Author Topic: Professionalism in calculator games  (Read 9663 times)

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Offline tloz128

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Re: Professionalism in calculator games
« Reply #30 on: December 05, 2010, 05:44:40 pm »
1.) Try to make the artwork in the game look as good as possible. Just because the calculator isn't very powerful doesn't mean you can't make a good-looking game.
2.) Don't release a public version of a game that is known to have significant problems (beta releases are different, though).
3.) Ask for advice from others on ways that you might be able to improve a game. Often times you may be biased in the judging of your own programs and they may not be as great as you yourself perceive them to be.
4.) Try to make something that will be not just played and deleted within a brief period of time. Aim to make the game something great.
5.) Optimize, optimize, optimize! Make it your goal to make the game code as efficient as possible.

Also, even though this does not make the game itself any more professional, it would be a very good idea to distribute the program under the GPL and include the source code with the game (like DJ said- the TI community is very open source, and I know I for one agree with this unofficial philosophy).
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Offline Munchor

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Re: Professionalism in calculator games
« Reply #31 on: December 05, 2010, 05:48:03 pm »
1.) Try to make the artwork in the game look as good as possible. Just because the calculator isn't very powerful doesn't mean you can't make a good-looking game.
2.) Don't release a public version of a game that is known to have significant problems (beta releases are different, though).
3.) Ask for advice from others on ways that you might be able to improve a game. Often times you may be biased in the judging of your own programs and they may not be as great as you yourself perceive them to be.
4.) Try to make something that will be not just played and deleted within a brief period of time. Aim to make the game something great.
5.) Optimize, optimize, optimize! Make it your goal to make the game code as efficient as possible.

Also, even though this does not make the game itself any more professional, it would be a very good idea to distribute the program under the GPL and include the source code with the game (like DJ said- the TI community is very open source, and I know I for one agree with this unofficial philosophy).

1.) The TI Community is open-source because the source can be easily gotten with decompilers :S
2.) I agree that our games have to be fast!
3.) The artwork is very important too
4.) An Application game is also much more professional than a .8xp one I think

Offline AngelFish

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Re: Professionalism in calculator games
« Reply #32 on: December 05, 2010, 05:51:17 pm »
I have to disagree with you on #4, Scout. I can't speak for others, but I think application games are generally a waste of app pages. You don't need to install a whole app for a program. Things like Wolfenstein are very impressive without them.
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Offline Munchor

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Re: Professionalism in calculator games
« Reply #33 on: December 05, 2010, 05:52:43 pm »
I have to disagree with you on #4, Scout. I can't speak for others, but I think application games are generally a waste of app pages. You don't need to install a whole app for a program. Things like Wolfenstein are very impressive without them.

Yes, also because they occupy Archive space which is necessary. That's why most programs are not published as Apps.

My next game, however, will be published in both.

Offline FloppusMaximus

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Re: Professionalism in calculator games
« Reply #34 on: December 05, 2010, 06:40:16 pm »
There are a few good reasons to make your program a Flash app:
- it installs persistent hooks (in which case, a Flash app is the only reliable way to do it)
- it provides libraries for other programs (whether using hooks or by other means; this can be done without making the program an app, but it's much less convenient)
- it allows the user to edit large data files (in which case, you want to leave as much RAM as possible free for the user's data)
- or the program itself requires a huge amount of code and/or data (but in this case, you should also probably consider splitting the program up.)

Normal (RAM) assembly programs are really a lot more convenient for the user (you can hide them, rename them, launch them using any shell you like, organize them into folders if your shell does that, compress them if need be, store them in RAM or archive or on a USB stick...)

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Professionalism in calculator games
« Reply #35 on: December 05, 2010, 10:50:50 pm »
With apps, you also bypass the 8192 bytes code limit, right? (8811 in shells, if I remember)

Offline FloppusMaximus

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Re: Professionalism in calculator games
« Reply #36 on: December 05, 2010, 11:06:17 pm »
That's true.  There are other options - you can, if you need to, copy chunks of code into lower RAM areas to execute them - but it's certainly not as easy as writing an app.  (Not that I'd say writing an app, particularly a multi-paged one, is easy by any means.)

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Professionalism in calculator games
« Reply #37 on: December 06, 2010, 01:26:47 am »
Ah, yeah, I heard a bit about that. You can also do the TI-BASIC launcher trick, but then you end up with multiple files and it can be hard to avoid code repetition sometimes.