SiCoDe Software

Site Name

SiCoDe Software

Site URL

http://sicode.ticalc.org

Founders

David Hall
Matt Hall

Founding Date

Summer 1998

Years Active

1998 to 2001

Aliases

SiCoDe

IRC Channel

#sicode

Tagline

iNNoVATioN in TI-BASIC

Programmed For

TI-82, TI-83, TI-86

Languages

TI-Basic

Affiliations

Basmic Campaign
TI-BASIC Quality Alliance
TI-BASIC Programming Alliance
Basicoderz Software
MaxCoderz Software
Dimension-TI
Ticalc.org

SiCoDe Software was the most well-known and most accomplished TI-Basic programming group in the TI community. The group not only released several quality TI-Basic games, but also coined the term advanced basic and started the Basmic Campaign and TI-BASIC Quality Alliance (TBQA). They are also the ancestor of MaxCoderz Software, one of the longest running and most illustrious groups in the TI community. Simply put, SiCoDe Software gave TI-Basic credibility and was an integral part of the TI community.

Group Significance

Back in the heyday of the TI community, there were lots of TI-Basic groups and personal sites popping up all over the Internet and TI-Basic programs were being released in abundance. In fact, the three major TI sites — ticalc.org, TI-Files, and Dimension-TI (calc.org) — were literally flooded with TI-Basic programs. However, most of the programs were simply duplicates of others that had already been released and were poor quality, featuring crappy coding, gameplay, and graphics, and were simply not worth downloading.

SiCoDe was one of the rare groups that was releasing quality TI-Basic programs that you actually enjoyed and looked forward to playing. In fact, when you saw that a program or game was made by SiCoDe, you knew that it would be good. Some of their best games included:

• Nibbles Arcade — a full-featured snake game that is comparable to assembly (it was even featured on ticalc.org)
• War — a side-scrolling game that runs at an incredible 7 FPS
• Frogger — a side-scrolling rendition of the classic game of the same name
• Connect 4 — a strategy game that utilizes an intelligent AI
• Ground Assault — a complex multi-player shooter game

To go along with their games, SiCoDe also released tutorials that explained the algorithms and techniques employed by their games. In particular, Brandon Green wrote a series of tutorials detailing game design, using arrays, scrolling the screen, creating graphics, and using trigonometry. Douglas O'Brien and Jonathan Capps also each wrote a tutorial.

SiCoDe coined the term to describe quality TI-Basic programming that is not only technically complex and efficient in terms of size and speed, but is also used to make genuinely fun games. This term became synonymous throughout the TI-Basic community, but eventually lost its meaning as many less than advanced TI-Basic programmers also started using it to describe their games and programs.

They were also responsible for starting the Basmic Campaign and the TI-BASIC Quality Alliance (TBQA). The Basmic Campaign was created to get more respect for TI-Basic programmers and programs. The word Basmic is a combination of "basic" and "asm" (a common abbreviation for assembly), or BASIC=ASM (BASM) as they put it, and the Basmic campaign lasted from 1999 to 2000 with support from several TI community members.

The goal was to get people to recognize that TI-Basic can be used to create quality programs that are efficiently programmed and fun to play. The general attitude held by many people in the TI community was that TI-Basic programs were inferior to and of lower quality than their assembly counterparts. Unfortunately, the campaign was not very effective, as people never seemed to get past the TI-Basic versus assembly debates, and it was eventually discontinued.

The TI-BASIC Quality Alliance was their second attempt at TI-Basic promotion, and it was started in 2000 after the collapse of the short-lived TI-BASIC Programming Alliance (TBPA) that they were affiliated with. The goal was to have the TI-Basic community release quality TI-Basic programs and games under one banner, so that people would know if a program or game was released by the TBQA then it was worth downloading to your calculator. Unfortunately, the alliance was not directly run by SiCoDe so it was not very effective in getting programmers and groups to join, and consequently there wasn't a noticeable increase in the downloading of TI-Basic programs.

Towards the end of SiCoDe Software's life, there were internal disputes within the group about member inactivity and the lack of direction and focus. In August 2000, Tim Parkin decided to start his own programming group called Basicoderz Software with friend Jeff Ruud. He recruited fellow SiCoDe members to join the group, including Brandon Green, Douglas O'Brien, Jonathon Capps, and Simon Flannery.

