CodeWalrus

CodeWalrus Website => Site Discussion => Site News & Announcements => Topic started by: Dream of Omnimaga on September 28, 2015, 12:20:11 AM

Title: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on September 28, 2015, 12:20:11 AM
In order to adapt to today's calculator community, we have decided to perform changes to our internal staff policies.

The first change was made to our staff activity policies. They forced every full-time staff to post at least once a day on the forums whenever the site averaged under 3000 posts a month. Above 3000, the requirement was three times lower. Now, the requirement will be closer to what Omnimaga had when I ran it: 10 posts a month, with the difference being that the gap between each post cannot be larger than 2 weeks. This allowed us to perform the second change: The part-time staff usergroup has been merged back into the regular staff usergroup, so as a result, both @Streetwalrus and @Duke "Tape" Eiyeron have reintegrated our full-time staff team and this also means it will finally be possible to add new staff!

Also, a randomness/forum games section was added to the forums, but to prevent clutter, we have added some restrictions to it: New posts will not show up on IRC like with other sections, posts will not count towards user's post counts, the board will only be active when its total content postcount is under a certain percentage of the entire site content and new topics posted there will only appear after a moderator approved them (to prevent topics like "Count to 8000" from being made). That new section is also invisible to guests.

So it is possible that there might be more staff additions in the near future, as we go through our future staff considerations list, and it might be possible to apply as well. Stay tuned!

UPDATE: We also got an IRC botnet, at last.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: semiprocoder on September 28, 2015, 01:20:12 AM
I like the idea of adding a new section, but eh. There already is a gaming and walkthoughs section and an off topic section, and I think pretty much everything in games and randomness could be placed in those two sections, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see. I like the new posting regulations for the staff though hopefully some new conversations will spring up after that.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: SiphonicSugar on September 28, 2015, 01:27:12 AM
Hmm... New staff...

How many previous staff members do you think you will have to kick off because they don't post enough?
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Yuki on September 28, 2015, 01:30:37 AM
Hopefully none.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on September 28, 2015, 02:18:39 AM
Quote from: semiprocoder on September 28, 2015, 01:20:12 AM
I like the idea of adding a new section, but eh. There already is a gaming and walkthoughs section and an off topic section, and I think pretty much everything in games and randomness could be placed in those two sections, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see. I like the new posting regulations for the staff though hopefully some new conversations will spring up after that.
Oh forum games is actually more for actually post-based games, such as the story thread and future games involving writing some lines of code in a program in each post. Gaming and walkthrough is really about video/board games and strategy guides, not randomness.
Quote from: SiphonicSugar on September 28, 2015, 01:27:12 AM
Hmm... New staff...

How many previous staff members do you think you will have to kick off because they don't post enough?
None, for now. Under the old requirements, you would get demoted to part-time staff and if your activity was low enough, demoted entirely, but Street and Eiyeron meets the new restrictions. Under the old ones, it's possible that we might have ended up never having a full-time staff again in the future, since most people nowadays simply don't have time to post everyday without any exception.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: semiprocoder on September 28, 2015, 02:51:45 AM
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on September 28, 2015, 02:18:39 AM
Oh forum games is actually more for actually post-based games, such as the story thread and future games involving writing some lines of code in a program in each post. Gaming and walkthrough is really about video/board games and strategy guides, not randomness.

