Omnimaga

Omnimaga => News => Topic started by: DJ Omnimaga on September 20, 2008, 03:58:23 am

Title: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 20, 2008, 03:58:23 am
Back in the old Invisionfree board days I always noticed that the Projects and Ideas as well as the combination of all staff project discussions always were the biggest calculator related forums on Omnimaga in term of post count and it was even pretty close to outdo the off topic discussion forum. It was like this ever since the old IF board opened and on this fresh new incarnation of Omnimaga it still seems to be the same so far. On every other TI websites the off topic discussion sections are often nearly as big, if not bigger, than all their general/non staff calculator discussion/help sections combined together. That made me wonder if Omnimaga forums are the best place to announce your calc projects and ideas?

I mean, I do not want to name any websites, but it seems to be the only english TI programming forums where you're guaranteed to get replies to your project or idea and for ideas you won't get ridiculised with a "Why don't you make it yourself if you want it?" response (in my philosophy an idea section is a place to share your ideas and doesn't necessarly means you are forced to do it yourself. Someone else can do it, especially if it would be in a language you don't know and if you plan to do it yourself if it gets enough interest, then fine), and currently it's a feat considering this forum is much less active than the old one (altough current activity is the same than back in 2005) and this new website is not to be announced by me on other sites until Oct 31st 2008 unless someone else does.

Back on the projects, to me it always seemed that on Omnimaga it doesn't matter on which calculator model you are designing your project for. It doesn't matter what programming language you are using. It doesn't matter if you use any libraries (xLIB, Resource, GBA, Freak Engine, ARPGCS, etc). It doesn't matter how much memory your game will take. It doesn't matter if the board is active or not. It doesn't matter. You still get feedback, even if the website mostly have a certain type of programmers (in our case, 83+ xLIB/Celtic III). On other websites there were often episodes and reports about members announcing a promising game in the works and it seemed no one cared and no one even bothered to reply and the project author was lucky to finally have replies after a first double-post. Afterward the member often found himself triple or quadruple posting to post new updates (sometimes it was even weekly updates). The result vary between boards and in some cases it happens with a certain type of programmers. On some boards, for example, TI-BASIC programmers who uses ASM library to enhance their games will barely get attention. On some others, TI-BASIC users will not get feedback altogether. On some active TI programming forums no one will care about your project unless you are staff or administrator there. Altough this has always been something common not only in the TI community and has been going on ever since forums exist, I noticed on Omnimaga it doesn't seems to happen as much as at other places. There are two other teams where, altough not during their entire existence, it didn't happened often either.

The fact two other programming teams where people can get good support for their projects in the works too made me want to raise another question about if the lack of support toward projects may be something happening only on general TI help or discussion websites and not on programming teams. However, this happens on active programming teams too. Revsoft is not very active and MaxCoderz got a one month downtime, and they do not currently have this problem as much as other places. This makes me conclude that the amount of support toward projects announcements on TI websites has nothing to do with the site activity (unless it's dead, like no new posts in several days), if it's a programming or not and the programming language and ressources used the most on the website. It either have to be the mentality on TI communities or it is something else. The best solution to this is to provide as much information as you can about the project, screenshots (preferably animated, altough in this era of skyrocketing GIF file size due to more advanced screen capture capabilities of new TI emulators you may want to keep them short enough for our dial-up users) and continue announcing updates to your projects even if it requires you to double/multi-post (most forums allow double-posting only every 24 hours and in their project sections).

We hope support toward users projects continue this way on Omnimaga. Even improvement is welcome. Despite having closed for half a year and reopened under a new board and a system not used anywhere else in the TI community (SMF), Omnimaga is still the second most active english TI calculator forums avaliable on the web in term of average activity per day. Currently our activity level is at the level it was during summer 2005. Hopefully it will get as active as it used to be in later years as our projects progresses and as new ones are being announced, such as a possible Reuben Quest 3 or Nemesiat 2 using the xLIB grayscale kit in the works and a potential 8 level grayscale kit for ASM programmers.
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: Speler on September 20, 2008, 01:02:56 pm
Quote
...Reuben Quest 3 or Nemesiat 2...
Yayz!

