gCn - global CALCnet2

threefingeredguy · Post by **threefingeredguy** » Sun 30 Oct, 2005 6:19 am

NOT yet, its only *OK*. Actually I will rewrite it since it should be about 5k but with my crappy coding (from like march or so), its about 22k.

KermMartian · Post by **KermMartian** » Sun 30 Oct, 2005 5:30 pm

dysfunction wrote:I'm speaking from experience that these types of things only get used by a few people who are really dedicated to their TI. This won't be something that the average gamer will use. I have an audio adaptor, and while it's cool, I have yet to see a single practical application besides playing simple MIDI music, and so few people use it, I doubt I ever will. It's probably the same with this. You'll need to be connected to a computer, which means you can't play at school, and how many people will want to play Gemini multiplayer when they can just as easily play Halo or UT online?
However, we could ssk, Why even program on the calculators at all, since it will always be inferior to the latest handhelds? The answer: it's just plain cool.

I think I'm gonna make that my sig quote...

DigiTan · Post by **DigiTan** » Sun 30 Oct, 2005 11:31 pm

Well said, dysfunction.

My only advice is to start from the bottem, then build up once you have the basics of the system in place.

CompWiz · Post by **CompWiz** » Mon 31 Oct, 2005 2:58 am

CoBB wrote:I vote for all the lazy bums who keep voting for others. If you want something to get coded, learn to code and do it. The lack of initiative in this so-called community never ceases to irritate me.

Those "lazy bums" may just be working on other projects. I happen to be working on a ti-basic adventure game with text input(look in announce projects section), and then I plan to learn assembly so I can code "n-game" with katmaster, and possibly a mini-golf game after that(both in program ideas). This will no doubt take a while, and coding an MMO game for the calc is probably much more appropriate task for someone experienced in programming calc assembly.

threefingeredguy: Hope the diablo comes along well. It would be a lot of fun to play that online.

'm speaking from experience that these types of things only get used by a few people who are really dedicated to their TI. This won't be something that the average gamer will use. I have an audio adaptor, and while it's cool, I have yet to see a single practical application besides playing simple MIDI music, and so few people use it, I doubt I ever will. It's probably the same with this. You'll need to be connected to a computer, which means you can't play at school, and how many people will want to play Gemini multiplayer when they can just as easily play Halo or UT online?
However, we could ssk, Why even program on the calculators at all, since it will always be inferior to the latest handhelds? The answer: it's just plain cool.

This is definitely accurate. I distribute the calc programs to the people at my school, and unfortunately, most only know how to open up crunchyOS and pick a game. If a game like Acelgoyobis requires the levels to be unarchived before play, no one will use it. Also, no one uses basic programs(except to store notes in before a math test). Not to mention, if the controls are not blatently obvious or stated in in-game instructions, or the game is kind of hard to figure out(I thought that desolate was great, but very few other people figured out how to play) no one will play it. It's kind of like the old computer days, when you had to know ms-dos to do anything advanced on the computer, and only hobbyists really used them.

Just curious, why doesn't acelgoyobis support archived levels? I think it's a great game, and it's unfortunate that few people have figured out how to unarchive levels. Couldn't it have some kind of level finder like mario?

CoBB · Post by **CoBB** » Mon 31 Oct, 2005 6:22 am

CompWiz wrote:Those "lazy bums" may just be working on other projects.

Typically not... And even when they are, so are those who they are bugging.

CompWiz wrote:Just curious, why doesn't acelgoyobis support archived levels? I think it's a great game, and it's unfortunate that few people have figured out how to unarchive levels. Couldn't it have some kind of level finder like mario?

Because the developer never had a plus, and there were no decent emulators around when the program was in the make. Exactly for the second reason the PTI project was started.

KevinJB · Post by **KevinJB** » Mon 31 Oct, 2005 12:22 pm

Just bug someone smarter than me to do it, I mean Jim E hacked Gemeni to split the levels into seperate files

... (...lack of initiative, lack of initiative...)

KermMartian · Post by **KermMartian** » Mon 31 Oct, 2005 2:12 pm

DigiTan wrote:Well said, dysfunction.

My only advice is to start from the bottem, then build up once you have the basics of the system in place.

Good call, that's what I'm trying to do right now.

Timendus · Post by **Timendus** » Mon 31 Oct, 2005 8:09 pm

KermMartian wrote:I only said 255 because calculators have a one-byte address within local networks, thus giving them a 255-device maximum. It's actually 2 less because 0x00 and 0xFF are reserved.

That would be 254 addresses, since 8 bits provide you with 256 combinations, and not 255.

This is a very ambitious project. Let me ask you this: have you ever coded any network related software, in whatever language? Websites don't count. Please do prove me wrong, but I don't believe you'll be able to do this.

Besides, what would be the point of making this? I mean; it's nice to have a calculator network over the Internet, but you'd need to offer something that the PC does not for it to get the slightest bit of popularity...

But I do like to theorize, so please tell us a bit about the protocol. I am interested to see what you've come up with.