There was a bitter feud between both groups, as Brandon Green and Douglas O'Brien owned the rights to the respective games and tutorials that they had created while members of SiCoDe. Basicoderz was frequently lambasted by PsychoCorp, a parody TI site created by SiCoDe co-founder David Hall. He liked to point out that Basicoderz was basically a rip-off of SiCoDe, including taking their games and their name (i.e., Basicoderz is spelled 'Ba' + 'SiCoDe' + 'rz').

The Basicoderz name was short-lived, however, and was changed to xCoderz Software in September 2000. Unfortunately, xCoderz suffered a similar fate as SiCoDe and eventually disbanded. Jonathon Capps then joined Cahal Technologies, while another member named Martin Johansson started his own programming group called MaxCoderz Software with Steve Riekeberg, a fellow TI-Basic programmer that he became friends with through their shared affiliation to BASIC Guru Online.

Group Staff

Although there were many members of SiCoDe (at one point numbering more than twenty), most of the members' contributions were more behind the scenes activities, such as writing documentation, maintaining the website, or running the forum. In addition, there were several projects started that were never released, and only a few members of the group actually released any programs or games under the group banner.

• Matt Hall — founder
• David Hall — founder
• Nathaniel Gibson — admin
• Douglas O'Brien
• Max Seckel
• Adam Norberg
• Brandon Green
• Chris Barnes
• Matt Kocin

• Jamie Pateman
• Chase Darden
• Stephen Bell
• Patrick Gray
• Simon Flannery
• Nathan Sanders
• Sean Kelly
• Matt Moultrie
• Devin Symons

• Tim Parkin
• Chris Brotzman
• Philip Abernathy
• Robert Leggieri
• Jonathon Capps
• Kaivan Khoshroo
• Ken Ritzert

Site Names & URLs

(Taken from about page)

The name "SiCoDe" was originally chosen after playing Spaze Invaders for the TI-83, with "(something)code" chosen after Alien Code, the game's makers. This was continued to "Psycode", but we figured that we needed an even number of letters in the name to fit in the centre of the home screen. So it became SiCoDe, sounding like Psycode, but with only 6 letters…

The SiCoDe logo (SiCoDe) started out with this mixture of upper and lower case letters as when SiCoDe was conceived, David and Matt thought the "S", "C", and "D" could not be represented in lower case on the TI-83. Later, we were proved wrong when we "discovered" the "VARS -> Statistics -> EQ" menu…

The original URL for the SiCoDe site was http://www.bigfoot.com/~sicode, but they then got hosting from ticalc.org in 1999 and moved to http://sicode.ticalc.org, where the site would remain until the group was disbanded.

• http://sicode.ticalc.org
• http://www.bigfoot.com/~sicode

Group History

(Taken from about page)