Yeah, unfortunately the community has been producing fewer and fewer top-notch projects every year (though this isn't completely true for the 68k calculators).  Hopefully this can change ;).
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 20, 2008, 06:05:03 pm
That's true. I only saw a recent increase in amount of projects. From summer 06 to the middle of spring 2008 there was barely anything. I was even worried that ticalc.org was dropping the POTY awards in 2007 because it started so late.
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: Ding_Programs on September 24, 2008, 05:50:40 pm
Omnimaga is the best community to showcase your gaming TI　projects =)
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: kalan_vod on September 25, 2008, 01:06:12 am
I think Omnimaga is one of the best places, I prefer to place at several places to reach a larger audience ..I love omni though
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on September 25, 2008, 01:27:08 am
yeah that's what I usually try to do as much as possible. After some events I stopped announcing at some specific places tho and I usually don't announce where people will not care, especially slow loading forums
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: Ding_Programs on September 25, 2008, 04:55:21 pm
agree with DJ Omnimaga 100%
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: kalan_vod on October 09, 2008, 08:29:58 pm
I remember you announcing diortem at maxcoderz, before I met you XD...Still miss those times being wowed by your projects, still am today!
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on October 09, 2008, 09:59:16 pm
Yeah true, there used to be a time in the entire TI community where your work in the community was recognised and that people would not lose respect toward you even if you tried to prevent lack of respect through the TI community.

Unfortunately this era has been a thing of the past for a bit over 2 years. Now there's only a few isolated place like this one and to a lesser extent, TI-Freakware and UTI and #omnimaga, where this era is still alive. I guess the only thing we can do is try to continue to show support toward other people projects whenever possible. But I miss when it was pretty much everywhere.

Also your avatar is a bit distorted, I wonder if there's a way in SMF profile settings to set dimensions?


On an unrelated note I was playing Illusiat 10 for the first time in maybe 6 years (when I translated it 3 years ago I didn't really tested it) last night. That was quite oldie
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: Ding_Programs on October 09, 2008, 11:10:38 pm
I like support=)
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: aeTIos on January 27, 2011, 10:50:38 am
YES IT IS!
necropost
EDIT: Okay, that was not funny
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: Munchor on January 27, 2011, 10:54:46 am
Quote from: Ding_Programs on September 24, 2008, 05:50:40 pm
Omnimaga is the best community to showcase your gaming TI　projects =)

Yap, I am more of a PC Calculator Programming Development guy, but Omnimaga is also good for them.

Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: Ashbad on January 27, 2011, 11:12:47 am
hey guys, please don't necropost anymore >.<

It's turnin' into spam.
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: qazz42 on January 27, 2011, 11:22:20 am
Quote from: Ashbad on January 27, 2011, 11:12:47 am
hey guys, please don't necropost anymore >.<

It's turnin' into spam.

and whoever disagrees is most likely the spammer.... seriously, stop
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 27, 2011, 05:24:10 pm
Yeah that kinda went too far now. I'll have to ban if this happens again.
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: Iambian on January 27, 2011, 05:36:52 pm
Aww, man. *someone* had to say that it was a necropost that brought this thread back to life. Didn't even pay attention to the date/time stamp of the top post until it was brought up. Won't stop me. I want to say what it is I want to say...

I do totally agree with DJ Omnimaga. I can certainly vouch for the support thing, since the amount I've seen for E:SoR has been what's keeping me going on this project. I'd like to thank ya all right here for that, and here's hoping that Omnimaga continues to get better over the years. I'd wager to say that it has, especially after the advent of the Axe parser language. I swear, someone has gotta say something about that.

It's most certainly true these days. Omnimaga *is* the best place to showcase your projects. Whether or not it was true back in 2008, it is most certainly true now in 2011.
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: Xeda112358 on January 27, 2011, 05:47:14 pm
Let's see, in the time I joined Omnimaga, I made my first *real* app and I have gotten about six times as much done in the past 3 months than I did in the five before that. I ♥ Omnimaga!
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Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 27, 2011, 06:01:56 pm
Lol I glad you like the site. From what I remember, I posted this topic shortly after a good project was poorly received somewhere. I remember poor projects reception was common at some other places before, too, but not necessarily all the time. From 2003-04 on MaxCoderz BASIC games were not welcome and there was lots of ASM fanboyism. On UTI from 2004 to 2007 there was some hate towards BASIC games using ASM libs because it was cheating in people eyes there, then in 2006 started the hate towards large games with multiple sub-programs, which started again in 2009 on both UTI and TIBD. Cemetech did not receive hybrid projects too well either for a while. Over the time this changed, MC was more open to BASIC and hybrid projects and UTI towards hybrid games, especially after Celtic arrival. In 2009 I remember some project bashing occured on UTI, though (AMKiller's Pokémon thread is an example http://www.unitedti.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=8659&view=findpost&p=132602 and this is when several UTI members started migrating to Omnimaga) and new members working on too ambitious projects were mocked instead of being pointed to the right direction. THis happened sometimes on Cemetech too but not as much since the major influx in new members there and Kerm's activity increase. Omni is still open in overall towards projects, but like Cemetech and other sites we don't get fooled by "Hai Ima nub Ima made a Starcraft cloen how do i use ClrDraw?" posts anymore: we will just point new people towards smaller projects. Project bashing still occurs today, though, on some forums, because Squalyl/Goplat's idea to port Java to the TI-Nspire was shot down on yAronet by C++ fanboys.

