At 11:30 PM 10/30/2001 -0600, you wrote:
Perhaps it would be a good idea to re-establish the guidelines for this
list? Obviously, the community has changed (which is not a bad thing).
Maybe the guidelines need to change as well?
Out of the ~200 members, there appears to only be a handful of people
actively coding for the platform or offering advice to other coders.
If these active coders see fit to exchange sourcecode on a frequent basis,
that is in accordance with the purpose of the group, namely to facilitate
collaboration, relevant information exchange, and yes, sometimes go over
old topics for the newbies (as we discussed in an earlier debate).
Noncoders are, of course, welcome. They are really helpful in play and bug
testing the games as they evolve. That's what I tried to do before I
started to code. But not every build posted to the list is going to look
and play that different from the previous one, or that it will be fun or
even completely functional. It just goes with the territory.
To me, I don't see an excessive amount of attachments coming through the
list. I'm more worried when a long time goes by WITHOUT anybody posting
their code to the list! We have had dry spells before. Attachments (or
just volume of messages) indicate that people are actively
programming. This is a good thing. In my own case, I typically post a
build once a week, and I try to wait until I hit a brick wall and need
input from the list. To me it's more important to welcome people's code in
order to help them out than to impose bandwidth limits. It would, in
general, be pretty silly to post more than one build a day. I can't see
limiting people anymore than that. Zipped atari 2600 sourcecode and BIN
files are not that big. If 20 people were working on games at the same
time, it would be a different story.
Also, I think it's far more useful to post the complete sourcecode than to
exchange code fragments in the body of Emails. That way you can see the
code in context with the entire program, and maybe catch other details
elsewhere while reviewing.
I also prefer the attachments in the list instead of, let's say, an HTML
link. That way they get added to the overall Biglist archive, for posterity.
Stellalist really isn't here to entertain. It's primarily a utilitarian,
rather than a social group. I think AtariAge has become the place to be
for more casual of discussions.
I did not call a stop to the computer science thread because I think
general computer science theory is highly relevant to any programming
endeavor, including the 2600. I know some people thought that was too off
topic. In my opinion it wasn't.
I also think generic game design theory is also highly relevant, or
aesthetic discussions, because 2600 programming forces all of us to be the
designers and the artists in addition to the programmers.
There are other professional mailing lists like the Lightwave3D one which
have many times the volume that this list generates. Since I'm not doing
animation anymore (although I may in the future) I took myself off that
list because I couldn't justify the time each day scanning through the new
messages.
If you are really into it, it shouldn't seem like such a nuisance.
Inversely, if you aren't really into it, it serves no purpose to be here.
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