Ooooh you should copy your 4 word story thread and make a line at a time programming thread where each person adds a new line, making(admittedly) a very odd, but nice program. Doesn't have to be a game.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on September 28, 2015, 03:02:07 AM
For the program thread I was thinking more about allowing people to add lines anywhere in the program, not just the last. That way people have more freedom (although it might be abused, which is why I might disallow the usage of If blocks and Lbl/Goto commands intended to make specific code permanently unreachable)
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: semiprocoder on September 28, 2015, 03:17:33 AM
that could work. You would have to delete any posts that would unconstructive or something like that though. Also how would it work with users being able to add any line. Would it be like a line number then the code or somthing? Or would they copy and paste the code and insert something?
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on September 28, 2015, 03:37:31 AM
Well, people just have to set rules at the start of the topic and any post breaking them simply have to be ignored. And yeah it would be adding a line or two in the code as they like. THey would copy-paste the code in their post or at least the portion they are altering, then make the extra line(s) bold, underlined or something.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Unicorn on September 28, 2015, 03:46:57 AM
I know that there used to be something like that for basic on cemetech, but I don't think it was a game.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: novenary on September 28, 2015, 07:51:32 AM
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on September 28, 2015, 12:20:11 AM
The first change was made to our staff activity policies. They forced every full-time staff to post at least once a day on the forums whenever the site averaged under 3000 posts a month. Above 3000, the requirement was three times lower. Now, the requirement will be closer to what Omnimaga had when I ran it: 10 posts a month, with the difference being that the gap between each post cannot be larger than 2 weeks. This allowed us to perform the second change: The part-time staff usergroup has been merged back into the regular staff usergroup, so as a result, both @Streetwalrus and @Duke "Tape" Eiyeron have reintegrated our full-time staff team and this also means it will finally be possible to add new staff!
I have to add that even though my activity didn't meet the requirement, I still did the job of a full time staff lately. I'm also back to being active on the forums and not only on irc, it seems. :)

Also, I just changed the styling of the randomness section posts in the recent posts view to be gray instead of low opacity so that it remains discreet yet readable.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on September 29, 2015, 01:59:55 AM
It looks nice in gray actually. I wasn't too sure about how to do it but it seems you got it. :)

Also yeah I noticed your activity actually went up after you became part-time staff. :P

Also I forgot to mention the IRC botnet in the news. I'm gonna do it now.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Snektron on September 29, 2015, 09:17:21 PM
Quote from: semiprocoder on September 28, 2015, 02:51:45 AM
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on September 28, 2015, 02:18:39 AM
Oh forum games is actually more for actually post-based games, such as the story thread and future games involving writing some lines of code in a program in each post. Gaming and walkthrough is really about video/board games and strategy guides, not randomness.

Ooooh you should copy your 4 word story thread and make a line at a time programming thread where each person adds a new line, making(admittedly) a very odd, but nice program. Doesn't have to be a game.

Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on September 28, 2015, 03:02:07 AM
For the program thread I was thinking more about allowing people to add lines anywhere in the program, not just the last. That way people have more freedom (although it might be abused, which is why I might disallow the usage of If blocks and Lbl/Goto commands intended to make specific code permanently unreachable)

Cool idea :o someone maek dis pls
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: semiprocoder on September 29, 2015, 09:22:54 PM
Now the question is just what language to do it in(or maybe I guess multiple threads for different languages), and I think that basic or axe would be good for most people but I don't know how well that would work out(especially since I've never really programmed in either of those).
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Snektron on September 29, 2015, 09:25:17 PM
A script like Lua or Python would probably work too.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: semiprocoder on September 29, 2015, 09:26:52 PM
Yeah lua would be awesome as thats what I've been starting to program in lately. Python maybe, I learned a little bit of it a while ago, but I'm quite fuzzy on it, so lua would be best for me, but Python could be better for most people.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on September 30, 2015, 02:53:25 AM
We should probably go with a minimal, but high-level languages. So far, those games only seems to work with TI-83/83+/84+/CSE/CE BASIC.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: semiprocoder on September 30, 2015, 02:56:02 AM
I don't know scripts are pretty simple. Or, you know, someone could make a new language specifically designed for this :), so that it ports to like every calc imaginable.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on September 30, 2015, 02:57:04 AM
As long as it's not like Walriicode (like TI-BASIC but with every command replaced with walrus sprites) or brainf*ck. :P It really needs to be one of the most used language in the calculator community, though.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: semiprocoder on September 30, 2015, 03:14:17 AM
You know, I could probably make a converter from some made up language to lua source using c or java(or even make an on ti nspire editor, although it wouldn't allow you to move the code accross calcs), but I have 0 idea how I would port to ti basic due to its token structure. Also I am not sure I would be able to make a full on editor, it would just be a text file to like some source files or something, and it wouldn't be very optimized as I've never done this before and I am not sure how to(but I have some ideas I don't think its too hard for either basic or lua). I guess I could just make what it would like and then someone could make it into tokens. Also my knowledge of basic is very minimal and my knowledge of lua, although much greater, is still not too expansive.

