84 replies to this topic

[Vorticon]

InsaneMultitasker, on Mon Oct 31, 2011 8:31 PM, said:

marc.hull, on Wed Oct 19, 2011 4:04 PM, said:

Marc, are you attending this year? There is a rumor that you are working on something interesting

I can't be there this year. We did a tonsillectomy, oral surgery and braces this spring. My deductible still isn't met and my cash stash looks like a popcorn fart. Seems I always miss the good years ;(.

Since Tim is my northern connection I am waiting for him to chime in on his attendance prospects. I have a bit of something he might show if he can muster the drive south (sorry bud, I saw the bus coming and couldn't resist throwing you under it . Ernie may show the SID software he finished.

You guys have fun. I am sorry I am going to miss meeting the K and and anyone else . Perhaps one of the brainier of the bunch can set up some kind of George Jettson video phone ??

Well... I had planned to reserve one of the executive suites so that folks could pop in and set up equipment or talk 'shop'. Last week I had to pull back from those plans for a few reasons. Fortunately, I didn't announce my intent It looks like a Saturday morning commute to Evanston is more likely, though if a few things settle down I may chance a Friday night arrival. I won't know until Thursday at the earlies.

It is also doubtful that the cooler of adult beverages (or Diet Coke, Matthew!) will be tagging along this time either but there is always some hope. grin

PS - That was my room last year, Vorticon, it's just that Marcus helped me break an RGB monitor and all things went south from there. Or did that start from the cooler contents? I honestly do -not- remember

You are probably correct (on both counts!)
I'm still trying to finish up the beta version of my new XB game before the Faire, and will likely still need to do some more coding on Friday night in order to have something relatively demo grade by Sat. The game is called Clear for Action, and is a naval combat simulation in the age of sail based on an original game of the same name for the Atari and TRS80 computers back in 1984. It's already too large to fit into one program, so now it's in 2 parts chained together, and I will more than likely need to break it down into 3 parts before it's finished...
While I'm at it, please allow me vent and say that I never programmed something so large in XB, and I can categorically state that XB (and Basic in general) is a very poor fit for complex and lengthy projects due to its extreme lack of structure. There is so much spaghetti code in my program with all those GOTO's that I'm afraid to let it go for too long for fear of completely losing track of the general program structure and flow. Had I done this in Pascal, I would have been long finished by now and it would have been a heck of a lot more readable as well as efficient.
There! I feel better already

[matthew180]

TIdBit might help you some. Although the end result is still BASIC or XB code, you get structure without sacrificing GOTO (is that a good thing? )

http://codehackcreate.com/archives/237

[Vorticon]

matthew180, on Fri Nov 4, 2011 6:38 AM, said:

TIdBit might help you some. Although the end result is still BASIC or XB code, you get structure without sacrificing GOTO (is that a good thing? )

http://codehackcreate.com/archives/237

Not really, as the problem is with the unavoidable use of GOTO... I would just kill for a CASE statement, a WHILE DO loop and RECORDS just to name a few. I finished the rough coding at 2am this morning, but as expected the program is still full of bugs. But much more problematic is the fact that it uses 3 large chained XB programs that loop back to each other, and the loooog pauses that happen when one section is loading turn the game into an exercise in frustration. The only way to mitigate this at the current stage is to run the game under Classic 99 emulation in overdrive mode. I may be able to improve the situation a little by prescanning, by how much remains to be seen. I will be off to Chicago in about an hour, and will try to debug the program at the hotel tonight.
See you there

[retroclouds]

Hope you guys have a lot of fun. Pictures please!!

[InsaneMultitasker]

"With great pleasure the Chicago TI User Group wishes to announce that the Birdwell Trustees have chosen Paolo Bagnaresi as the 2011 recipient of the John Birdwell Award. Congratulations to him from all of us. --Hal"

[retroclouds]

Congratulations to Paolo. He's a great person. I remember having a good conversation with him on the International TI-Treff in Paderborn Germany, about two years ago.
Hope we can get a report on the Chicago event soon. Really wanna know what you guys were doing TI wise.

[ti99userclub]

Paolo Bagnaresi, The Best 99er in Italy !!!

[JonnyBritish]

There were many pictures taken however for me the highlights were seeing the F18 board in action as well as watching a geat demo of TurboForth, now with an assembler built in and also Vorticon's new naval combat game coded in extended basic, certainly inspired me to have a game to show for next years event. There were a number of attendees from abroad as well as across the USA.

If you were not able to attend I would strongly recommend visiting next year if funds allow it. Great to be able to put names to faces. Also by next year the new Geneve 2 board might be available...now that would be cool.

[Ksarul]

My attendance this year was torpedoed by the actions of She-who-must-be-Obeyed, not by lack of funds or desire. She was truly irked when I told her her machinations would NOT prevent my attendance next year!

[kl99]

It was a great event, I will definately come back. I will prepare some game and maybe even an animation/sound demo on the next faire.
I want to do a demo contest anyway some time next year with an official winner-election on a ti-meeting (either US or Europe).

Klaus