Isn't there something in your End User Agreement with TI that says that you can't charge people for programs on the calculators?? You can only ask for them to send you money if they want to and they don't have to.

Also, a lot of people are saying that the quality of the programs will go up. I completely disagree. The programmers are putting in a lot of hours to make the best programs that they can. The incentive of money isn't going to make them try harder. Take Zelda 89 for an example. That game is a breakthrough for calculator games. It is comparible in graphics with the Gameboy.

Don't say something like "isn't there something in your End User License..." without verifying this. There isn't anything like that in any agreement you have with TI.

I for one copy real computer programs and get serial numbers from people... so why the heck would it work on a calculator?

Hehe, it would work because the serial # would come from the calc's ROM, and a program can be built to run only on one ROM, or on one calc. It's simple enough to hide the code in such a way that it would be incredibly difficult to disassemble and then patch. I don't think the few people with skill and time to do so would be such communists. Further than that, any hacked copy wouldn't be on any major distribution site, so the sales lost to that hack would be in the noise, not that any calculator programmer plans to become a billionaire off his asm programs anyhow ;-)

If I, for one, found a hack for ANY calc shareware program would spread it all over any place available, and would quickly ignore any pages that posted shareware programs without their respective hacks next to them.
just my $.02

Lets not forget Asteroids for the 85. It was the first game and was shareware. One person paid and the full version is everywhere for everyone to download. I think that this is the way that all calc shareware would end up. And with dissasemblers it wouldn't take long for someone to figure out the scheme used for the serial number generation.

What the hell is wrong with you calc software should be free for everybody and in reality how many people will be paying for them some people will be posting "full" version games on their websites anyway and if developers input a source code for their "registration" then new hacking programs/and or cracks will be supplied and given away on almost any ti-8x/92x website

This is so stupid. I don't even pay for computer games and why would I pay for freakin' calculator games. No one's gonna buy game for calculator.

Anyone ever hear of Microsoft? What about Linux?
Linux is free, better than windows, and it will stay that way. Windows costs money, lots of it, has lots of bugs, and...

Anyways, my point is, because Linux is free, and has open source code, it's passing up Windows.

The same goes for calcs. I learned to program looking at source code, if all calc products were shareware the source code wouldn't be available, (like Windows Products) and thus, we wouldn't have as good programs.

(Hope someone gets my point)

hey.....while we're all talking big and blah blah, why doesn't someone create AutoCad for the ti-89! with graphics rendering and 3d what have you!

Shareware smareware. The concept is good, but it will not work. I.E.
Microsoft Office 97+ = 500$ or so
they price it soo high because people will buy one copy, and distrubute it to everyone else for free, that's why it's price so high. So, is the shareware crap going to be big bux?????????



Honestly, who wants to pay for a calculator game?

It is in my opinion that the programs on calculators should not only be free but I also believe the source should be freely available. As I look around at the programs made by the truely great about half of them have sources released wich, IMHO shows that people are doing it more for there own purposes rather than to make money doing it. However, large companies are trying it, 2 programs have been released on the ti-73 for $30 US a piece.

The header contains a link to the ti page which has a link to the sunburst page. So ya someone can try to make a shareware program but I dought many people will pay for it. Also I think, hope, that the programers who have the talent to make a quailty program wouldn't want to sell their programs.

So, in short. Keep the scene fun light harted and relize that we are dealing with a limited platform that just fun to program for.

BTW I've programed in ASM a little but haven't released anything to the net. Look for something soon, I hope.

In response to everyone who asks "Who wants to pay money for a calculator game?" my answer would be yes. Of course it depends on the program. I would pay money to have my entire calcs memory full of great games. If someone made a program package with games like tetris, jezzball, a good long rpg, zelda, some great math programs, all packaged together, I would pay to have that on my calculator. Also, I want to know how many people would pay $1 for a full version of Zelda89 with no bugs? I know I would, the game looks great now. I don't see why the programmers who made this don't make it even larger and release a full version for a low cost. I believe they could make at least some cash.

Life isn't about making money, Open Source is the way to go. That way everyone can benefit from it, not only a greedy programmer.

Life is definately about making money, everyone should find a job that they enjoy and make money while they're doing it. For some it's programming.

Not when you're a communist.

yep. it looks like we're going to have divide the ti community into two halves: communists with freeware and capitalists with shareware ;-)

btw, the capitalists would obviously have better programs; and mb cook would be a communist on account of his theory that competition hurts the quality of game programming :-)

No, because both have weakness, if either side would think more, they could have done better, in theory both work, but this is life its more complexso you need combinations, if there were rules and restrictions to guide people towards making better progs, like no software that crashez every few min (windows) if people would have a motive to acutely make good progs and not on the view of making $$$ and not caring how well the prog is

I believe you're refering to the microsoft monopoly as a sort of downside to capitalism. First, this sort thing could only happen with shells, and already has happened on the 85, 82 and 92 ... the other calcs have built in asm support so a program that runs on the shell / kernal _must_ also run without a shell, as part of the implicit rules shell makers must follow. Since the calcs with serial numbers also have built in asm support (except the 73, which only sort of has built in support), there's no possible way for such a monopoly to exist on a calculator and so what you're talking about is irrelevent. Second, since there are no monopolies, if you don't like the program, don't buy it.
I'm not saying that communists wouldn't produce any good software, only that the average quality of software would be higher under capitalism, since a) people would only be willing to pay for high quality programs and b) there's incentive for indivuals / companies to begin making games who normal wouldn't have.
What's more than this, the capitalists would not only have all the fruits of capitalism, but also all the freeware as well. Are you forgeting that you would be paying only $5 for an awesome game? .. much less than it's really worth! Is there a person here who can afford $150 ti-89 but not afford to pay $5 for a game he wants to play? None of us are living in a third world slum, so why should Marxism even be considered?

I agree whole heartedly.

Example: Turn the clock of PC's back about 3-5 years ago, when shareware was around at it's peak. No one I knew EVER registered the games, yet companies like Apogee hung around for a LONG time. Doom is a prime example-John Carmack once said that less than one percent of the people ever registered the shareware version, yet Doom made id software very succesful. Think about that, all of you bloody commies.

Yeah, programming something like Windows2000 or something like that, not some calc game/app that won't be used by 1/100th of the ppl that something like win98 would be.

Who would actually pay money for a copy of Win98 or WIn2000 let alone calculator programs. I for one am a programmer myself and fully believe in the GNU License. It will help everyone in the long run releasing source code. By releasing source code you allow aspiring programmers to study your code and create a better program than yours. If you go to something like Bill Gates Microshit where you have to pay for the program and that doesn't include source code, programs as a whole will lose quality. Also on the note of buying Windows products, I used to have warez copies of everything until i discovered LINUX. you should try it it's better than any other OS for PC.