I have visited a month ago and today the TEDDYWAREZ (You know, Guru Logic...) page and they are very strange people!!



I know some groups have stop making msx games or programs... but they don't insult the MSX!!! I know also the MSX is not now a commercial success, but THEY MUST know that in our houses and minds, the MSX IS NOT DEAD.



In Spain there is an ex-msx only group (now a very good vintage systems group) named Matra. They are not against MSX!! They support it very good!! Why TwZ don't make the same work?

Huh? The teddy's are strange indeed but what does it have to do with insulting MSX? Do they do that? I dont believe so.



BTW: Strange people rock!

I don't know, but when you say MSX IS DEAD and you kill all your MSX programs... I think is something like insult the MSX. I'm also a strange person... BUT MSXER!

everyone has his own habits. you would find me weird as well i think.

You can have long discussions on whether MSX is dead or not. Basically it all depends on you define 'dead'. Commercially, MSX is (was?) dead, but that doesn't mean we don't have to like the system anymore!



Anyways, the TwZ-people are strange indeed but they don't mean to insult MSX. Also, they're still active for MSX, although not as active as before. AFAIK only Chaos is still developing software for the MSX.

Chaos is still active on MSX (hey chaos, you read this forum, right? reply! we won't bite!!), Fader is active on PC now. Working on a popup stopper called MagicKillah (link). Don't know about the rest of the dudes. The site... well it is strange indead, and looking at the activity around the globe... MSX is much more alive than it was 4 years ago. But still, the humor on this site kinda fits into tha TwZ history I guess.

while checking the link, I came across this line:



"Does MagicKillah use lots of CPU-power or memory?

No. MagicKillah uses almost no CPU-power and about 5 megs of RAM. It takes up about 4 megs of harddisk-space. "



Whooah, and you dare say NO to that question?



sniff, I remember good'ol days where 50KB mem was already HUGE for applics, not to mention 720KB of Disk data was enough to store good stuff on to.

Sight...



Thaz what's really the problem these days.. .Who cares if the program gets huge, just buy more memory.. (send your money, fuck you buddy!)

That same attitude is what killed the fun of programming for me in general (see, that's why I don't do windows coding these days) It's just that we, MSX coders, have learned to gain the best out of less.

Think about it, we had/did:



No spaghetti coding (or atleast, less)

Fast routines

Smart data handling

Creative thinking

Making solutions for what was thought to be impossible (again creative thinking!)

Handmade, so REAL knowledge was necessary

Appreciation, which might be the biggest of all.



all that is what we learned on our beloved 'little' computer system.

And see what happens now..

No one cares about arguments mentioned above, or so it seems. Hell, we've got the cash and therefor the hardware to NOT care about that anymore...



Sorry, I'm just an old fool who cares too much...

will the real slim coder please stand up!

I know the Totally Wicked Zebra is a very funny page, but I didn't wanted the controversial around my message. Actually, I think say that they are insulting the MSX is a bit hard... but they don't want to explain why the change of mind, why "MSX IS DEAD", why only PC PROGRAMS???, I think RO is right.



I am also a coder of vintage systems (MSX, Speccy, CPC, ...). I know what I was saying in my first message.



I didn't want also to insult former Teddywarez. I like very much their games and I have bought all their games... THANKS TWZ. But keep on mind that MSX IS NOT DEAD! Work on it like MATRANET! They are ex-msx coders... but they support MSX (And other vintage systems).



I wanted the truth only.

a pop-up killah? How sad, there are hundreds of similar apps. It does not mean that fader is sad but i mean, there is nothing left to program anymore on PC and co. Everything has been made already except for the HUGE (read: too big for 1 coder) projects....



THAT's sad....

heya RO... 100% agree... BUT:



There's a difference between fun-coding and pro-coding. Pro-coding means that you code for a company, meaning that a product should be done in time.. if that means 'wasting' alot of mem/cpu, then so be it. I spoke to alot of pro-coders, they all wanted to optimize 100% if they had the time for it.



And to qoute a phrase from Savage (an old phonecall): "if it looks good on an msx, it's a trick"



anyway... still agree with the point you made..

There's another thing that keeps pro-coders from optimizing: (in)compatibility. Standardized systems like MSX are highly suitable for extreme optimization. The new one-chipper (no matter how high or low its specs are) will be so as well. Of course, the lower the specs, the more challenging some things can be. But in general, I think we will be better off with somewhat higher specs this time. (If you feel the urge to reply to this, do so in a different topic.)



Back to TeddyWareZ: Not dead yet, but less alive than before.

yeah, I agree with the 'time' argument... (gheh, I remember certain projects never to be finished IN TIME ).



But my point really is, lotsa coders getting lazy or anything.

They tend to get sloppy, not knowing EXACTLY what's up, small focused (read: if it works, don't touch it)

I've seen some shitty code the last years, even HTML (which is soo damn e.z.) seems to be a language ppl manage to fuck up. Okay, I'm talking about the newbies probably.

It just scares me to read 'only takes up 5 meg of memory'.

