Well, originally, I wanted it done because it was easy for people to cheat by going into my code.

Then, there's some people that will go in to check something and delete the stuff without knowing how to fix it.

So... basically, it was to stop stupid people and accidents from happening.

Other than that, I'm fine with people learning from my code if possible.

I am personaly against locking programs, but then again, i have never had the misfortune of anybody messing with my code and blaming me :X hope i never will!

hmhh
I can understand that when you put literally dozens of hour of work in a game, you don't want just anyone to scr*w with your code tho. I have the principal that I don't just copy/paste code (otherwise I'd have 'made' a lot of games), but there are people that rip codes and claim it their own.

Well, because of that, the only programs I lock anymore are, thanks to Celtic III, programs that contain Map or Save File data on them.
I hide all subprograms though. Not for any real reason but to make people have a clean program list and don't have the issue of sifting through a lot of programs to finally run the right one.

You seems to be lashing on people who protect their programs, though. At least, the way you are saying it almost makes it look like you are saying everyone who blocked their programs at one point are just retarded and stupid people. You need to watch out how you say things, sometimes, because some people might get offended. I give -2 to the first two posts because of this. Plus, it's not like you have the right to insult people who lock their games when you didn't even contribute anything to the TI community.

That said, I used to lock my programs so no one at school steals my code. At my school, no one knew how to unlock programs nor had a TI-PC cable to do so, so it kinda protected my stuff. Someone attempted to steal my code at school, once, but everyone figured out and he just trashed his theft copy. Later, someone asked me if he could make a game based on my Illusiat 6 game, so I unlocked it, but I told him to not send it to other people until he's done in case. Unfortunately he lost interest and didn't finish it, though.

Now about redistributing games on the Internet: TI-Graph Link software, which is the predecessor of TI-Connect, has a BASIC editor with the ability to lock/unlock any BASIC program. This software, despite being for Windows 95 and 98, still works on new OSes it seems, so if your game won't show up in MirageOs or if you don't have CODEX, then you can use TI-GL to unlock any file. Codex came out in the end of 2003, making the process even faster and easier. So now locking programs is useless unless you are distributing your game to people who barely knows anything about calculators.

There was a rumor in 2002 about a program that can permanently lock down a program, though, by hacking it or something, but the site that had the tutorials shutted down and it was only for the TI-82 and 83. I am pretty sure with ASM tools, if this was done on 83+, anyone could figure out how to unlock the files anyway. Heck, they did it with RPG Maker, they did it with Super Mario World ROM hacks. There is no way to permanently block data from someone really for that stuff.

I actually stopped locking my games around 2003 because I knew people could unlock them and they started getting complex so I thought they were better coding examples than the old ones I had before.

I am still concerned about people accidentally hitting Goto and changing something in the code without noticing then complains the game doesn'T work at all or the game crashing their calc, though (with asm libs)

EDIT: Also, about if people releases your game as their own: What, if for example, your game is unlocked, and you send a demo to school people (or someone grabs your calc while you don't pay attention then grab the game on his), but that person releases a version on ticalc BEFORE you even do so? Then if you release your own version, the other author will be able to get your file taken down for code theft cuz ticalc will not have proof that it's your own code, not to mention the thief file will have been uploaded before yours. I actually saw this happen before. This is another concern I sometimes have about keeping my code unlocked.

When an error pops up, you can either "Quit" or "Goto" the spot the error was at (including hitting the [ON] button) and from there adding anything to that spot or hitting delete or clear on accident could completely mess the program up.

I am personaly against locking programs, but then again, i have never had the misfortune of anybody messing with my code and blaming me :X hope i never will!

I stand compleatly with Builderboy on this. Locking programs prevents learning from programs and I don't know about you, but I've learned a ton from other peoples' code.

If I have a locked program I just use Doors.

I just want to say: Don't kill people because of thier beliefs. Unless they believe in killing people.