• January - February 2001 - Its downhill from here until on February 22nd 2001, SiCoDe is officially disbanded.
• November - December 2000 - Work continues on projects behind the scenes, but it feels painfully slow to SiCoDe's fans. SiCoDe say goodbye to Matt Moultrie, Devin Symons and Chris Barnes due to inactivity, bringing SiCoDe's membership size back to something more manageable. ProBoards start fishing for money, and by the end of December it looks like SiCoDe will have to find a new web-board (again!). Jonathon releases Maze to luke-warm reception (something about 'not complex enough'), which kicks off another flame war between SiCoDe and its fans.
• September - October 2000 - Phillip Abernathy returns and breathes life back into his pet project, Maskäria, a text-based RPG loosely based on Legend of the Red Dragon, a game from BBS days. SiCoDe makes a major coup in landing Chris Brotzman as a member. Chris brings with him what may be the best RPG written in BASIC on any calculator platform - Dragon Warrior 83. While not an exact duplicate of the original Nintendo game, it shows great promise and could be the most graphical RPG ever on the 83. Ground Assault 89 finally makes it out the door near the end of October, and is coined the "2nd Anniversary Edition" as it mirrors the time frame of the release of the original Ground Assault for the TI-83.
• April - August 2000 - Work slows to an imperceptible crawl, but somehow Lode Runner and PeGz still manage to make it out the door. Somewhere within this mess, Jihad, Golf, and a number of other programs are announced, many never seeing the light of day. Tempers flare within the SiCoDe membership, with most of the finger-pointing aimed sqarely at David. Tim Parkin leaves to start his own group, Basicoderz, taking Brandon Green (who now 'belongs to two groups') and Douglas O'Brien with him. A ridiculous holy war between SiCoDe and Basicoderz ensues, bringing work in both groups to a screeching halt from late May to mid-August. To everyone's shock Matt announces that he's leaving to get on with life (a noble effort), which leaves Evolution hanging out to dry, and fans none to happy about it. The war continues. On August 19, 2000, the remaining co-founder of SiCoDe, David, leaves the group, citing the inevitable movement of life, and a change in the climate of the TI Programming community, as the culprits. This also leaves Jihad way short of expectations (unreleased). The site and leadership of SiCoDe is entrusted to Nathaniel Gibson, who inherits "'the Titanic, after she's hit the iceberg, and the captain's gone off for one last stiff drink.' - Anonymous". This move also means that the website has now moved stateside, crossing the Atlantic to 'start a new life'. Many members leave in the wake of David's departure, and the TI Basic Community begins to write SiCoDe off as lost, and ponders what might have been.
• April 1, 2000 - SiCoDe becomes SiCoDe Pokemon Island for a day, which is too long for some who despite seeing the joke decide to have a go at us for it. TiCalc.org is "hacked" and Dimension TI "isn't hacked".
• March 2000 - An eventful month. Basmic is disbanded after it is thought that the campaign had less chance of meeting its objectives than Half-Life being ported to the TI-82… the TBQA begins discussions on how to reform. We have a short "war" with Novasoft, who at the end of it all go and join the OPA. FourOUT, War, Connect 4, Frogger and Nibbles Arcade are released with the latter securing a lot of publicity - even the neutral Nick D spoke up about it. War and Frogger use a much hyped but nevertheless very "texty" scrolling engine capable of 6 FPS - the TI Community faints in disbelief and awe at our skills (not). The WebBoard gets hectic as it is replaced after frequent misuse, and SiCoDe begins coding another one. Work on Evolution /does/ continue. COM.LINK is deleted and bits moved around. Work in Progress starts to build up again, not in the least due to Devins insistance of working on around 5 projects at once. Planetarion slows right down because of overuse…
• February 2000 - Work starts again. Nathaniel Gibson joins us after deciding starting his own group is too much effort. Douglas O'Brien joins us for perhaps more normal reasons. GA Commando changes to Jihad with a new engine based on B3D G4 (a previously unreleased concept). Much of Work In Progress is canned for one reason or another. We also lose touch with Patrick Gray and Stephen Bell, and Chase Darden leaves. Brandon writes another two tutorials covering very advanced stuff (like scrolling at 4FPS!). OPA accuse us of hacking into their site - fortunately it turns out to be someone else :) Apart from that, Planetarion playing continues…
• January 2000 - The world fails to end! Desert Dry is dropped due to Patrick Gray disappearing, and Brick Block is released to frantic cries for help from puzzled players. SiCoDe Tutor is started with Brandon Green providing all the tips and tricks you could ever need to program "ADVANCeD.BASiC". SiCoDe's first TI-85 program, QPad, is ported. Various games, including Final Fantasy and Golf are started and Work In Progress creaks under the strain. Minesweeper is released towards the end of the month, just in time for the discovery of Planetarion by the SiCoDe Staff. Work stops… :)
