Of course, the deadline is impossible for me to find.
I do appreciate this contest though!

Well, I have a great program in the working that sounds like it would fit in with this contest, but I see no way where I will get it done in the next year+. I will have very little time as soon as school starts, maybe if I had started it earlier this summer...
It MIGHT have then had a chance to be finished by whenever the deadline for this contest would be. Oh well, maybe next year...

Well, supposedly, you're not supposed to start programing until the contest begins.

regardless of when you started, you CAN'T enter a game you already started.

Well, I haven't really started it. It's still in the theoretical stage, actually. I realize I gave the impression that I have started it, but all I have done is think about it for a few months now. No coding yet, no anything...
Of course, as I said, I will have little time to actually code it for a contest. I'll be lucky to have it done in 2 years at the rate I finish my projects (none of which I have uploaded, maybe I should do that someday...)

I have this really good idea for a game, but it would take me 3 years to write it all. If I do it for a flash drive I might be able to do it in 1. I hope they give us a long time to do it.

You know, if you wanted a 256meg flash drive, you could buy one for $20.
I guess that's not the point, though.
Bragging rights is what it's all about!

BASIC is slooooooooowwwwwww and pathetic.

Try a C/68k asm contest; you may get more interest.

Many people at United-TI like basic programming, including myself. There are not so many people working on C programs at UTI. It might be more effective to suggest a C contest to a different website.

One look at what I'm gonna submit and you're going to take back those harsh words.

dont worry about him he's a troll

(does anyone know what kind of food troll hate the most? %) )

Are there any instances where BASIC is somehow better (i.e. faster, less wasteful of system resources, smaller in size, etc.) than assembly? Ease of use doesn't count--any language, with practice (and perhaps appropriate libraries) can be easy.

No because basic is an interpreted language and the calculator must take the time to run the assembly, plus change the basic to assembly

It can be smaller though. And assembly programs are not fast by definition (inefficiently programmed and using a lot of bcalls, they can be worse than a basic program)

something people don't understand-the calc translates basic into machine language, NOT assmebly. the calc doesn't know that is is seeing:
label:
ld a,74
ld (variable),a
call group1
cp kdown
call z,down
jp label

the calc sees:
$#4few5$%#@D#G$#F432
or whatever machine code looks like (maybe binary, i don't know that much about the machine language)

so the processor doesn't see:
while 1
getkey->k
if k=21:then
etc...
end

it doesn't translate that into:
label:
call group7
cp k2nd
etc...
jp label

it sees:
43DE@D@#TF$C@D#@#D
the same code it sees with asm. the only difference for asm is that the language is already machine code. basic's lack of speed is just the time it takes for the processor to translate.

Understand?

Programming isn't about using the language you like the best. It's about using the best language for the program you want to create. Why do you think web pages are not programmed in assembly?

Couldn't have said it better!

Think about the target program, though! As long as you are efficient, an assembly strategy game would most likely be faster and smaller than the same game coded in BASIC.

I have been thinking about the target program. This contest is what the majority of voters wanted when we held a poll a few months back, it has also been somewhat difficult to plan because of the genre. To say it is anything but a success so far would be very misinformed, we already have more then 80 participants signed up, and there is still more time for signing up.

Also, web pages aren't programs--they are scripts. However, you could theoretically develop a very powerful assembly-like scripting language...

Webpages can already be, and are by some companies such as Google, Yahoo, etc. written in C. Knowing that, it is now far off from knowing it is possible to write them in assembler, but there is really no point since scripting languages such as perl, php, python, and a few others already are much more efficient.

Of course you don't have to tell me what webpages are or aren't, I do contract web programming on the side of my normal day job of database development.

so you're saying that you could (theoretically) make a game on a webpage without using java?

awesome, pheonix on my webpage... (you know im joking)
you are absolutely right, though. I think computor developers should make a combined html-java language. so there aren't a million class and jar files you have to deal with.
that's off topic, though

i forgot that this is an older news article

Okay, now I'm curious.

What are you going to submit?

