Ok so I thought it would maybe be a good idea to write an introduction about myself, and a serious one this time, unlike my previous topic that redirected to a rickroll
. Especially with the large amount of new members who signed up since then. So here we go:
My real name is Kévin Ouellet (what motivated to write this intro is Will_W recent discovery about me being Kevin Ouellet, even thought he has been around for a few months and seems to be a fan of Reuben Quest, which I mentionned I made a few times before). I got my first TI calc on July 4th 2001, a TI-83+, and immediately started programming then. I started frequenting calculator websites in October 2001. I started on Gfox 83, Badja, Calc.org and Planete TI-83, all of which are now defunct. I did not immediately go on ticalc.org because at this time their file archives were down (due to the Ticalc.org CD being recalled by Texas Instruments for innapropriate content) and back then I was more interested in downloads than news. I programmed many RPGs until the Illusiat 2002 incident in Early March 2002, where I took a 2 months hiatus from calc programming. Following that, I only did small crappy games until May 02. After figuring out how tilemappers work by looking through Champion Of The Realm code, my motivation went up again to code another RPG. However, it took months before I make a RPG that tops Illusiat 2002 in overall quality. From May 2002 to September 2003, my calc game production reached a peak, to the point where I managed to release 7 new RPGs in half a year, from June 2002 to December 2002 (Illusiat 6 through 11 and Mystique).
2002 was also the year where I started venturing on other TI websites. First being MaxCoderz, then Void Productions. Then I saw ticalc archives were fully re-opened so I started visiting more. I was saddened to see Calc.org crash, taking away all its hosted sites with it (including Void, which moved to ticalc later, and Badja). Later I found Les83plus.free.fr, a very complete french site.
In September 2003, I stopped lurking on websites and started participating on forums. First I joined was MaxCoderz, back when they still used Ikonboard forum software
(see Archive.org link). This is the first place where my calc games made it to public (altough poorly received). Later I joined
http://www.yaronet.com/forum.php?s=493 which was at a different URL back then, as PHPBB2 forum. Then I joined United-TI and Drubu Productions. Unlike my old games, ROL3 was received well on those forums
In March 2004, I started an OMnimaga forum on yAronet, in attempt to bring some ppl from the old team IRL online and let my projects and old games be known into more details, but this board never worked well and I closed it in Sept 2004, after it only got 60 posts. In April 9th 2004 I started Omnimaga: The TI-Calc RPG Headquarter.
In May 04 I started having harrassment from some ASM trolls and thought about leaving MC and the rest of the community (on other forums, ROL3 did not get a lot of attention, despite most of it being positive, Omnimaga forum was dead and Drubu shutted down), but I still finished ROL3 and started a Zelda game.
After 3 months with no home internet access, I came back on forums in August 2004, announcing ROL3 was finished. Zelda was a secret project, which later entered beta-testing phase, altough the TI-Connect 1.5/1.6 fiasco occured, forcing me to test the entire game myself and cancel the entire beta-testing round (basically, this game was sent using TI-Graph Link and used hacked pics, and TI-Connect broke compatibility with TI-Graph Link group files). I was not respected well on MC forums at the time because I did a lot of self-promotion back then and I was a BASIC programmer. Then Ticalc featured Zelda/ROL3. Back then, to gain respect, you had to get featured on ticalc.org. On UTI, however, I never really gained much attention, because back then, most people there were against the usage of ASM libs in BASIC. They thought it was cheating.
Then in Nov 2004, I dropped out of college, losing internet access for almost 3 months again. This period had good and bad news. Good news was that I finally discovered how to do grayscale with Omnicalc and started Reuben Quest. Bad news were that MaxCoderz board was hacked and they had to start over from scratch. Also UTI server was dying, causing major outages which caused UTI to become even less active than it is today for the next four months afterward. Another bad news came where the server on which Omnimaga was hosted shutted down, causing Omni to dissapear for 2 months. At the same time, there was another good news, though: Reuben Quest made front page on ticalc.org.
Then I got a stable connection again. Reuben 2 made ticalc front page. However, I started losing interest in calc programming, altough I still remained interested in calc dev anyway. Omnimaga was converted into an interactive site, then people begged for a forum. This is how Omnimaga old board started on May 12th 2005.
Since 2005, I sporadically work on calc games, while participating in Omnimaga growth (altough it suffered a setback in 2008). I released xLIB xLIB Revolution, Metroid II: Evolution (a sequel to bsparks Metroid xLIB clone), Super Mario Smash Dance, an expansion set for Metroid II: Evolution, a far-from-finished pseudo-3D racing engine using xLIB, a TI-81 remake of Illusiat 1 and currently have Illusiat 13 project on hiatus. In the meantime, in 2008, I also ventured into Casio programming during the dark days of Omnimaga, but never really got far into it. In 2010 I started getting more active in calc stuff directly, altough mostly random discoveries (old OS bugs), messing around with stuff and a few other things that are within my knowledge.
Unfortunately, certain circumstances (partly caused by something that happened to me in July 2005 and also recent social real life events) may eventually cause me to never get to finish a calc game again and my leave, but for now, I focus on trying to make Omnimaga as good as I can and hoping I'll get motivation to finish something again. As for the future, regardless of if/when I go, I took every possible precautions to ensure the future of Omnimaga in long term: regular backups, hosting ownership change (rcfreak0) and new admins (ztrumpet and Builderboy).
I plan to stick with Omnimaga TI community until the very end, even if I have been doing calc stuff for almost 9 years, now.
