I'm sure most of you who visit other TI forums has noticed the drastic decrease in activity in the TI community lately.

Well, some people will say it is probably because people are losing interest in calc stuff or everything has been done. Well, this is not the problem this year. There is effectively lot of activity going on in the TI community at the moment. However we cannot see it anymore, because almost everything in the works is secret now. Since 2007 started there seemed to be a drastic increase in secret calculator projects, especially games, so much that everyone joined the bandwagoon and now I can cound on an hand how many public game projects are still active on each major TI forums (UTI, MC, Omnimaga, TI-Freakware, Revsoft, Cemetech, Calcgames and Detacheds Solution), and this doesn't just include the staff of each forums. On some of those forums they're currently nonexistant.

I don't mean to bash anyone making a secret project, because I understand that some people doesn't want to give false hope to people if they don't finish it, I myself do this with almost all my games until I have something major done. I am just saying that currently there is way too many secret TI projects compared to public ones, so members barely have anymore reason to post on forums. Even MaxCoderz, Revsoft and Cemetech have decreased in activity (altough Cemetech's may be partially due to the recent downtime), Omnimaga forums survives because of the few public projects that are still active and UTI is mostly calc help and support now, same for calcgames and detacheds. And this sucks because the TI community is actually very active atm, even more than last year. Every 2 or 3 days I get greeted via PM on IRC with a new secret project sprite set or screenshot.

I think the 2008 resolution for the TI community should be to have at least 70% of public projects, or at least when the entire engine is coded make the secret project partially public. Just posting updates once per month would alerady help. The other 30% should be surprises. Right now at least 60% of the calc projects I found are secret. If more were public this would give those lurking guests more reason to join, so at least something else than spambots would register now. It would also make a bit more discussion.

Imagine: a monthly update on 10 people projects, and each updates triggering 1-30 pages of discussion and questions/suggestions, that make 10-300 more posts on the forums about calculator programming talk, and considering some people would probably updates their projects more regulary that would make even more discussion, thus, the community would look more active.

Anyway it is just my opinion, I do not force people to abide by my suggestions, and people can keep their stuff secret if they want to, I just mean that in the future we should consider posting a bit more publicly.

I generally find that secret projects don't demand as much as public projects. They also don't cause as much stress, or the notion that you have to get something done.

Generally this is due to the fact of trying to keep the public interested, dealing with requests, dealing with doubts, suggestions, updates, etc.

With secret projects I could be working on it every single day, or not have worked on it for a whole month, but I know that I don't need to keep anyone interested, or impress them.

Overall I find secret projects more stimulating when you are tight on time, don't feel like dealing with the public, or for other reasons.

I believe that the status of a project, public or private, should be up to the discretion of a programmer/programming team. Overall I would be glad if I was getting the screenshots/tile sets.

I understand you point guys. The only problem is if everything is kept secret it make the TI community look dead. Omnimaga is active because the amount of projects in the works here is insane compared to other sites, but on UTI you look the new posts and you rarely see any project updates. Usually I idle on the new post page and close the window then go back refreshing the active topic list here -.-

That said, please do not overhelm yourself by posting updates all the time either. You could announce the project once 1/4 of it is done then post a news about it, and only wait until you have major progress before posting updates on the project

i kinda agree w/ Halifax, though it's nice reveal some details to ask for sprites/get suggestions

My next project will be secret. For the 2 days it will take me to finish it
I plan on making a pure basic game with 3 sprites. i got a sprite in basic to run almost as fast as a xlib one.

Edit: spelled sprite srite :oops:

QuoteBegin-lordofthegeeks+16 Nov, 2007, 14:2-->

QUOTE (lordofthegeeks @ 16 Nov, 2007, 14:20)

My next project will be secret. For the 2 days it will take me to finish it I plan on making a pure basic game with 3 sprites. i got a sprite in basic to run almost as fast as a xlib one. Edit: spelled sprite srite :oops:

Do I here people make fun of 1x1 sprites?  The Game shows that they can own .