• December 1999 - Evolution bursts forward into the limelight with quite a lot of progress happening in a short time. A rolling demo and screenshots are released. Maskäria, a full-length text RPG is also announced. Robert Maresh ports Pong Arcade to the 82. However the real argument is again around Basmic. After an obviously flawed representation of the TI Community's views about Basmic, the Quizlet subject has to be changed. Also, the Assembly Coder's Zenith is host to a large discussion on their message board. Four new members join SiCoDe - Matt Moultrie, Philip Abernathy, Brandon Green and Adam Norberg - prompting SiCoDe to look again at membership size…
• November 1999 - The GA Soundtrack finally becomes available in MP3 format, and the quick and unheralded release of Zap! Arcade and QPad (TPad in just 200 bytes!) livens things up a bit. Not to mention the formation of Basmic, widely regarded as A Good Move, but surprisingly in some circles derided (I kid you not). The hits counter goes through the roof (which is just as well, as we got a new one after Max's Anti-LE slurs!) and everything's fine, that is until the emails arrive… Meanwhile, SiCoDe has a laugh with it's "Millenium" Countdown that on the first attempt counts from Jan '99!… it is fixed by December though. Max releases his animated gifs (courtesy of TISShot, released this month) of GA Commando's weapons systems. On a side note, Soulstice is announced out of the blue by Devin who has been busy it seems :) Two bugs are found in the previously-considered-to-be-flawless GA - thanks to Jeff Campbell who maintained he didn't go out looking :) A year after the release for anyone to notice can't be bad though…
• October 1999 - GA reaches its first anniversary and to celebrate we release a new version for the 83 and 82 (ported by Robert Maresh). Additionally, GA becomes the first TI game (to my knowledge) to have a soundtrack and this is made available (except for the MP3 version which we have problems finding a host for :( ). ORiON is also released, to much er… indifference :) After a long running argument with TiCalc.org's staff, we start work on Nibbles Arcade in attempt to prove that you CAN have a BASIC Nibbles game :) Solstice is announced, a new RPG with loads of features. The TI-Files seems to be dropping behind in the archive matters as they keep forgetting to upload our files. We get two queries about Spy V Spy in one week - shame no-one's working on it. After many comments from people wanting ASCII text versions of our programs, we finally do it. Urban Warrior also becomes GA Commando, with a nice new spinny rotaty 3D engine and units and enemies from GA.
• September 1999 - Three new releases at the start of this month - TPad is optimised, SiSecure now includes CODER and WritePad is released. However two of our members (Matt Kocin and Jamie Pateman) leave, due to other commitments. At least three programs by SiCoDe appear in TiCalc's POTM (Playmate of the Month?) nominations, even though they were released ages ago (this was because we only just got round to uploading them to TiCalc). We wait with baited breath to see whether we win… …but we don't :) Desert Dry Beta 1 is released, with ORiON Beta 4 (are the betas going to stop?!). The website is constantly reorganised (as usual). Finding I forgot to put CODER into WritePad, it has to be updated to v1.01 to include it :) There is a lot of fuss when Matt announces he is going to drop GA2 - I'm sure he doesn't mean it…
• August 1999 - The website has a bit of an overhaul with Javascript 83Menu-style index on a brand new frame, and a large advert/logo graphic. Colony 3 changes its name to ORiON while Global Domination changes its name to Street Wars (just kidding! Wargames, really). Desert Dry is put back a couple of months as Patrick completes coding, and Ground Assault II really begins extensive development (most work up to now was on different ways of doing, and optimising the same thing - namely the graphics engine). The TBQA really begins to roll, and gets a new website at http://tbqa.calc.org. SiCoDe Com.Link is started, and gives SiCoDe users a Bulletin Board and Chat service. SiCoDe Labs is discontinued after we decided we couldn't remain objective in our reviews. ORiON is released as Beta 1.
• July 1999 - Street Warz is dropped as it is decided it wouldn't meet SiCoDe's standards. Perhaps there's a moral in there somewhere :) The website isn't updated all month as the administrator - David - goes off to Peru for the month.
• June 1999 - Two new programmers join us at the start of the month (Kaivan Khoshroo and Devin Symons), taking the staff up to 9 people. But it doesn't stop there! We then gain two more programmers, Matt Kocin and Patrick Gray who specialise in the TI-86, hopefully allowing SiCoDe to expand onto that platform. However, growth seems likely to stop as by common consensus, the whole staff agrees to severly reduce the number of people we employ, to try to prevent SiCoDe becoming hard to control and allowing easy communication between members to occur. On the communication front, AOL Instant Messenger was generally accepted by the staff over ICQ as their preferred method of "instant" communication but then was changed in favour of Yahoo! Messenger which didn't put restrictions on non"AOHell" users. There are now so many projects in the pipeline that only some of them are listed. Desert Dry, a project of Patrick Gray before he joined SiCoDe becomes a SiCoDe project ensuring SiCoDe a top position in TI-86 BASIC gaming when it is released. Pong Arcade is announced, and within a week completed by SiCoDe's Devin Symons who seems to have almost unlimited ideas for new games :) Ground Assault is re-released on the TI-82, securing SiCoDe's position on the TI-82 gaming scene. SiCoDe forms and becomes an affiliate of the TI-BASIC Quality Alliance, in an attempt to develop BASIC as a popular language for TI calculators and demonstrate the quality availiable using it.