As for now I believe most projects would be received well in general on other forums too, but for UTI, TIBD, MC and Revsoft it's hard to tell because their activity is not very high.
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: shmibs on January 27, 2011, 06:17:55 pm
firstly, /\/\ AWWW =)/\/\
EDIT: these arrows point through dj's post to xeda's spoiler, as i was a little bit ninja'd


secondly, now that this topic has been brought to everyone's attention i really think it may be interesting to see the opinions of how things have changed in this regard since 2008. i started visiting ti-calc around that time, and just from seeing the increase of releases and reviews over there i've been astounded at how much things have picked up. that being said, it makes me a bit sad that i haven't seen many major BASIC releases recently, as they were the first things i was met by when perusing the archives. someone who has been an active member of the community for a bit longer may be better at analysing this particular development.

as for nomnimaga being a good place to unveil one's projects, i think that it is a wonderful place to gain momentum and throw ideas out. encouragement and help with plotting/spriting seem to be what we do best. this is not the ONLY thing, mind you, as there are people who specialise in every sort of help, from technical to spriting to just all around moral boosting, in every community; this is just the one characteristic which stands out most to me.
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: Xeda112358 on January 27, 2011, 06:23:16 pm
Aww, ^-^
See, we have connections here that make us a community and what makes Omnimaga so great is that a lot of us join for help. In the process, we give help where we can and we kind of round each other out. It is a whole community of weaknesses and strengths, but we all contribute to fill in the gaps and that is why we can hold strong ♥
Title: Re: Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?
Post by: DJ Omnimaga on January 27, 2011, 06:34:35 pm
Quote from: shmibs on January 27, 2011, 06:17:55 pm
firstly, /\/\ AWWW =)/\/\
EDIT: these arrows point through dj's post to xeda's spoiler, as i was a little bit ninja'd


secondly, now that this topic has been brought to everyone's attention i really think it may be interesting to see the opinions of how things have changed in this regard since 2008. i started visiting ti-calc around that time, and just from seeing the increase of releases and reviews over there i've been astounded at how much things have picked up. that being said, it makes me a bit sad that i haven't seen many major BASIC releases recently, as they were the first things i was met by when perusing the archives. someone who has been an active member of the community for a bit longer may be better at analysing this particular development.

as for nomnimaga being a good place to unveil one's projects, i think that it is a wonderful place to gain momentum and throw ideas out. encouragement and help with plotting/spriting seem to be what we do best. this is not the ONLY thing, mind you, as there are people who specialise in every sort of help, from technical to spriting to just all around moral boosting, in every community; this is just the one characteristic which stands out most to me.
There is also the fact newbies are treated as newbies, not as n00b. In other words if someone never posted on a forum before and he asks a question, we won't instantly reply with JFGI/RTFM.

As for 2008, things were much more active around 2003-06 in terms of game releases including BASIC, but today there is a lot of activity again. The only thing is that as you said there are fewer BASIC projects but I think that was inevitable with the arrival of Axe Parser. The same thing happened on 68K calcs when TIGCC came out. One thing that concerns me since the second half of 2010, though, is that ticalc.org activity seems to be on the decline again. I tried to help by suggesting features and encouraging others to do so, but it didn't have much effect at the end, so this is why I've been posting more game release news lately, so people still continue getting the recognition they deserve, even if Omnimaga traffic is much lower than ticalc. I kinda wish Ticalc.org news were like Shashdot: contributed by users but moderated. At least they would not need to write everything themselves, but they would still screen news for worthiness.