And what do you mean by every command replaced with walrus sprites. Do you mean that you tell the compiler what to do with different sprites or does its drawing functions display sprites or something.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on September 30, 2015, 03:19:04 AM
Such project would be a lot of work, since you would need to master most languages to do it. As for Walriicode it was a joke language idea in reference to those languages that are totally unreadable, like Brainf*ck. :P
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: semiprocoder on September 30, 2015, 03:29:58 AM
Yeah, thats what I thought, but still, I don't think that lua(or basic once and if I actually start using it) would be too too hard. I have a couple years of learningness(whatever the word for this is) so I have c knowledge, just not as much lua, but I could do some basic stuff really easily. More complicated things might be left to someone else however. My compiler type thingy would be very horrible though and would only do simple things. I'm not saying it would be anything good.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on October 01, 2015, 01:12:53 AM
Yeah I am just saying, since some people who never programmed before tend to be way too ambitious when starting new projects, only to realize that they bit more than they could chew. And often, people started new Zelda games as their first ever project, creating lots of hype in the community, but they finally would never get close to writing a single line of collision detection code.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: semiprocoder on October 01, 2015, 01:18:07 AM
Yeah, that kinda happened to me for a bunch of projects a few years ago. I wanted to make a 2d minecraft(and sort of did so. It had a crafting system and stuff but everything was super simple), but gave up. That wasn't really my biggest project that I gave up though. I tried making a tower defense game once and even had plans for the mechanics and stuff. I made a bunch of classes and spent a couple of weeks on it, but I got bored because I still had 0 graphics done to show that I had something done. All I had was a decent bit of the mechanics I planned for it. Worst of all, I only did that less than half a year ago.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on October 01, 2015, 01:19:47 AM
My first ever project was an RPG. :P




But it only had 1 dungeon lol (split in half, and it was impossible to come back once you reached part 2) and was completely broken, balance-wise.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Luxen on October 01, 2015, 02:21:13 AM
My first project had to be a compression system for TI, a lossless binary compression routine. Naturally, cause I was such a noob, I thought I could do it in ti-basic.

I guess if you count P3 in plotlib, then i did do a sort of compression routine, but I dont think that counts; all I did was exploit a larger plot setting and pulled less pixels from the original plot sprite.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on October 01, 2015, 02:26:39 AM
I think some compression is possible in TI-BASIC, but it depends how complex. Illusiat has 100 item slots and save files have 5 items per list element because they are 2-digits, but saving the game takes over 5 seconds.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Luxen on October 01, 2015, 02:31:38 AM
When i said binary compression, i meant that my ti-basic program would take another program, crunch it with my personal non-existing compression, and then slap on a self extractor on top of it.

Without libs, cause i didnt even know they existed at the time.

...yeah.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: semiprocoder on October 01, 2015, 02:34:12 AM
Just wondering, what type of compression were you planning?
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Luxen on October 01, 2015, 02:37:50 AM
Lossless compression. cmon, you expect me to even research this stuff? I just knew i wanted a 'non-corrupting' executable compression.

I was doing  :w00t: until the lovely community woke me up to the real world.

Btw, thats w00t? It looks more like it should be 'psycotic' :/
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: semiprocoder on October 01, 2015, 02:54:23 AM
I have like 11 projects in eclipse that I never finished but started. 3 of them are some sort of 2d minecraft. Seriously. One of them I envisioned would be like a jedi game. Not to mention some pure processing games I wanted to make a while ago but never did. Also I have a couple kinda completed projects that don't have finished graphics and stuff.
Title: Re: CodeWalrus restructure
Post by: Dream of Omnimaga on October 03, 2015, 07:51:11 PM
If you ever need graphics, you can ask in the pixel art/drawing sub-forums. Keep in mind though that it can take a long while to get any contributions, though, if any at all, since there aren't many people.