Is Omnimaga the best community to showcase your TI projects?

[DJ Omnimaga]

Back in the old Invisionfree board days I always noticed that the Projects and Ideas as well as the combination of all staff project discussions always were the biggest calculator related forums on Omnimaga in term of post count and it was even pretty close to outdo the off topic discussion forum. It was like this ever since the old IF board opened and on this fresh new incarnation of Omnimaga it still seems to be the same so far. On every other TI websites the off topic discussion sections are often nearly as big, if not bigger, than all their general/non staff calculator discussion/help sections combined together. That made me wonder if Omnimaga forums are the best place to announce your calc projects and ideas?

I mean, I do not want to name any websites, but it seems to be the only english TI programming forums where you're guaranteed to get replies to your project or idea and for ideas you won't get ridiculised with a "Why don't you make it yourself if you want it?" response (in my philosophy an idea section is a place to share your ideas and doesn't necessarly means you are forced to do it yourself. Someone else can do it, especially if it would be in a language you don't know and if you plan to do it yourself if it gets enough interest, then fine), and currently it's a feat considering this forum is much less active than the old one (altough current activity is the same than back in 2005) and this new website is not to be announced by me on other sites until Oct 31st 2008 unless someone else does.

Back on the projects, to me it always seemed that on Omnimaga it doesn't matter on which calculator model you are designing your project for. It doesn't matter what programming language you are using. It doesn't matter if you use any libraries (xLIB, Resource, GBA, Freak Engine, ARPGCS, etc). It doesn't matter how much memory your game will take. It doesn't matter if the board is active or not. It doesn't matter. You still get feedback, even if the website mostly have a certain type of programmers (in our case, 83+ xLIB/Celtic III). On other websites there were often episodes and reports about members announcing a promising game in the works and it seemed no one cared and no one even bothered to reply and the project author was lucky to finally have replies after a first double-post. Afterward the member often found himself triple or quadruple posting to post new updates (sometimes it was even weekly updates). The result vary between boards and in some cases it happens with a certain type of programmers. On some boards, for example, TI-BASIC programmers who uses ASM library to enhance their games will barely get attention. On some others, TI-BASIC users will not get feedback altogether. On some active TI programming forums no one will care about your project unless you are staff or administrator there. Altough this has always been something common not only in the TI community and has been going on ever since forums exist, I noticed on Omnimaga it doesn't seems to happen as much as at other places. There are two other teams where, altough not during their entire existence, it didn't happened often either.

The fact two other programming teams where people can get good support for their projects in the works too made me want to raise another question about if the lack of support toward projects may be something happening only on general TI help or discussion websites and not on programming teams. However, this happens on active programming teams too. Revsoft is not very active and MaxCoderz got a one month downtime, and they do not currently have this problem as much as other places. This makes me conclude that the amount of support toward projects announcements on TI websites has nothing to do with the site activity (unless it's dead, like no new posts in several days), if it's a programming or not and the programming language and ressources used the most on the website. It either have to be the mentality on TI communities or it is something else. The best solution to this is to provide as much information as you can about the project, screenshots (preferably animated, altough in this era of skyrocketing GIF file size due to more advanced screen capture capabilities of new TI emulators you may want to keep them short enough for our dial-up users) and continue announcing updates to your projects even if it requires you to double/multi-post (most forums allow double-posting only every 24 hours and in their project sections).

We hope support toward users projects continue this way on Omnimaga. Even improvement is welcome. Despite having closed for half a year and reopened under a new board and a system not used anywhere else in the TI community (SMF), Omnimaga is still the second most active english TI calculator forums avaliable on the web in term of average activity per day. Currently our activity level is at the level it was during summer 2005. Hopefully it will get as active as it used to be in later years as our projects progresses and as new ones are being announced, such as a possible Reuben Quest 3 or Nemesiat 2 using the xLIB grayscale kit in the works and a potential 8 level grayscale kit for ASM programmers.

[Speler]

...Reuben Quest 3 or Nemesiat 2...

Yayz!

Yeah, unfortunately the community has been producing fewer and fewer top-notch projects every year (though this isn't completely true for the 68k calculators).  Hopefully this can change .

[DJ Omnimaga]

That's true. I only saw a recent increase in amount of projects. From summer 06 to the middle of spring 2008 there was barely anything. I was even worried that ticalc.org was dropping the POTY awards in 2007 because it started so late.

[Ding_Programs]

Omnimaga is the best community to showcase your gaming TI　projects =)

[kalan_vod]

I think Omnimaga is one of the best places, I prefer to place at several places to reach a larger audience ..I love omni though

[DJ Omnimaga]

yeah that's what I usually try to do as much as possible. After some events I stopped announcing at some specific places tho and I usually don't announce where people will not care, especially slow loading forums

[Ding_Programs]

agree with DJ Omnimaga 100%

[kalan_vod]

I remember you announcing diortem at maxcoderz, before I met you ...Still miss those times being wowed by your projects, still am today!

[DJ Omnimaga]

Yeah true, there used to be a time in the entire TI community where your work in the community was recognised and that people would not lose respect toward you even if you tried to prevent lack of respect through the TI community.

Unfortunately this era has been a thing of the past for a bit over 2 years. Now there's only a few isolated place like this one and to a lesser extent, TI-Freakware and UTI and #omnimaga, where this era is still alive. I guess the only thing we can do is try to continue to show support toward other people projects whenever possible. But I miss when it was pretty much everywhere.

Also your avatar is a bit distorted, I wonder if there's a way in SMF profile settings to set dimensions?


On an unrelated note I was playing Illusiat 10 for the first time in maybe 6 years (when I translated it 3 years ago I didn't really tested it) last night. That was quite oldie

[Ding_Programs]

I like support=)

[aeTIos]

YES IT IS!
necropost
EDIT: Okay, that was not funny

[Munchor]

Omnimaga is the best community to showcase your gaming TI　projects =)

Yap, I am more of a PC Calculator Programming Development guy, but Omnimaga is also good for them.

[Ashbad]

hey guys, please don't necropost anymore >.<

It's turnin' into spam.

[qazz42]

hey guys, please don't necropost anymore >.<

It's turnin' into spam.

and whoever disagrees is most likely the spammer.... seriously, stop

[DJ Omnimaga]

Yeah that kinda went too far now. I'll have to ban if this happens again.