Don't worry, you can tell me; I don't have anything that even resembles a z80 calculator, so I can't exactly steal your idea. Port it to 68k, maybe, but not steal your idea.

Nothing by way of an idea yet, but I do want to win this.

The language itself is slow and pathetic. The programs that it can create, however, may not be. Unfortunately, the programs are STILL bound by the limitations of TI-BASIC, and will be slower, bigger, and less powerful than their assembly counterparts. The only exception I can think of would be very, very small assembly programs, which may require more overhead than a BASIC program designed to perform the same task.

the thing is that: WE DONT CARE

the whole point of this BASIC contest is to show up what you can achieve with a such limited language

You SHOULD care. Writing good software isn't about limiting yourself or the program unless it is ABSOLUTELY necessary. In the real world, holding back like this could ruin your career as a software developer. You shouldn't make your software more inefficient than it needs to be.

I know that this is a contest, but why invest your time in a BASIC program that will forever be limited in what it can do for you?

the thing is that assembly is very hard to learn for some people, and not everyone has time or motivation to learn it so they have to stick with BASIC. Also its free software and we are not paid for making them so we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!! we do WAHT WE WANT!!!!!!

sry for the double post but If you hate BASIC so much why do you even bother posting here? If you really want an ASM contest go to maxcoderz.net and if you want a TIGCC contest post on the TICT forums. I was going to say Omnimaga too (see link attached to this post) since some ppl here program C for 68k but if you register to the forums I dont think your account will last long, according to the kind of comments you post here, you'll probably be IP/nickname banned forever and not even be able to view the website at all without a proxy

if you didnt read a post above from anothe rmember UTI is mostly BASIC programmers

First, to clarify, I don't hate BASIC itself, I dislike the facts that a.) TI limits its non-assembly developers to using a slow BASIC interpreter, b.) they are satisfied with the mediocraty it provides, and c.) the hardware on which BASIC programs are interpreted doesn't help the situation. This is why I stopped using TI's BASIC dialect for TI programming! In fact, that's why I stopped developing for TI and moved to PC and Palm OS (both of which support far more powerful math software than what TI can provide), which do NOT impose these limitations. I know that TI intends for their hardware to be used for educational purposes, but even they can see that there is a large minority of users who are developers, and want better equipment with which to develop for graphing calculators!

Second, I post here because I can get this message across to the international TI community more easily.

yeah I have to agree with that point, which is a bit similar to what I think. This doesnt mean we have to stop programmign BASIC though, especially with the difference between ASM and BASIC difficulty, but it sucks that TI wont give us a better intepreter.

Now if only TIGCC or ETP studio was avaliable for z80 calcs...

writing good software? you do remember these are just calculators, right?

its called xLib... and it ROCKS!!!

But BASIC programs that use xLib will still be slower than the same program written completely in assembly. Unfortunately, there is no way around the slow BASIC interpreter built into TI-OS (yet), without compiling the program into assembly, and then assembling an executable.

Have you heard of RPL (Reverse Polish Language)? It is quite an interesting project, everything is uncompiled, but the interpreter saves time because the code is written in the order it is to be executed. (In RPN format... hence the RPL)

You can find information on it at detachedsolutions.com forum, under Testing, I think...

Interesting. I'll look into it; I'm tired of the TI-OS interpreter.

accually, you are right, but a basic program using xLIB will still be faster than a basic program that doesn't use xLIB. (xLIB writes sprites faster to the screen, clears the screen faster, and the getkey funtion makes basic 3x faster)

Well, it is definitely slow and seriously lacks power, but that doesn't mean the *programs* written in BASIC are necessarily bad. I've seen plenty of great ones. Besides, they already had an asm programming contest.

There are good BASIC programs (I've even seen a BASIC on-calc assembler!), but the assembly equivolent of any BASIC program would be faster, smaller, and more powerful.

Wrong. Some programs, especially small ones with a lot of math, can actually be smaller and just as fast when written in BASIC. I know this from much experience.

That depends on how you code it.

No, really, in my case the BASIC program was smaller, and believe me, I optimize *obsessively* in Z80 asm.

I stand by what I said.

What was the program you are refering to?