User:DJ Omnimaga

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Aliases

  • Kevin (2002-05)
  • Kevin9999 (some sites, 2003-05)
  • xlibman (2005-07)
  • DJ Omnimaga (2007-present)
  • ragol666 (alternate, 2007)
  • DJ_O (some sites, 2011-present)
  • Illusiat (ticalc handle, 2003-11)

Site URL

http://codewalr.us

Ticalc.org URLs

Years Active

2001-present (didn't program from August 2010 to August 2013)

Affiliations

  • CodeWalrus (2014-present)
  • Omnimaga (2001-2014)
  • Epic Programming Studios (2004-05)
  • United-TI (2004-2008)
  • z80 Revelation (2005)
  • TI-Jon (2005)
  • TI-Center (2005)
  • TI-FreakWare (2006-2008)
  • Rivereye Studios (2006)
  • Hikaru Rakuen Programming (2006)

Biography

Kevin Ouellet was an active TI-83/83+ calculator programmer during the first decade of the 2000's. He is mainly notable for his many RPGs released, as most were the longest and most complex RPGs developed on the Z80 models, and include the Illusiat series, The Reign of Legends series, Reuben Quest series, Mana Force and First Fantasy. Starting TI-Basic programming in July 2001, he used this language through almost his entire programming career, along with assembly libraries starting in 2003 to enhance his games.

In his early programming career, his release rate was quite rapid, sometimes finishing two large RPGs in a single month. As a result, the Illusiat series, excluding the 13th game, was finished in less than one and a half years, with several other releases in between including three other large RPGs. He slowed down to two or fewer releases per year in 2005, however, and after Reuben Quest: The Lost Mirror in January 2005, it took over one decade before he releases a major RPG again. His other non-RPG products include Metroid II: Evolution, Metroid II: The Last Chozo Expansion Set, xLIB xLIB Revolution and a TI-81 remake of the first Illusiat game.

In the TI community, he also contributed with the creation of Omnimaga in 2001 and CodeWalrus in 2014, which are websites and programming teams. He started participating in online discussions only in 2003, two years after releasing his first game. Omnimaga eventually became one of the most active forums before shutting down in 2008. He reopened another Omnimaga site later that year, which eventually led the TI community in activity for a few years before slowing down.

Life issues spanning from the second half of 2009 until early 2011 caused his health to slowly deteriorate. This combined with TI community disputes (see below) led him to take a step back from most calculator sites and some of his Omnimaga duties (including FTP access). In early 2011, life issues ended, but his health would continue to deteriorate for months before finally starting to improve, and it would never fully recover. As a result of this combined with more TI community problems, he retired from Omnimaga staff entirely in July 2011.

After his health had improved again, he would return as news editor, but his interests were slowly shifting away from calculators, causing him to announce in June 2012 that he was officially stopping calculator programming (although he had actually stopped coding for two years beforehand) and would no longer post calculator-related news on a regular basis. In late 2012, however, as the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition was leaked, he started TI-84 Plus BASIC again and then switched to TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition BASIC as soon as the new calculator came out in Spring 2013. Around that time, he also experimented with HP 39gII programming and released one game. He also got involved into HP Prime programming and plans to release new games for it in the foreseeable future. He also started a new calculator forum called CodeWalrus, co-founded with aeTIos, Pimathbrainiac, juju and Streetwalrus.

Since Kevin started TI programming, 9 of his ticalc.org files made the headlines and participated in POTY surveys (sometimes more than one in a single poll): The Legend of Zelda: Dark Link Quest, The Reign of Legends 3, Reuben Quest 1 and 2, xLIB xLIB Revolution, Metroid II: Evolution, Illusiat TI-81 Remake, Illusiat Complete Collection (which included the TI-81 game) and Supersonic Ball. Both Reuben RPGs participated in the same POTY survey in 2005, along with XXR. Ironically, Sorunome's Axe and ASM remakes of the two RPGs competed against each others for a POTY award as well, this time in 2014. The ASM remake of Reuben Quest 2 won 2014 POTY and DJ Omnimaga won a POTY of his own in 2015, with First Fantasy: Mana Force.

Impact and Controversies

Although Kevin did not have an immediate impact in the TI community when he first started participating, the release of an unfinished version of The Reign of Legends 3 in 2004 led to the creation of xLIB by Patrick Prendergast in response to the slow speed and difficulty that many existing ASM libraries had at the time. The subsequent release of Reuben Quest grayscale led to xLIB being converted into a hook-based Flash Application for faster speed. In addition, those RPGs inspired several people to get into RPG development and use ASM libraries in their own BASIC games. The release of the Reuben series also sparked an article on ticalc.org asking if it was time to replace TI-BASIC.

As he took a strong stance against hostility in the TI community, Kevin was in the middle of many disputes as well. In the early days where some of his games would make ticalc.org front page news, it was unusual for a TI-Basic program to get featured. As a result, those news often started ASM vs BASIC arguments in comment pages, occasionally questioning the newsworthiness of TI-Basic programs. Early on, he denounced lack of respect towards TI-Basic programmers in particular, to eventually denounce obnoxious comments in general towards new members, defend the usage of ASM libraries in TI-Basic and to a lesser extent Axe programmers.

