From: ernie@aquarium.Buffalo.NY.US (Ernest J. Gainey III)
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
Subject: Re: Splitting the Group
Date: 16 Aug 92 17:31:50 GMT
Organization: Not an Organization
X-Newsreader: Arn V1.00 beta rel2

In article , DreamWeaver writes:

>
> > Cause, programming IBM_PC's belongs under comp.sys.ibm.programming or
> > some such group... ;-)
>
> True in theory ;) ... but comp.sys.msdos (or whatever) is in a constant
> battle with comp.lang.c (or pick your language) ... I track both groups
> and see people being kicked back and forth between then because "that's
> not a hardware problem ... it's a _language_ question ... go elsewhere" or
> "that's not a language question, it's a hardware-specific problem ... go
> somewhere else".

Yes.. I've watched comp.lang.c also... its intent is for the discussion
of ANSI and K&R C concepts... in otherwords, "how is this done in C",
or "how do I write this so it's compatible with 99.9% of the C compilers
in existance" ;-)

This group used to have some absolutely wonderful discussions on how to
do maze generations, terrain generations, and command line parsing for
simple AI like in infocom type games... (along with theory on writing
MUD type games...etc...) and game pseudo-code... ;-)

[the current description i've seen for this group is...
  "Discussion of adventure game programming"           ]

Now all one find here is.. "how do i program VGA"... I've seen a few
incarnations of a programmers kernal for doing VGA... maybe someone should
archive it somewhere... and put it in a FAQ... so we can stop seeing it
over and over and over ;-)

>
> There seems to be a great deal of interest in game programming ... at
> least enough to warrant a group of it's own.  As for me, I feel that
> programming is programming ... irregardeless of the machine.

True... but see... If I wanted information on how to do Blitter access
on an Amiga to move pieces of the screen around for an adventure game
i was writing... I'd first ask here for general concepts on how one
would maybe pseudo-code the ideas of the game... without the graphics
concepts... then i would pop over to comp.sys.amiga.programmer and ask the
Guru's there... "how do I do this with the blitter, or should i use the
copper, or am I better off doing the graphics routines on my own?
I have the coding for the game .. i just need to know specifics on
graphics programming now(aka hardware/OS related)"...

> If you're
> going to start splitting hairs about the hardware platform, then this
> group has no purpose and we should all go back to our own machines.

true... i would just think, people MIGHT get better answers for VGA
programming under comp.os.msdos.programmer, comp.os.os2.programmer, or
even better for those window types, comp.windows.ms.programmer... ;-)

besides, they probably have it in their FAQ's an FTP location where
one can get quite intensive sources on VGA programming ;-)

>
> I realize I'm probably going to fire up a flame war (I dropped into this
> thread late so I'm a bit out of touch) ...

I havent really been following it until recently either... but I have
noticed that comp.lang.c and rec.games.programmer have been becoming
hardware discussions of MS_DOS machines... when they used to have loads
of interesting discussions that were non-machine dependent... but most of
that is getting lost in the VGA discussions ;-)

> but I'd like to relay a story
> from my own experience a year ago:
>
> I used to be active on the TURBOC-L and TCPLUS-L mailing lists.  At one
> time we had a lively discussion going on about how to handle EGA/VGA
> graphics.  Nothing fancy, there was just a large group of people who
> needed help understanding the variety of manuals out there and a sample
> program or two to get them kicked in the right direction.
>
> I got the dubious position of being "resident guru" (or one of them).  I
> offered to put together a series of "classes" or posts from the research
> I've been doing for the past few years ... and got a "great let's do it!"
> response ...
>
>  ... until I was just about ready to start the posting ...
>
>  ... when all of a sudden a bunch of lurkers jumped out with posts like
> "Ive just started watching this group and have been for a while and if all
> you're going to talk about is graphics I don't want to be here" and the
> like.

They had no right doing that... if you were asking people.. for their
opinions..and they waited till the last moment to make their feelings
known... then they really had not right even voicing their opinions at
the last moment ;-)

> When I stopped talking about graphics, with a "ok, you want to talk about
> something else ... let's talk", the list went totally dead.
>
> The point:  those who were whining the most were only interested in
> hearing what others had to say as long as those others could read their
> minds.
>
> My point:  All machines (Amiga, Commodore, PC, Mac) have game capabilities
> and this seems to be a good place to talk about programming them.  If
> someone wants help with a particular thing, they should ask ... but be
> prepared ... just because you complain about the group doing something
> you're not interested in doesn't mean that there are people reading who
> will be able to help you.

Understood... but do you think someone could possibly maintain a FAQ of
some sort... telling where one can get sources for VGA examples and such;
just so we can cut down on the VGA talk just a little! ;-) Theres only
so many times one can look at IBM_8088 assembler ;-)
And it might be beneficial to a few people... to have some documentation
on where they can go searching for stuff they want/need... ;-)

>
> If you don't believe me, try this:  All IBM programmers will no longer
> talk about IBM development ... from now on we will discuss Amiga and only
> Amiga ... and see if it works.

Yikes, I hope I didn't hint at that!!!! There's a good way to kill this
group... most of the Amiga people hang out in the comp.sys.amiga.* groups!
 ;-)

ernie
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