History of the TI community

[chickendude]

Magnus was one of the old ticalc staff members

[AngelFish]

Yep, Magnus was pretty important, although I'm not sure what the extent of Bill Nagel's contributions were. But, a quick list of other notable things should include anyone who was in DetachedSolutions, the histories of the major calc sites (Omni, cemetech, revsoft, ticalc, UTI and the sites that formed it, TIBD, probably a bit about some of events around Detached Solution's site and the discussions that took place there), Benjamin Moody/FloppusMaximus, etc... As for politics, the community has never been short on them. The people who have been around awhile like DJ, Kerm, and BrandonW can talk about them more than I can, but there's definitely some stuff there.

[AaroneusTheGreat]

Bill Nagel made a game called Nebulus for the 68k calculators, among a few other things. He is quite a talented programmer. Nebulus was one of the few grayscale 68k games to feature music and sound effects.

[EDIT]: My mistake. The Nebulus game was made by a guy named Geoffrey Anneheim. My apologies. My memory isn't always the best. I do remember something pretty impressive from Bill Nagel though.

[chickendude]

I remember Bill Nagel mostly coding for the 83, they were one of the early ASM programmers (ticalc shows their programs being released mostly in 1997/1998) and developed AShell for the 83. For some reason i remember Penguins also featuring sound, but my memory may be failling me a bit there...

[Xeda112358]

I believe Brandon said he was *the* person that brought the beginning of assembly programming to the TI calculators.

[chickendude]

There was also Kirk Meyer who did a lot of work on the 86 and made the awesome 3D graphing app for the 83+. They also got the cease and desist letter for programming Monopoly 86, though i was never exactly sure if it was true or not...

[ExtendeD]

I remember some of these names I got my TI-86 in 1996 or 1997.

[Xeda112358]

I was 4 years old back then o.o This has been going on since I was just a little little kid o.O

[Deep Toaster]

For most of us, this has been around longer than we have

[Xeda112358]

I'm turning old in a few months I will be twenty !_! I will have been alive for two decades My life is already over a quarter over

[DJ Omnimaga]

I believe Brandon said he was *the* person that brought the beginning of assembly programming to the TI calculators.

I thought it was Magnus and Dan Eble or something with Zshell?

Also yeah I remember Calcgames. At one point I think there was a tiny rivalry between it and ticalc due to how calcgames stopped allowed Snake and Tunnel clones with no new features, but it wasn't as big as Dimension TI.

As for the community size I indeed remember the days where everyone wanted to start new forums just to have admin powers somewhere or compete against the bigger guys. I think people learned that too many forums hurted the community though. The community was really small also in 2007-09, but it rebounded in 2010 before starting to dwindle again in Spring 2011 or so, and even in 2010 it never reached the size of 2004 again. Today the community is way bigger than it was in 2007-09 in terms of posting activity and program releases everywhere, but much smaller than in 2004 when as noted above there were over 100 programs a day uploaded on ticalc sometimes.

For the Omnimaga history I will probably need to do it myself when I have time, but for Cemetech and others sites we would have to ask their respective admins or founders. As for old stuff I might know some but I don't have as much free time lately so I don't know if I can help much.

Also for Omni history now we have the old board back so that's one more part of Omnimaga history (although back then there weren't many notable releases compared to on the current site) that is around now.

[Xeda112358]

Burr has done some great work so far with documenting since February: http://tibasicdev.wikidot.com/ti:home

I have already learned of some amazing things I never knew. For example, I wonder how many of the new folks are familiar with this TI-83+/84+ game? Check out the page on the programmer Badja

[Deep Toaster]

Burr has done some great work so far with documenting since February: http://tibasicdev.wikidot.com/ti:home

Wow, he's done a lot of work over there

I have already learned of some amazing things I never knew.

A few months ago I realized there's so much to the calculator community in its history that a lot of us don't even know of today...

For example, I wonder how many of the new folks are familiar with this TI-83+/84+ game? Check out the page on the programmer Badja

I've never seen that one, but his Uncle Worm is probably one of the best-known TI-83 Plus games of all time. And from the links on his TI|BD page, I found out that he's ported it to Android.

That's funny—a famous calculator game getting ported to a phone

[Xeda112358]

I've never seen that one, but his Uncle Worm is probably one of the best-known TI-83 Plus games of all time. And from the links on his TI|BD page, I found out that he's ported it to Android.

I've heard of it but never played it

That's funny—a famous calculator game getting ported to a phone

Imagine that being said back in 1990 First, a game being made for a graphing calculator. Second, the same game being made for a phone.

And yeah, there is so much stuff that isn't known by us newer folks. That is why I am glad this has been started. I learned that this had been made for the calc a long while ago before I made Grammer:
http://tift.tuxfamily.org/projects/fastrpl
I mean, look at these screenies:



I think that is fairly awesome.
EDIT: The first is called gravity pong, the second is minesweeper, and the the third is a snake game. I am pretty sure that is all at 6MHz, too, as it was designed for the TI-83+.

EDIT2: I learned about this from deeph-- a member of the TIFT team and one of the organizers of last years zContest. The team is a french team, I believe.

[DJ Omnimaga]

wow that TIBD page so far is awesome :0. It would definitively be great to have the history of every site, though. Also I remember Lotus a lot. It was pretty popular back then in school. As for FastRPL, it was promising, but what doomed it was how learning required full ASM concepts knowledge, which singled out most BASIC coders, and the lack of English documentation.