lower forum posting rates in general, http://www.ticalc.org/about/webstats.html and the smaller amount of program releases.
However, in 2009, something different is happening: there are more and more notable program and game releases in overall than the previous one or two years. POTY 2009 will be the largest POTY since 2005 (note that each POTY includes entries from December 1st of the previous year to November 30th of the current year), with 8 z80 entries so far (the same amount as in 2006) and 5 68k entries (same as 2006 too). There are no TI-86 entry (there was one in 2006, the last time a TI-86 program was featured) but there are 6 for computers (4 more than in 2006). While the OS key factoring and hacking tools released this summer might have artificially boosted that amount of featured softwares, there were still more notable game releases before this happens, so this is somewhat good news. Not more traffic, but more releases. There also seems to be an increase in files added to the archives too, including games.
Could this means the TI community is picking up again? For sure, more possibilities are open now that the keys have been factored and that the TI-Nspire got cracked. Besides these discoveries, the people who claimed in 2005 and 2006 that everything was done on calculators in terms of programming has been proven wrong in BASIC, Hybrid and ASM in many ways, especially the later, with softwares such as TI-Boy SE.
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I don't think the key factoring was the largest cause of the increased projects, since many were started before the factoring was made public, but I think it did help keep things going. Looking through the "Fun Number Theory Facts" on UTI there were many names I hadn't seen in years, and (at least at UTI) there was a huge spike in registrations.
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Yeah I know, even before the key factoring there was still an huge load of projects going on. It seems in general, since late 2008 at least, there have been more dedication toward calculator developpement than there was from Summer 2006 until Summer 2008.
Omnimaga also got a bunch of new members too that I did not see before on the old board and UTI.
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Now would be a good time to do more competitions to bring new coders and so code done. :P
And bring the lazy to activity too.
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Now would be a good time to do more competitions to bring new coders and so code done. :P
And bring the lazy to activity too.
That's a good point. I vote for a new contest sometime. :)
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Hmmmm, methinks a mini contest series might be in order?
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well personally i have some other stuff on my plate (including IRL) so it would need to be ran by the other staff like what was supposed to happen with the last one
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Well I'd be ok with helping run one, I'd have to use an emulator to judge though, unless I get my calc back.
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i generally prefer emulator too, since my calcs often got stuff alerady on them and not enough RAM. That means no hacked pics (unless you do an installer)
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im not staff but i could definetly help organize and judge
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I have some ideas that we could do for short mini-competitions. They would only last a week or so, and so we could have a couple in quick succession. Perhaps ideas like 24Hour coding, where a theme is revealed at a predetermined time and entrants have 24/48 hours to complete a game/program. Or a 1K challenge, where coders are challenged to get the best game into a file size of 1K or less. What do you guys think?
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Those sound like great ideas!
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thats sounds awsome and a good way to get ppl more interested in programming (or get us back into ot XD)
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again though, mini competitions would put us into direct competition with TIBD, though, which alerady seems to struggle finding participants for their owns :(
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Well TIBD is a little more obscure then we are, although we are close...
Yeah, how about week contests or something?
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Yeah but several UTI-only members goes there and not here
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@DJ's post: Like I was...
I like the week contest idea. The problem with the TIBD contests is that they last too long.
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Well, I know that they have a competition coming to a close, and unless Graphmastur goes and starts another contest right off the bat, i think we will be fine for a while, he just finished a fairly large OS challenge. But yeah, a weekly challenge might be cool :)
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24h or 48h could be done 1 or two. But to more participants, I agree that it is better to warn there will be a contest and 24/48h before the end warn the theme.
Also 1 week contest would be better because few people could bring something in 24/48h...
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I really like the 24hr idea, but I don't think many people would participate.
What about limited contests, like just on the homescreen or something.
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hmm that would be awsome but we would have to be you sign up with a judge then your timer starts
i f your game isnt in in the next 24 hours then "disqualified" and have it span over like 4 days to alow max participants
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The checking in with a judge sounds like a good idea, cause we can't be sure everybody who wants to join will be online at the exact same time.