MathStuf · Post by **MathStuf** » Mon 31 Oct, 2005 10:52 pm

Timendus wrote: it's nice to have a calculator network over the Internet, but you'd need to offer something that the PC does not for it to get the slightest bit of popularity...

Well, with the strong possibility of a 68k port (which I may have a hand in helping to make anyway), and my program that allows one to make an RPG based on the engine of PokÃƒÆ’Ã‚Â©mon (it should have a release later this week if I can find the source of this one bug...). It will have battling and trading capabilities eventually. With gCn, tournaments could easily be set up and carried out across the world instead of the small community within your school where time would probably be limited. Any multiplayer game supporting gCn could have tournaments online.

coelurus · Post by **coelurus** » Tue 01 Nov, 2005 12:02 am

Online calculator networks?

What about showing proper realtime 2-calc linking first? I like wasting time on things I find fun (like throwing playing cards), but I don't steal time from constructive and useful projects (aka "Sledge").

Choosing projects is about priority; would you rather stick to developing a crappy basic game (I only express my inner feelings) than switch over to a new idea that's so much more vivid and complex? Personally, I get no satisfaction from releasing things everybody else does, try set your standards a little higher...

currahee · Post by **currahee** » Tue 01 Nov, 2005 4:58 am

It's not impossible is it? Assembly is fast enough to do: Send, Recieve, Input, Output, Repeat

Timendus · Post by **Timendus** » Tue 01 Nov, 2005 10:30 am

It's not that simple, currahee.

First you need to control the hardware, because the send and receive routines that are built in are only suitable for one on one communication. So you'd need your own protocol to send over a byte. I've developed one over the last three years that's still not working properly and that I'm not going to share with any of you

but anyway the point is that it's not easy.

To handle the network properly you need an interrupt routine handling incoming datastreams from whereever and keeping the network organized. And the larger the network, the more time the interrupt requires to do it's job. I dare to state that for any network over, say, 50 calculators the interrupt will slow the calcs down so much that they won't be able to play whatever game anymore.

All this has nothing to do with making it a network over the Internet. That's the "easy" part

I bet Ben and I could link our calculators to each other over the Internet in a few days if we took the time. But if you want point to point connections from somewhere in a network to somewhere in another network over the Internet, you'll be dealing with totally different shit. You'd need much more complex addressing than one byte for starters. Next to that; it'll be pretty slow, and you're not going to enjoy your game of Pong when your paddle takes seconds to respond to your keypresses

Andy_J · Post by **Andy_J** » Tue 01 Nov, 2005 12:18 pm

Timendus wrote:All this has nothing to do with making it a network over the Internet. That's the "easy" part I bet Ben and I could link our calculators to each other over the Internet in a few days if we took the time.

Took me less than that to whip up my IP link program.

Of course, since I use TalkTI, it only works on TI-protocol communication... and it's really slow... but t works!

KermMartian · Post by **KermMartian** » Tue 01 Nov, 2005 2:33 pm

Timendus wrote:...But if you want point to point connections from somewhere in a network to somewhere in another network over the Internet, you'll be dealing with totally different shit. You'd need much more complex addressing than one byte for starters. Next to that; it'll be pretty slow, and you're not going to enjoy your game of Pong when your paddle takes seconds to respond to your keypresses

Actually, because I hand off the internetwork stuff to the host computer, it gets sped up considerably; the calculators are still dealing with the 1-byte address whether the receiving calc is next to it or halfway across the world.

And yes, I do have some network experience with the TCP and UDP protocols - Blockland anyone?

Timendus · Post by **Timendus** » Tue 01 Nov, 2005 10:20 pm

KermMartian wrote:Actually, because I hand off the internetwork stuff to the host computer, it gets sped up considerably; the calculators are still dealing with the 1-byte address whether the receiving calc is next to it or halfway across the world.

No it wont. I know what you're thinking, but that would only work for broadcast like things like a public chatroom. As soon as you want to implement private chats (or multiplayer gaming, like I said; point to point connections tunneled over the Internet) you'll need to implement a different kind of addressing or naming. Maybe you want to do that in a higher layer (if you manage to keep your layers split properly in assembly

), that would help a bit, but then that higher layer would still slow down the performance be it a little less noticeable, so I don't see how you can make this statement.

Next to the calc network implementation slowing things down, sending a packet over the Internet takes time too. So a message has to go from a calculator to a PC, from that PC to your server, from that server to another PC and from that PC to another calculator. That takes time, no matter how you do it. It'd be fine for a chatroom or something, but you'll certainly notice the lag in multiplayer games. Especially for people with less than a broadband connection.

AndySoft wrote:
Timendus wrote:All this has nothing to do with making it a network over the Internet. That's the "easy" part I bet Ben and I could link our calculators to each other over the Internet in a few days if we took the time.
Took me less than that to whip up my IP link program. Of course, since I use TalkTI, it only works on TI-protocol communication... and it's really slow... but t works!

I meant writing it from scratch

But thanks for confirming it to be slow