There are many TI-BASIC arcade games on ticalc.org. This topic is dedicated to finding those programs which show just what good BASIC programming can do. If you have a good program, tell us. Help show other users how they ca make a truly fun BASIC game.

Well, I find your initial statement to be quite provocative. In general, one should only criticize others if one has made something better themselves. Can you point me to some fun TI-BASIC arcade games that you have made that you feel are good?

You got tired of looking for a fun game to play, and want us to entertain you.

What I did for entertainment recently was make a program that takes any input of the form a+bi and then rewrites in terms of X*e^X. No kidding, that was the best part of my day.

Actually not. This is for people who get tired of tons of necessary lists and pics and other stuff. I'm plenty entertained with trying to uphold my own statement with my own games.

OK, so show me some good games of yours that don't use "necessary" lists and pics that you consider examples of well-made BASIC arcade games.

I blew it. Check your message box, Kerm.

it's not terribly hard to make a good arcade game ti-BASIC, though the best ones ARE usually slow and/or have a huge size.

@C.sprinkle: Thanks for the PM. Actually, Cemetech had an initiative five or six years ago called the BASIC Elite that intended to provide a guarantee that programs and games by certain authors were likely to be of higher quality than the general public's creations, but unfortunately due to lack of time available from everyone involved, it eventually lapsed. SourceCoder was originally a project of the Elite, in fact.

I think it's a mix of knowing plenty of effective optimization tips, and being able to design a fun game with a decent game mechanic that will fit within the confines of BASIC.

Sometimes the better games in BASIC have the worst graphics and even then the ASCII art is pretty horrifying. But sometimes the gameplay is so awesome, it makes you just go "wow".

I saw some of that when judging the last round of omnimaga's team battles. You should see what Raylin was able to pull out in under an hour -- it's probably the best strategy game ever written in pure basic. Then again, I guess it really isn't a arcade game, but it's a good game nonetheless

Well, while we're on the topic of good and bad TI-BASIC arcade games, then, perhaps we can pick out some good examples of what we consider excellent such games, and perhaps a few examples of what we consider poor executions?

Good ones:
Asteroids by Kerm Martian
(Maybe not an arcade game)Donut Quest by Mikhail Lavrov

They are efficient and take few external files.

Bad ones I don't remember, but they usually are too slow, have memory leaks and have too many external files.

In other words, their creators didn't read the 1337 Guide.

for every good arcade game that exists, there are 100 other bad ones copying it on ticalc.org.

That's how it seems to work. I saw a thing that the file archive supervisors wrote about dumb things people do. One of the top ones was downloading a good game, editing the source slightly (screwing stuff up in the process) and re-uploading it under their name.

I can't tell you how many times I've caught people doing that with my programs. Actually, I think I'm overdue to take another sweep through the archives looking for stolen programs of mine. That's the main reason I don't like to publicly release the source code for my ASM programs, especially large and time-consuming projects like Doors CS.

I did it for my Axe program CalcLock because not that many people understand Axe. But in general, my programs aren't looked at or downloaded enough to warrant protecting the source.

I only release source on places like here or omnimaga, because ticalc is full of noobs who just steal source and modify it.

Like I used to be?

But I didn't release anything. I just learned routines, etc.

good sir you are disatrous indeed then.

That seems rather short-sighted of you to me. ticalc.org may have a good number of users who display unethical tactics, but only because there are so many more users who will get to see and download your programs than either here or Omnimaga. ticalc.org is the community flagship website for a good reason: notability and prominence. In anything in life, if you want to raise the public profile of a project of yours, you'll have to learn to live with the negative results as well as the positive. For example, when EE projects of mine get featured on Engadget, or Hackaday, or Digg, or Slashdot, there are tons of users that encourage and support me, but also a significant number that cast aspersions upon my efforts.

I didn't write the second part about only releasing source here! That was Ashbad Alvin!