Survey posted 1999-12-01 05:04 by Andy.

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ticalc.org needs articles and tutorials dedicated to assembly language programming.

Thank you David. I agree.

I also agree. If people want more games, why should they have to pressure the current asm programmers to make them? Why not let them make the games themselves? But for to happen, they (including myself) need more information and tutorials.

I would like tutorials as well, but I think the files need some work

Exactly. Besides making games yourself, I think that the big thing is porting games. I would like tutorials on porting games becasue there are a couple that I want for my 86, and also, 85 and 82 games would run better if they were ported then just emulated. Even 89/92+ to 86 - even though it isn't exactly porting (becasue of the compleatly different processors), you would still have something to base your code on if you aren't sure of how to write a game.

Heh, you don't port from the 89/92+ to the 86 or vice-versa. You re-write from scratch.

He said that. What he meant is that the 89 code would provide an idea of how the 86 code would be. Read the comment before you critisize it.

Believe it or not, I did read the comment. He said its "not exactly porting" and I wanted to clarify that its not porting _at all_.

Same thing.

Sometimes you have to read a little deeper....
Couldn't you just stop critizing everyone's every little mistake. It gets old, and most people are able to decifer the poster's "horrible" grammar and spelling mistakes.

Yeah! His point was obvious, perhaps you're too stupid to understand that.

Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! More programs would be prettycool to yo!

Tutorials on porting games is a BAD idea. It's fine to learn asm and to mess around. Sure, you'll crash your calculator, but hopefully you'll test the game yourself and have others test it before publicly releasing it. But with porting, people (not to mention any names) have the tendency to get sloppy. Just because the game runs doesn't mean it's bug-free. It takes a lot of skill to make sure someone else's code that you don't fully understand is generally bug-free, at least fatal bugs. Basically, if you don't know what you are doing, you shouldn't be porting games. The porter should have experience programming on both the calc it's being ported from and the calc it's being ported to. Reading a tutorial isn't going to provide that.

Well, don't worry about me trying to port a game and causing a big mess... I can hardly understand my own code after a month, much less someone else's! I hold a great respect for those that can take someone else's code and remold it to a different calc, while keeping both the essence of the original author's program and their sanity intact.

I think that someone needs to make Battleship with loading and saving game options. This would be a cool game if you could also play it over a graphlink.

- Derrick

I know its written in BASIC, but its just too slow! Someoned who knows ASM needs to make a battleship.

Speaking of games. Someone should create Yaghtzee in asm. Also make a card game package - combining Solitare, Freecell, Blackjack, Poker ... etc. How 'bout 2 on 2 basketball similar to NBA Jam - with fewer or external players to save space.

Anyone ever played digger on PC. How about MegaMaze. Both games are similar in you move around a maze or tunnel blasting things in your way until you find each other and kill each other. Special weapon powerups and shield powerups. Would be a great link game.

Anyway, I voted for more screenshots. Especially since moving gif's can be created using VTI (best emulator ever!) and TI Shot. Also readme files should be more descriptive (like VTI's) and source code should be released.

As for programming tutorials, there are many. I would appreciate someone telling me which site(s) are the best for this. Maybe I will put my 2 years of programming in high school to use and write some of the aforementioned games.

VTI rules! TI calcs rule!

Snakeman

Im planning on making a Yhatzee game in the future for ION.

~Jonathan

I voted for more articles/features (I guess that means news) because most programs you want would want to download anyway already have screenshots. Who needs a screenshot for Pythagorean Theorem v1.0? I would like to see more news articles. I guess that's assuming there's enough news to report.

I would especially like to know what the heck is going on with rom 2.01!!??!! - I can't believe TI would throw another curve ball at 89 asm programmers...in the past 4-5 calcs released they have featured "built-in asm support" so why would TI try to get everyone to build apps?

I can't seriously imagine that the **great** people at TI would want to screw over programs like Mario, Megacar, Tetris, and Phoenix (SF2T is a great game too - just can't keep it on my calc 'cause it crashes after 1 or 2 games and takes 30 min. to put on my calc). Come on, seriously, what do they have against them? Maybe it all corresponds to the government cover-up in Antartica...

Whoa (where'd that come from?)...time for bed.

Nick Chaves

i agree to this. i would love to learn the asm language!

I agree I want to learn ASM for TI89

yep, more asm tutorial needed
definitely agree

ticalc.org needs more screenshots, especially animated ones becuase that people would atleast know what they were downloading, and how the file looked, too. They should also let programmers add their own screenshots as well, not just the staff; cuz I wanted to add my own animated screenshot, and they wouldn't let me!!!

I agree that authors should, within reason, be allowed to submit their own screen shots. Perhaps once the staff has decided to make screen shots at all, then allow the author to submit one. I know my program Lockdown could kind of use a better screen shot than one that says 'Not Installed'...

<hint hint>

I totaly agree. Sometimes they put the lamest screenshots. Like the the error messages on my programs. How irritating is that? It also saves time downloading the programs and loading them into an emulator to test them. I would like to see (eventually) all programs have animated screenshots or at least normal ones. By the way, does anyone know why Laser Mayhem for Ion dosn't work? (83 version).

I also agree with you. I'd like to program in assembly but it is very hard.
If we want to have more games, we must have lessons.

For the french, I advice Zguide 3 from Zorglop which is very good.

I am a great BASIC programmer, and I program in assembler for the Intel family of processors, but I have no experience with the Zilog Z80. I think the guy who made the tutorials called "beginning assembler programming" needs to finish and make some more.

Well, Z80 assembly is certainly easier than x86 assembly. (I don't like the implications of "Intel family" as a pro-AMD person, but that's off-topic I'm afraid).

I probably better or really cool if they had screenshots because I kinda don't know if a game has good graphics or if its worth downloading without knowing if it cool and stuff.

Yeah, I can't get any shells to instal on my 92+ and I too would like to see more out there on 92+assembly. Then maybe the meager archive could grow a little.