• May 1999 - TPad v1.3 and SiSecure v1.2 are released. SiCoDe announces Tron, a conversion of the classic arcade game which promises ASM-style gameplay, and program size. We recieve a query for the B3D engine so more games using the format look set to be coming soon. Soon, Tron Arcade, as it is now known, v1.0 is released and delivers all that it promised. Warzone is dropped by Matt as he cannot understand his own code when he went back to finish it! Problems with the bulletin board are finally rectified by unknown persons. No explanation is recieved from InterNations. SiCoDe continues to develop and expand. Global Domination and Street Warz are announced. Towards the end of the month, a new programmer - Chase Darden - joins SiCoDe to work on Street Warz and Global Domination with Max.
• April 1999 - Out of the blue comes an announcement that SiCoDe's DnK has ported GA and Lords to the TI-82, a move which satisfies the many 82 owners who requested this. SiCoDe at last finishes the conversion of all it's program manuals to HTML format, with the unfortunate consequence that the program version numbers needed to be updated to vX.X1. Nevertheless, the program archives were redesigned and a much-needed facility to view the manuals online was added. The work in progress section is viewed with some distain as we realise there are enough programs on it to last us for at least 3 years (exaggeration!) - we fret over which ones to drop. Meanwhile the situation is further complicated with Matt's desire to program a Stars! type multiplayer game, with internet compatibility etc., when he should be doing GA2… naturally we now intend to include Colony III's functionality in this, possibly dropping Colony III while we do it. Urban Wars v1.2 is finished as B3D G3 is released, along with a new sequel campaign. Unfortunately at the end of the month GA82 and Lords82 have to be recalled to fix an unfortunate error.
• March 1999 - The beginning of this month sees Matt give up Warzone at the last minute (only temporarily), after numerous problems with neverending bugs, and start on the much-hyped but nevertheless eagerly awaited Ground Assault 2. Features of this prove to be astonishing, with 3D terrain promised - but as such may turn out to be memory hungry. Meanwhile Stephen starts work on Magica II - hopefully to be a decent RPG. David continues work on Colony III in between co-ordinating everything and working out some new B3D campaigns. Speaking of B3D, the development of Generation 3 of the engine means extensive work redesigning our games pages, as does the porting of our games to the 82 and 86. SiCoDe Arcade and Misc were also dropped due to the fact that the programs in it were rubbish. TPad recieves 4 Stars at Dimension TI, and SiSecure and PieChart surprise us by recieving 4.5 Stars. Towards the end of the month, work is suspended on Colony III in favour of B3D G3, but after programming hotspots David runs out of ideas…
• February 1999 - If we thought last month was hectic, we were proved wrong this month. Two emails are recieved from people wanting to join SiCoDe and they are promptly accepted. Nathan and Max begin work - Nathan converting Math and Science programs and Max drawing pics! Ground Assault v1.2 was released pretty low-key, and thus no-one finds out about it for ages. SiCoDe negotiates an alliance with the TBPA and ends up affiliated with them. Additionally, in the great Hosting Scramble of Feburary, TiCalc offer to host our site. Eventually we accept. Matt, seemingly unable to break away from programming strategy games, starts programming Warzone, and David starts Colony III - although no-one seems to know what it's all about. Just before the end of the month, a further programmer, Stephen, joins and starts to convert our readme files to HTML, as well as porting our games to the 82 and programming new games.
• January 1999 - Everything starts to roll… Urban Wars v1.0 and Lords v1.0 released at once. Both games (eventually) recieve 4 stars at Dimension TI. Heartened by this, Matt starts to convert GA to the Lords engine and David begins improving B3D - it ends up as B3D G2. A friend of ours at school, Jamie Pateman joins.
• December 1998 - Development on Urban Wars continues slowly until the viewpoints were worked out on paper - then it is nearly completed in a week. Matt starts to develop Lords as a break away from the "modern day" strategy game. Greatly optimised code and, hopefully, better gameplay promised.
• November 1998 - SiCoDe Ground Assault v1.1 released, virtually unnoticed, and now includes the ability to change game parameteres. Urban Wars starts development with an aim to depose Daniel Simm's (honestly, we don't have anything against him!) Quake of TiCalc's Top BASIC Game Award.
• October 1998 - SiCoDe releases Ground Assault v1.0 to mixed reception ("Another Basic game… uh, cool…"). Undetered by this, work continues…
• Summer 1998 - SiCoDe formed by David and Matt in Hertfordshire, UK - Ground Assault to be the first project, designed to better Daniel Simm's Command & Conquer. Both of us had experience programming games in school, and were determined to improve the standard of BASIC games. A website was set up with a view of conquering the world (well, almost).