Um. Aren't we on the July 1999 POTM? Not June. June's was decided last month...

Hehehe... good obversation. I didn't even notice that at first. Someone must have been drinking when they posted that news item..

BTW - its a shame this thread will be trashed when a ticalc.org person notices it...

If we were drinkING while posting it, we wouldn't have felt the effects of the alcohol until a little while after. I believe you meant to say that we were "drunk." Sorry, just felt I needed to clear that up.

--b00clax

I am not questioning the sobriety of the ticalc.org staff, but what if you had been on a sustained bender. You would have been drinkING before the time the article was posted, as well as the time it was actually posted. Or you could have been drinkING West Virginia white lightning. In that case the effects would have been immediate.

You suck

I thought that comment was funny. <shrug> :)

Thank you for noticing this. I have fixed it.

I seem to have a problem with the rules and regulations of the Nominations for POTM, as the first poster on this comments section did.

I don't understand why some games which are ports and minor updates should be on the list of Nominations. I look at the Voting list for the 83:

-Dying Eyes: A great game that was from a great programmer on the 82, Alex Highsmith, and then ported to the 83 by another great programmer, Sam Heald.
-SOS 2.0: The best shell for the 83 with many new features, by one of the best programmers whom I really respect, Joe Wingbermuehle.
-Slopes 2.0: I havent tried this latest version yet, but it is by another great programmer, Ian Graf.

These are all very good contestants for the POTM for the 83, since a few of the other choices didnt deserve to win. However, I seem to recall that SOS 2.0 wasnt even on the Nominations list, how can it be on this voting list?

I begin to advocate stricter rules on which programs should be on the list for Nominations, because there was a program that I felt deserved to get on the voting list: Labyrinth, by a great programmer named Badja. Although, it didnt make it onto the voting list for some reason...

If SOS 2.0 hadnt won the last month (I cant remember) then Sure it deserves to win, but I'd just like to know how it came to be on the voting list if it wasnt on the Nominations list. Maybe ticalc doesnt even look at the Nominations, and puts up there whatever they choose to win. Maybe its not a Democracy here, i dunno... =P

As previously mentioned, there was a mistake in the way the nominations were put up. The right ones are up now.

It wasn't "previously mentioned" at the time I voted and made my post. I did not see such a "Note:" as there is now. But that's good it was fixed though...

What I meant by previously is, previously on this comment page. Like, there is a comment above mine that says that. Not previously in time.

Updated programs should not be elegible for POTM. As mentioned before, POTM is supposed to recognize new or substantially updated programs. Frankly, substancially updated is almost a contradiction in terms. The majority of all updates are merely for bug fixes. Why should an author be decorated a second time for messing up his first release?
Albeit, there are a few exceptions. Most updates to shells are fairly large, and occasionally games are revolutionized (compare PlainJump v1.0 and PlainJump v1.1 on the 85). Such cases should be dealt with as EXCEPTIONS.

Ports should be elegible for one month only just like any other program. Most people (not those that frequent this list...) only own one graphing calculator, because that is all that is really required. Therefore, a ported program is just as *new* to the standard calc user as any other program. The major argument seems to be that "the porter doesn't deserve the POTM". Just because the programmer was not the last person to edit the source code, that doesn't mean the program's author has somehow changed or that the game has somehow been tainted because the "contact in case of bugs" email address is different? I may have ported Ztetris to the 82, but it is still Jimmy Mardell's game. Why shouldn't he be credited for perhaps the greatest calculator game ever?

As for the skill involved in porting, here are 3 general porting rules:

1)Porting is always always easier when it is your own game because you know your own source code (Cullen...)

2)The better the game, the longer and more difficult the port. Ztetris and Quest III are obviously harder to port than something like Brix or Wak-A-Mole. An awesome game on one calculator is usually hard to port to another, so why shouldn't the accomplishment be recognized?

3)It is almost always easier to port UP the TI ladder. 82<->83, 82->86, 83->86, and 85->86 porting are all done with include files for the most part. External variables and interupts make things a little more challenging. Porting to the 85 would be the same if it wasn't for the & signs. Porting done from the larger screened 85/86 to the 82/83 is not so easy. Only 3 or 4 people have done it successfully (not including original authors who ported their own game). More than 5 people failed at porting Ztetris to the 82/83.

Conversions of programs between shells are not ports, neither are programs remade on a calculator with a different processor.

When I said substantially updated programs, I meant the same thing as you said above. I agree, most of the time, updates to programs are merely bug fixes or minor improvements. But there are instances where a program undergoes a complete overhaul and deserves a chance to win the POTM award.

Sam, I know you are a massive porter yourself, so I understand where you are coming from. But do I understand you correct here? Are you saying that if a port were to win the POTM award, the award should go only to the original author? I have no qualms with that. But I guess I am a bit hesitant to give an award to the porter, who didn't design the game or come up with the idea.

Sure, porting can be hard, but I think if anything, the award should go to the original author, or maybe to the "game". I think its misleading to give it to the porter.

After thinking about this issue some more, I think the ticalc.org staff needs to write up some guidelines (oh boy, not again...) for the POTM award.. and describe exactly why it is award and who is eligible.

Obviously, if the public has the ultimate ocntrol over who wins, sometimes an unworthy program will win. Thats just the price we have to pay to have that kind of control over it.

