Yes, we have 2 'big' Atari ST and family (STE, TT,
Falcon) forums - most visited, most posts. In En. lang. , atari-forum
and atariage. So, quantity is there. What about quality ? I see
there plenty of threads with not so hard questions, but replies,
answers often are really poor, shallow, without good links. Yeah, can
see some mentioned, commented in forum here. Could say - some bar talk
level . And yes, it seems that for some talk self is most important,
not accuracy, knowledge. Well, we, who do some development, programming
and like - we have different priorities. Doing good, efficient SW is
all about taking care about details, accuracy. Smallest error can make
it not working, working bad. Plus it is very good to know TOS well -
what is now much easier than in 80-es, 90-es. Thanx to literature and
good pages about TOS details. Too bad that those forum repliators do
not visit them much - I guess that's too hard for them - like to
understand all those terms and other things. At leastt give link then -
maybe some will understant it much better.
About what
forum admins, moderators care most ? I will say it after seeing lot of
it: about own ego, vanity. About same of their friends, crew
people. So, I posted my opinion about originally unfinished game
Jaguar XJ220 (Core Design), what was 'completed' by someone close to
one of AF moderators in 2009, and published for free. Me, unthankful
persona wrote that it looks very well, but game play is not so good.
And what ? That moderator wrote that I should not write such negative
things in forum. Sure, forum is not for writing what people think, but
to write what it's admins/moderators think that is proper there :-) It
is called dictatorship, lack of freedom of speech, writing. I
don't need such forums. And funny thing is that after my PM reply it
came to admin, who talked with me like some Stalin, and I was banned.
But whole thruth is that I refused to obey to what admin demanded,
because it was breaking of own rules. I did not insult anyone on
forum. I just wrote my opinion, and that can be like someone work 'is
not so good' . I read much-much worse comments there, but they
were for 'ordinary' people, not forum staff related. Soo stoopid.
Then. there was another case. when I wrote about Ijor's Pasti page
(yes, only 1 page, and short one existed and esists). How it lacks
relevant details, should release finally some not beta version after
about decade ... And simple kicking out from forum (would not call
it even ban). Typical for egoists - instead listening and maybe improve
own creation getting offended and abusing power, position.
Yeah, that's why we are now where we are. Decline of Western
Civilisation.
Cases of heavy insults and clear lies about someone's work: Marcer
wrote around 2009 how my hard disk 'cracks' caused serious loss of some
hard disk data on his PC. So, he ran them with some emulator. That's
simply not possible - that some Atari ST SW cause data loss on files,
disk areas which are not set as emulator workspace. Concrete it can be
only some DIR on PC hard disk, which is set for GEMDOS emulation, so
some partition C-P for emulated Atari. And all what Atari SW can do is
reading and writing files, creating DIRs to that partition. But GEMDOS type partitions can
not be formatted from emulated Atari - they support only file, DIR
access in them. So, whole claim about data loss is pathetic. Even if he
really lost some data not related with Atari emulation that could
happen only because his PC was crap. As is his knowledge, and ability
to notice some reliability problems. Even worse is that after that D-Bug came with that my FloImg - floppy SW for Windows "can delete whole partitions without
any sort of recovery " - really big words. But that's common when have
no something intelligent to say. How can floppy SW delete/damage
Windows (PC) hard disk partitions ? Again, total idiots. And it came up
at atariage too. Reaction ? Nothing. Lack of knowledge, lack of care
about facts, truth, what's possible. But some talked about hard disk
game adaptations like all they are ULS based - typical shallowness. ULS
is far from being universal ( ULS='Universal Loading System) , and
there is no any support for games using TOS functions/system calls. I
have mages where is more detail about it, and what is %-age of games
using TOS calls . Doing support for TOS calling games is relevant
factor in fact that I did most of game adapts, actually surely much
more than all them together (others who worked on Atari games). And
for the end maybe the best: at atariage his moronhood C.J. wrote that I
copied ULS 'byte by byte' :-) Again big words without sense
and any fact. Funny to use word byte for something what has published
sources (ASM) . What I saw in them is that they 68000 ASM programming
knowledge, skill is not that good. I was better in it even then, with
much less programming behind me than now. Everyone can check it.
Update at Dec. 19 2023:
And atariage forum continues with being place where all kind of shallow
morons can write all kind of unrealistic accusations. There is now
thread called "My
unfortunate experience with Lotharek" - where one member writes
about his problems with UltraSatan firmware corruption, and how
Lotharek reacted not well on his demand to fix it under warranty
period. I will not go in that case, although have some ideas about what
really caused that firmware corruption. For me it became interesting
when someone explicitly accused my hard disk game adapts for causing
it. Sure, some changes in game code - which are necessary in case of
games with direct floppy controller code redirected to hard disk
(because it needs to work from hard disk (now rather from Flash card)
will damage UltraSatan firmware. First of all: that code in universal
(not like so called ULS), and is for all types of hard disk adapters
for Atari ST serial. Access to hard disk/Flash card is always via
active driver - which is not exclusively for UltraSatan. My UltraSatan
driver works well with SD4ST too, for instance. Could write more
argments, but this is already too much technical for majority. So, let
see more nonsenses: someone (you can go in thread and see who was it)
wrote that Lotharek is who came first with idea that my creations cause
UltraSatan firmware damage. I checked it, and no way. That trolled
persona must be brain damaged thanx to his addictions. I mean, how he
came to it at all ? I checked it at Lotharek site, and he still offers
SD card image with my game adapts. That says it all about what is
reality. All in all, what I can say now, 1.5 years after
getting banned from that place is: admin is idiot. He has no clue what
Atari ST is. He has no clue about people. All what cares is to get
attention, to make some sales, profit. Quality of posts, their reality
matters not. Thank you very much, we (those with little brain) know now
why things are so bad in last years on this planet overall. Selfish
interests controll it.
And selfish people don't care about how much effort might be invested
in things what they get for free. No, they rather listen to big words
of 'big' people - like C.J. He wrote multiple times about how I
stole ULS code from him, and use it 'byte by byte' :-) Well,
anyone with little brain, and more important with some care for facts,
truth can check about in different ways. Is there any support for TOS
function calling games in ULS ? Did D-Bug released any TOS calling game
? Nope. They talked about that majority of Atari ST games is with code
for floppy access what does not use TOS functions. Ha-ha . I realised
some 14 years ago that situation is opposite. After looking couple
hundreds of ST games. And now, after experience with couple thousands
of games statistic is same: some 65% of Atari ST games using TOS
function calls for disk access and other things. So, I developed myself
supporting libraries, TOS in RAM for such games. And still working on
it. But some just don't care. They still use words 'crack', 'hack' and
similar. Things are much harder with solving running of games from hard
disk (now rather Flash cards) than 'crack' - what means deactivating
copy protection. Additionally there are other things - solving TOS
version incompatibility problems (TOS in RAM is one of solutions),
diverse bad code fixes, state saves .... Well, marry Xmas for all good people :-)