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PMing the judge sounds fair. I know I can only do things in 24 hrs if I go from like 4pm one day to 3pm the next.
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well the best thing about this is we dont even need to recieve the pm as they are time stamped all they need to do is pm the same judge (probally dj or someone who is always on) and after words we just check the entries for join time and time of program submission and see if they fit the aotted time so it is even able to be done with out any one actually being on to recieve the sign ins and the final programs XD
*geekboy loves timestamps XD
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well the best thing about this is we dont even need to recieve the pm as they are time stamped all they need to do is pm the same judge (probally dj or someone who is always on) and after words we just check the entries for join time and time of program submission and see if they fit the aotted time so it is even able to be done with out any one actually being on to recieve the sign ins and the final programs XD
*geekboy loves timestamps XD
yah that would work
one thing that i see though is what if someone already has a program on there calculator they created that fits the theme how would you know they had only been working on if for the alloted time and didn't already have it. you would have to have someone check everyones calculator for programes then at the end if it is a different program than ones they already had (not just named different) then it would be valid. this would probably take a while but it would be worth it to make everything fair.
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Technically it is still pretty much impossible to check, though. I mean, the person could have the program stored elsewhere. To me, all we can do is make sure the program is not released to public anywhere
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What if we don't release any information on what the contest actually is until the start of the contest? If they just so happen to have a great program that fits the category, then... well, we're screwed and just have to hope they're an honest person :D
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Since most of the prize of the contest is in fact the glory and fun of competing, the people who cheat and submit pre-made programs will only be cheating themselves, and will wallow in pitty and agony for the rest of the... week. ;)
One way to fix it would be to have the category very very specific and also very original ;D
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hmm yeah definetily agreed
so when are we gonna do the first one XD
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I don't really know, since for future contests, I wouldn't be in charge (like how it was supposed to do with the previous one, altough I kinda got fooled to get unintentionally dragged in, and because of the TheStorm incident). The only thing I would participate in would be judging. There will most likely be a lot of discussion about it going on in the staff forums before a contest starts at all.
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So... is anyone working on a contest? I can't wait for one to start. ;D
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we might eventually do stuff like TI|BD did, altough I would most likely not be the one in charge (since I was not even supposed to be in charge of the previous contest in the first place), and it would be after christmas, because first there are exams soon, and secondly, during holidays, almost nobody comes here :(
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Yeah, we've been talking, and the details are being planned out. But most likely it will occur after break.
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awsome i cant wait either i need somthing to get me back ito programming and a mini contest could do just do that XD
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You're not finishing Crimson? :(
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i am but with school and not a lot of work getting done i dont have a "creative spark" any more (im realy not happy about that my self :/ )
i am personnaly planning to get the engine done by christmas but thats all up to schol and how life progresses the holidays are a reck were the local party family :P
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I've had many a project that died because of that lack of spark, I feel for you :(
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I've had many a project that died because of that lack of spark, I feel for you :(
Poor projects in my sig...
I think Escape will never got coded on again. I am still planing to finish up Gravity Dude, though. If only I had motivation to finish it...
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What's escape about exactly? And you had better finish your projects you guys! The community needs it!
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Don't worry about me and Serenity :)
And escape reminds me of a game i made way back when i first learn text sprites (even before Portal) and it was basically a watered down, slow version of Donut Quest without the awesome graphics XD
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Escape was a Metroid Pi style game, but very stripped down and on the homescreen. I think I'll post what I had sometime soon. I never got past random paths for rooms. I stopped right in the middle of the 2nd to shoot routien. :)
The only cool thing is the main menu...
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There was actually a cool home screen Metroid game called Metroid Pure, but it was very buggy :(
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Isn't that what Harrierfalcon got his inspiration from? Oh, and he was also inspired by Zoith.
I'll release what I have done on Escape today. :)