Why not give credit to both the porter and the original author? Give both coders credit and let them share the award. As for ported programs recieving more than one reward, maybe ticalc should make note of wheather or not the program is a port on the nomination screen. That way those who vote for the POTM and are less frequent visitors would know wheather the program is an original or not.

You think the ticalc.org staff has time for that? They don't even have time to test programs before they post them.

It's not a matter of time, it's a matter of placing the infastructure in such that we can make these types of segregations. For example, if we want to filter out ported games, we need some way of marking them in the database when they're added. I'm investigating into that right now.

Ok, but I fail to understand how the file archivers are going to be able to tell if a program is a port or not. I guess maybe they would have to start looking at the documentation files...

They already do.

No they don't, at least not all the time. I've found many files that are not even in the right directory (i.e. BASIC programs in ASM dirs and vice-versa). The only way that could happen, besides pure stupidity on the part of the staff, is if they didn't read the documentation files.

I do believe that most of the files were added by you a long time ago. :)

Now, we do have a couple of fairly new file guys, and there may have been a few mixups at the beginning, but everyone's human. That's why we have a filearchive@ticalc.org alias: so people can report problems, and the archivers can fix them.

I used to find files in the wrong directories all the time, long, long ago when you were doing file archives and I was not yet crazy enough to even think of helping out with the site.

It happens sometimes. <shrug> No need for personal attacks (and attributing "pure stupidity" to the archivers /is/ a personal attack).

Yes, a majority of the files in the archive today we added by myself.

However, I never added a progarm in an Assembly directory that was purely a BASIC program. Sorry, but IMHO, that is just not acceptable.

Maybe you found some BASIC programs in the Misc. Programs directory that you thought should be in Math or Science, or Graphics... but that is minor compared to these other things.

We don't tie the POTM award to the author. Instead, we give the credit the to the program, not the author. In regards to your other suggestion, I'm going to be working on this for next month's POTM.

Personally, I would like to see a rule structure for the POTM award to be something like this.

1)New Programs: Should be in the Nomination Section. (This should happen by default anyway)

2)Updated Programs: If the program has not won a previous award, It should be in the Nomination Section. If it has won an award, It should not be in the Nomination Section due to the fact that it has already been recognized as a great program.

3)Ported Programs: Same as above. except it gets complicated now. If any previous port of a Program won (this includes the original program and updates), it should not be nominated, if it has never one an award, it should be nomited. if there are multiple ports of a program released in one month, the program never won an award, and they all win due to name reconition, the port with the highest number of votes will be the winner of the award for it's particular calc and the others would be ineligable to win, allowing the 2nd place program to fill the ineligable spots.

To put it simply, a program can only win once, no matter how many ports or updated versions there are and it should have multiple chances to win if it has never won a previous award.

Wow.. I have to say, I agree with everything you said. Even though that would be a very complicated procedure to follow, it sounds very fair.

And as you notice, I think my view towards ported programs has changed just slightly. If the original program never won an award (maybe because it was released before POTM started), then the port should be eligable. However, the original author should get primary recognition.

Such a program might win in one particular month over another because as time goes by, people's perspectives change and their ideas about a great game change. Obviously, today's calculator games are more advanced than the ones 3 years ago.

I agree with your idea that only one version of a program should be eligable for the award. However, should it be the first version? I suggest that it be the FINAL version. Suppose someone had a program with great potential and decided to release a very early beta of the program, just to see everyone's reaction and get some feedback. Under your proposal, that version would be eligable for the award, and the future versions wouldn't be. This would discourage programmers from releasing these early versions of their programs - something that many people enjoy. So instead, the final version of the program should be the one eligable for the award.

I think Ed Fry's procedure (above) would work better. Updated programs can keep getting nominated as long as they haven't won an award. Once such a program has won once, it can never win again.

That seems fair, but what if an author releases a beta version of an outstanding program which wins the POTM. Later he completely re-does the entire program almost from scratch so that program is almost completely different from the earlier one, but is still, technically, the same program. But since the earlier version already won the award this newer program will receive no recognition at all. Maybe honorable mentions or something similiar should be given to "substantially" updated programs?

Well, you have to admit, that example would almost never happen. Such cases would have to be handled on a case-by-case basis by someone on the staff.

Your idea about giving honorable mentions sounds interesting. It would probably work, however I don't know if its justified for the few cases that would warrent such an award. I guess you would have to ask the question to the public, "Does such-and-such-a-program deserve to win an honorable mention for such-and-such-updates? Yes or No?" - because honorable mentions probably won't be given out every month, and you aren't competing with another game for the award.

Exactly, every program that has a chance of appearing on the voting ballot more than once in its lifetime (due to a port or an update) *should* be evaluated on a case-by-case basis as to wheather or not it deserves to make it on the list again, however, I could see that being a very time consuming task.

And as for an honorable mention award, I was thinking more on the lines of the staff as the ones issueing the award, but I can see the public wanting some involvement...

In a case like this, If it was so completely different that it was rewrote from scratch, it could probably be considered more of a sequal to the original game than to be considered the original game itself. and a Sequel of a game would be eligable for POTM.

Most likely, you would see a scenario like this for a ASM shell. In a case like this, it could be up to the Voting staff whether or not the program would be eligable due to a complete rewrite of the code, and it would still have to least get nominated by Ticalc.org users before that would take place.

Personally, If it was that good to get POTM in a Beta stage, and there is a system implemented on Ticalc.org to view past winners, it would always have some form of recognition and really wouldn't need to win the award more than once.