First off let me start by saying great article Kevin. I have been saying something needs to be changed for a while now. I even remember posting something about this very subject at MC.
When I was in 7th grade, I went out and bought an 83+, scrounging up all my birthday money and loose change. After spending over a hundred bucks, I think about 125, something changed in me. Like everything that I spend my money on, I plan to use it and learn from it in all the ways I can. That included development. I had had this itch to develop games since I was a little kid playing Mario for the NES...this was my tool to get me into it. I programmed for two years in BASIC impressing my friends at school. In 9th grade, I got into the community, with a small two man team including me and a friend from school. X-productions. He became inactive and I just started learning ASM, I felt BASIC just didnt have the power that I needed. I still feel that way, however, I think the gap between the power and speed is defenitly getting smaller. Thanks due in part to ASM and BASIC coders coming together helping each other out. xLIB xLIB Revolution, Aura, and Contra come to mind of games that have wowed me in the past two years.
I have been in the community back when Sam still worked on Zelda and void was pretty active, and I became active in the community when Drubu productions was in their infancy, and that is were I first introduced the community to Cobra. My baby. I have seen high and low periods of inactivity, amazing projects and complete bombs.
Being a founder of a group is tough stuff. Staying active and keeping the people interested is a challenge. I applaude all the old timers, Alien, Cobb, Coelurus, Kozak, and all the others I forgot! You guys for the most part spent your time working with a programming group or help mainting one by providing interesting ideas and bring forth new challenges! For me finding just a little time to keep the Revolution Software going is a challenge, finding even more time to code is proving to be even harder with work and school and a daily life of my own!
Something I think needs to be done, I dont think the community will die, but for z80's sake and for future games/projects of any type, I think some sort of discussion needs to be done. This right here, may be a way for people to post ideas on how we can improve our future.
Groups of the past when they were faced with this issue, decided to do nothing and let it resolve itself. I like to see new members joining forums or groups, that bring with them a fresh perspective on things, and perhaps a nifty project too!
So here it goes, here is one way I feel we can improve the community and get new and old members involved. I was thinking perhaps a community wide contest, open to coders of all types of calcs and languages.
We could get some of the big shots, MC, EPS, UTI, Omnimaga, RevSoft, and groups for other calcs, the ones I listed are mainly for the 83/84+ family. Macross, Time to Team and others.
I also think a website with ASM (maybe BASIC) knowledge, readmes, how-to, links to great sources, downloads, etc to help beginning developers have a place to learn and thus excelerate or community in a positive way... All of this will take time. I know, but we can always try right?
My friends, we must not repeat the past, we can right a wrong, and go down as an era that cared to bring the community out of a low spot. Now it is up to us to set things right...
-Travis Supalla (co-founder of Revolution Software:
www.revsoft.org)
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sorry!
