Talk:Calculator gaming

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Created this page on accord of off-hand remark on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Block dude.  :) —Quarl (talk) 2006-01-12 09:39Z

My experience with calculator gaming was from the 1990s, someone who has gamed on calculators in this millennium please expand. —Quarl (talk) 2006-01-12 09:40Z


This article really needs some attention....Doom and Lemmings on "early calculators"? Sorry, but that's just too much, especially without sources. Is there e.g. a version of Doom for e.g. year 1997 or 2000 class calculators? At most I can imagine implementations of Tetris or simple puzzle and logic games (a-la "Guess the number"...) and most programmable calculators from the late 80s/early 90s even lacked graphics or at least user-programmable graphics, so how could they be playing graphically and CPU intensive games such as Doom ? EpiVictor 21:39, 17 January 2006 (UTC)

I've added links (you could have verified very easily via Google queries on obvious keywords). Lemmings for HP-48 was released in 1993 and Doom for HP-48 in 1995. HP-48 was created in 1991. —Quarl (talk) 2006-03-16 08:00Z
I've seen some of those games [1] and, I realized that what REALLY is lacking from this article is a mention to the QUALITY (graphics wise) of said games. The screenshots on that page remind me of Gameboy or even Gameking games, and the versions of "Doom" for HP-48 on that page are both post-1995 and they look like the monochrome ZX-Spectrum "Doom" (yeah, that was released too).
What I mean is that we must provide a comparison scale and a typical example e.g. screenshots, so people don't see this page and think that you can run GBA-quality games on a programmable calculator. Like I imagined, most of these games are puzzle or logic games, and the "Doom" must be mostly a curiosity, just like the "ZX Spectrum doom" was. I guess you cannot load PWADs on that one ;-) EpiVictor 15:58, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Gameboy Advance was released 2001, ten years after HP-48 (1991). I don't think there's any doubt that the games on 1990s calculaters were at best comparable to 1990s handheld video games (Gameboy original was 1989). Can you see if the screenshots are available under GFDL or fair use? —Quarl (talk) 2006-03-17 04:02Z
Addition: about "Doom" again, it's just something that looks like a 3D maze, at most it can be called a limited-hardware doom or dungeon master clone but it's not an official iD product, nor does it appear to use the same graphics engine as other doom ports. EpiVictor 16:01, 16 March 2006 (UTC)
Given that HP-48's Saturn chip is a 4-bit processor (in effect) there's really no comparison to modern computer hardware or even modern handheld video consoles :) I've edited the article to say they were "implementations by hobbyists", feel free to edit if you still think that's implying too much. —Quarl (talk) 2006-03-17 04:02Z
Well, in the current form the article is much less misleading and leaves less to the imagination than before. Again, 1 or 2 screenshots would totally settle things down :-). I "insisted" on that point because my experience with "calculator gaming" was limited to simple BASIC games such as "Guess the number" or, at most, some simple text-based games for calculators/palmtops such as the Casio PB-100 or Casio FX series, so reading that "Doom" or "Lemmings" were available for calculators barely able to plot user-defined functions in real time...well...made me raise an eyebrow :-) EpiVictor 17:05, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Reverted History section to 10-04-2006 status.

Before hating me for doing this, note that: a) The (anonymous) author who rewrote the whole history section by himself, had a too emotive approach. b) He included misleading and untrue statements (claiming that "exact doom clones" were possible on a mid-90s calculator when it was more like a 3D grayscale maze moving at 8 fps...) c) He implied that a graphic calculator without dedicated circuits for video and sound (and not even an ultra-powerful CPU could equal the performance of a Gameboy, this is just not true.

It's a matter of keeping the article as less misleading as possible. EpiVictor 16:23, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Who says calculators don't have "dedicated circuits" for video and sound? —Quarl (talk) 2006-07-04 06:06Z
Depends on what your definition of "dedicated" is. For example, CGA video adapters were indeed, graphics adapters and were "dedicated" to text and video output, but very few people would label them as "dedicated", for they lacked hardware scrolling, hardware sprites etc. etc. and the whole video processing burden was left to the CPU, in other words they were little more than "frame buffers".
Or, to make a more general comparison, the C64 and most 8-bit gaming consoles contain "dedicated" video circuitry, in the sense that it offers hardware scrolling and hardware sprites, while almost all other competing machines (most notably, 8-bit homecomputers such as ZX Spectrum and Amstrad CPC ) lacked any such circuitry, and had a simple "CRT driver" circuit. Some machines went to the other extreme though , like the Galaksija computer, which delegated the task of actual video generation (including charancters, sync pulses etc.) to the main CPU. Same thing goes for sound: consoles and homecomputers have got "real" sound chips, while the cheapest of the bunch (including PCs and ZX Spectrum) have merely a speaker connected to a TTL line which can be switched on and off by the CPU ! Back to the calculator issue: in general calculators DON'T have scrolling, sprites etc. or even "real" sound chips, but their designs are more similar to lowly 8-bit homecomputers, especially those of mid-90s graphing calculators. EpiVictor 13:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)
I guess you mean "special-purpose" vs "general-purpose". This is a tangent, but just to clarify, just because a piece of hardware (or software) is general purpose does not mean it cannot do something that specialized hardware can do. For example, one can run a gameboy emulator on a modern desktop computer using completely general software emulation at performance much higher than the gameboy itself could on specialized hardware. —Quarl (talk) 2006-07-05 03:02Z
Exactly....too bad graphic calculators, especially the HP-48 class ones, are barely as powerful as a first generation Gameboy even in "pure" CPU power terms. Just strip a Gameboy of its hardware-aided scrolling, sprites, sound chip (well, I guess you can leave on an Amstrad-CPC like frame-buffered video output) and you have a HP-48 class graphing calculator, performance wise. Of course it can do whatever a Gameboy can do...only worse. Anyway, the debate was about "dedicated" circuitry, which I believe is a subtlety in terms. Perhaps "Dedicated video and audio circuitry providing hardware acceleration" would be less ambiguous? EpiVictor 10:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC)
That information would be useful in the article to prevent misleading readers into thinking 1990's calculators could do more than they could. —Quarl (talk) 2006-07-06 08:20Z

[edit] stub

This articial is a stub it contains non of the following which basicly are need not to be a stub

  • Picture of the Calcuator even better if it contains a game being played
  • Lacks up to date information
  • Lacks details of any culture surrounding this gaming community
  • Lacks any repsonce by schools to this sort of gaming

This is just off the top of my head this artical should be twice its current lenght , am re adding stub (Gnevin 21:32, 18 May 2006 (UTC))

[edit] NEED HELP

I am an amature programmer, and I need help to program a glider game, like where you would try and get rings while dodging spikes and such. If anyone could teach me how to do this or write this for me please come foward.

InNeed92 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 64.233.238.77 (talk) 23:12, 13 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:Ti-89 game.png

Image:Ti-89 game.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images lacking such an explanation can be deleted one week after being tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot (talk) 02:37, 12 February 2008 (UTC)