In 2005, he decided that his newly-created Omnimaga forums would have a strong stance against hostility in general. However, from 2005 to 2009, he also started an unofficial campaign to get moderators and administrators of every forum to take action against such behavior as well. This caused extra fights and tarnished his reputation, as other administrators considered that it was up to them to decide what is allowed on their respective websites. It was also made particularly worse due to his sensitivity.

The stricter moderation against trolling on Omnimaga and its IRC channel #omnimaga was highly controversial among defenders of freedom of expression in #TCPA, and the banning of certain #TCPA people from #Omnimaga and Omnimaga sparked IRC wars and many attempts to get Kevin to leave the TI community or close his website. In 2008, it culminated in the demise of the previous Omnimaga website, and per Kevin's request and as a protest against the general lack of respect towards him despite all his contributions, the removal of his ticalc.org profile and files.

In early 2009, after Omnimaga had re-opened due to much demand, he stopped his campaign to get other forums to become friendlier, realizing it caused more problems than benefits. He decided to take a different approach instead, focusing entirely on Omnimaga's hostility-free mentality to attract members. After over a year of no disputes or attacks, Kevin eventually put his calculator releases back on ticalc.org. In 2011, a rivalry started between Cemetech and Omnimaga, as both forums were very active, but had opposite mentalities on many fronts. This led to another peak of disputes in March and April 2011. Since some people involved in the 2008 disputes became involved again, Kevin responded by pulling his ticalc.org files again for another two years. This eventually led to his retirement from Omnimaga as an administrator in July 2011.

He has since returned into TI and HP programming and co-founded a new calculator and mobile forums, called CodeWalrus, which remained private until January 1st 2015. That new website caused controversy when it was first leaked, as it came out at a time where the TI community is shrinking in size, but due to demand and the differences in policies, arguably preventing the website from being redundant, CodeWalrus was finally accepted better than previously expected by the TI community.

Releases

2001

Sep
Illusiat
Oct
Illusiat 2
Illusiat 3
Nov
Donjon (lost in memory clear)

2002

Jan
Illusiat 4 (lost in memory clear)
Mar
Mortal Kombat
May
Omnipack & Omnipack SE game bundles (includes Mortal Kombat)
Mana Force
Jun
Illusiat 6
Jul
Illusiat 7: The Legend of GWAF
Illusiat 8
Aug
Illusiat 9: Shadow
Sep
Illusiat 10
Oct
Illusiat 11
Nov
Mystique: La Larme du Dragon
Dec
Illusiat 12

2003

Jan
Illusiat 5: The Ultimate Quest (Calculator remake from 2002 PC game)
Feb
The Reign of Legends
May
Mana Force 2
Jul
The Reign of Legends 2
Sep
Illusiat 2004 (Remakes of Illusiat 1 to 4)
Nov
Nemesiat (TI-82 STATS/83 re-release of Illusiat 6)

2004

Jun
The Reign of Legends 3
Oct
The Legend of Zelda: Dark Link Quest
Dec
Reuben Quest: Ev Awakening

2005

Jan
Reuben Quest: The Lost Mirror
Apr
Diortem (Unfinished Metroid clone that ultimately became Metroid II: Evolution)
Oct
Xlib Xlib Revolution

2006

May
Super Mario Smash Dance
Jun
Metroid II: Evolution

2007

Aug
Illusiat 11: Kin Master Quest
Nov
Metroid II: The Last Chozo Expansion Set

2008

Dec
Illusiat TI-81 Remake (ported to all Z80 models)

2009

Jul
Illusiat 13: The Final Chapter (cancelled, but close to finished)

2010

Mar
Axe Tunnel
Apr
Eat Nethams: The Game

2011

2012

2013

Mar
HP 39gII Grayscale Tunnel
Apr
Legand of Zelda: Sord of Atari (experimental parody game for the TI-84+CSE)
Aug
HP Prime Color Tunnel
Sep
Supersonic Ball
Nov
HP Prime Tunnel TI-84 Plus CSE Demake

2014

2015

Apr
First Fantasy: Mana Force (ported to CE in August)

2016

Apr
Opossum Massage Simulator (84+CSE)
Apr
Wal-Rush! CE

Games featured on ticalc.org (by POTY surveys)

2004
The Reign of Legends 3
The Legend of Zelda: Dark Link Quest
2005
Reuben Quest: Ev Awakening
Reuben Quest: The Lost Mirror
xLIB xLIB Revolution
2006
Metroid II: Evolution
2010
Illusiat TI-81 Remake
2013
Illusiat Complete Collection (includes the entire Illusiat series including the TI-81 remake)
Supersonic Ball
2015
First Fantasy: Mana Force (won POTY)

In 2014, Sorunome released Axe and ASM remakes of Reuben Quest 1 and 2, respectively. His remake of the sequel won 2014 POTY.

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