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Article #389

Re: Game libraries...

#389
From: Baylor
Date: Mon, 03 Aug 1992 01:36
64 lines
4106 bytes
>>  A precompiled game
>> without source would be fine if you don't want to make the system
>> itself available.
>> 
>
>Show me the interest.  You are the only one who's said anything about it.

	Ok, since this hasn't been kept to email, i guess we can
butt in. I'd like to see it (everyone of course knows i like to 
see anything - free laser printing and some precious little spare
time pay off). I love text adventures, but i love writing/creating
more than playing.
	As for prodigies, i'm an aspipiring native american/history
teacher (native american history is a college major at a few schools,
but i'm aiming at history in high schools - i like young kids better -
no crude jokes please) who's been programming for about a year and a half.
In fact, i never saw a computer before last january (the one before last).
	I think i program fairly well - in a class for CS majors, numbering
640, a 50% fail rate filled with people who've done this before at a ranked
CS school (or so they tell me) (oh, one person i knew was even a professional
40 year old programmer - no idea why she was in there) i finished number 10
in the class. Since then i've gone on to do a decent amount of programming,
and I'm a computer consultant here working towards my CNE and head of
where i am now (head of novell network, top computer consultant). It looks
like i'm moving on to even better jobs (universities don't pay well :) )
and i'm kinda proud of where i am.
	To top all that off, i know several people who are far more 
competent than i am and are much quicker learners. I have met some quite
brilliant people on this net.
	So yeah, i believe someone could program something text/wolf
quickly. But my qualifiers:
	it's easier to do something once you've seen an example of it.
It's probably not to bad if you can dissasemble/modify it and play with
it, and great if it's there to examine closely. The guys who make clone-
macs in taiwan i doubt are quicker than the guys who made it originally.
Not knocking technical accomplishment of the people who've made this stuff,
it's just a little quicker development time when you have something to
pattern off of (or is that just me)
	second, i've written text parsers that did what infocom could do
(or close) in a week (maybe longer - it was a while ago). But i know
some things i didn't do then. For starters, i haven't tried on my system
everything i've seen info people do. Second, while it parses, it's not
real reusable. I've written stuff before and since and i know about writing
"template" programs that make the second tiem around much quicker. Well,
my parser was too hard coded and isn't real freindly for making stuff -
it's not a development tool like TADS (way beyond me), it's just a program.
	There's a difference between a program that runs and and one 
that does everything but clean the kitchen sink for you. And one may
be quick to write, another may take forever (oh, i suspect tads worked
fairly quickly - just because he's revised and improved it doesn't
mean it didn't work well so many years ago).
	And, not saying i know any of these people of course, but quite
a number of crackers/hackers/viri/freaker types are probably quite
yound i'd imagine, maybe even non-trained youngsters working in 
a radio shack somewhere.
	Ok,so this is a lengthy reply; i never was brief. Flame at will - 
i can learn from anything :)
	(yeah, and one day i'll learn to type)

-- 
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Baylor Wetzel    baylor@cc.utexas.edu        Hang Tyson 
Free Leonard Peltier
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From: baylor@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (Baylor)
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer
Subject: Re: Game libraries...
Message-ID: <77019@ut-emx.uucp>
Date: 3 Aug 92 01:36:08 GMT
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Organization: The University of Texas at Austin, Austin TX
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