I say to myself: hmm, that's a fucking lot dude!



But, again, since I do *NOT* make windows code, I really haven't got a clue what I'm talking about. It's more the concern for lazy coding.

Ofcourse I am a controlfreak, so there you have it. I tend to overreact from time to time.



Nevermind the babling, I just cry my hard out here...

(savage might be right on that piont wolfie. ps what happened to your golden... eh, nevermind)

TeddyWareZ is continuing in a different setting. Fader doesn't do any MSX coding anymore and Chaos still does (come on Chaos, join the discussion. You'd be the best person to explain all this. A system can't die. Not as long as there are still people actively doing stuff with and for it.

Okay, I'm at work.. it's friday-afternoon, the sun is shining, I'm all alone in this room
so I don't feel like doing much work anymore.

That's why I'm now going to write a little story about TeddyWareZ (TwZ)
I dunno if you're interested, but I just wanna share this text.
And some people asked me to tell something about what happened with TwZ.

The Past

Since our childhood d-fader and I have been busy with MSX.
In the beginning not even knowing about other people still using their MSX'es.
We played games, programmed in basic and showed eachother the results.

I think it must have been around 1994 we came to know there was still some kind of an MSX scene. 'Still fairs? new hardware? even magazines, games and demos were still being made by a fanatic amateur-scene!!' We couldn't believe it.
And I don't know about d-fader, but when I saw those demo's made in the early 90's, the
only thing I could think of was: wow.. I wanna do this to!

The upcoming years, MSX played an even bigger role in our lives: 'Who needs
education?, we wanna MSX!'

So in 1997 we founded (together with some friends like Hexx) a 'real' MSX group: TeddyWareZ. The year after that 'Teddy's in Action' (demo/musicdisk) was released.
We were very proud, reviews were good, ppl seemed to be really interested in our software. It gave us so much inspiration we came up with tons of new idea's for more projects. In 1999 Blue Crystal joined us, he helped us with GFX and did some coding.

Until 2000 we kept on actively producing MSX software. (musicdisks/demo's/utils)
And boy oh boy, we've had so much fun. A lot of crazy things happened during those years.

But unfortunately the crew lost it's interest in MSX.
I think most of the ex-msx'ers do have the same reasons for this loss of interest:
- jobs/school
- getting older and more serious (this doesn't count for us btw)
- less free time
- girlfriends/family
- personal computers / internet
- seeing other ppl quit MSX
- seeing clubs/magazines (MCCM)/groups etc. quit with MSX
- decrease of fairs/fairvisitors and booths
- etc.

Beside these reasons TwZ also lost interest because the interest in TwZ seemed
to be gone. One thing we always loved was getting response to our products and reading
reviews of them. But all diskmags, and almost all magazines disappeared, so no more reviews. Also, our latest products did not sell anymore and we hardly received any comments on them. (tnx for the ppl who did react )

After 2000 I was actually the only active TeddyWareZ member left in the MSX-scene.
D-fader did make 'Chaos Assembler 3' the cross asm., but he was not really interested
in creating software for MSX hardware anymore. I used Chaos Assembler for making push'em, teddy's in action 2 and guru logic. Sure, it was fun to make these programs (and
I did enjoy working with some new MSX friends like BiFi, who helped me quite much these
years (tnx Bifi ), but I also missed the days working with the rest of the TwZ team.

After a night of partying with d-fader in our town called Assen we talked a bit about MSX.
We realized the whole TeddyWareZ team would never come together again for making MSX software. It was something of the past. That's why MSX was dead for us.
So in a non-sober condition we decided to change the content of the TwZ page.
The next day I already regretted this, but since we didn't receive much reactions
about it, I didn't feel the need to change it back again.

present
TeddyWareZ is history, but no way I can leave MSX behind. Especially not after
something which happened to me last year (no, I can't talk about it yet )
The MSX-feeling in me still lives. Sure, it's different than a few years ago, but
now and then I still got that MSX-mood, and then I decide to get busy. (a result
of this is e.g. the xmas 2002 demo)

Oh yeah, there will actually be one more semi-TeddyWareZ project.
Together with TNI and Snout I'm working on something quite big.
And since it started as a TeddyWareZ project I will use this name one more time.
I hope we can finish the big project soon. It's really going to be quite something Imho.

I'll also change the content of the TeddyWareZ page again. Just so you can download
our released stuff.

Future
Future? hmm.. I still have plenty of game-ideas I'd like to work out
So I'll probably join or start a (new) MSX crew. I know the MSX-scene is getting small,
and I won't reach a big audience with upcoming projects, but that doesn't matter to me
anymore. I'll keep on MSX'ing just because MSX rules! and that's the way it is

Greetz,
Chaos

that last alinea sound all too familliar

from an artist (gfx/music) point of view:
Ideas are like skin! You need bones, blood and organs to give the skin shape!

and from a coders point of view:
Engines are like bones, organs and blood.. without skin it's just laying on the floor, and rotting away..


Anyone with a gold mysterious-looking toybox here?