Guys... If I may be so bold...

The title of this thread is Hijack v74. That means that there are many people eagerly anticipating the seventy-fourth release of the Hijack mods. Wow! Mark Lord devoting some of his programming muscle to the Empeg has been quite a nice turn of events, and we all have some really nice functionality with the robust IR translation, screen blanker, etc. And, of course, the breakout game...

But the real power of what's *already available* in the kernel mods (and has been there since v30 or thereabouts) has not even been explored, and that's the ability to run user applications, bind to the menu, and control the display and receive input. Now all of the wonderful ideas that people have batted around in the forums can finally become a reality, and they can fit in beautifully with the Empeg's interface. Huzzah!

But wait.. where are the goods? Where have all the programmers disappeared to? I thought after this "holy grail" showed up, hackers would be tripping over each other to release new fun extensions to the Empeg... Be it silly games, maybe porting Emptris to the new hijack interface, a lyrics scroller, various information scrollers in overlay mode.. Whatever. There were dozens of ideas thrown around in the programming forum before the hijack mods were around.

I know not everyone (and not even a majority of the people here) are experienced enough to be able to write user applications/games/etc for the Empeg, and that's fine. I also know many of those who do have the programming talent are busy with their real jobs, their real lives, etc... Especially during the holidays. But the thing is, Mark has done a lot of work to build a bridge between user applications and the Empeg interface, and now we need to start backing that effort up with some development on the user side. Mark has made it clear a few times on these forums that he is hoping to see some real effort from the many talented folks we have scattered around the world, and I guess I'm just not seeing it. Even before the holidays I wasn't seeing it. Maybe there are twenty people working on top secret efforts that they're just not ready to share yet, but I haven't heard about anything yet.

I know that Rome wasn't built in a day. Heck, it took me several weeks to get even an alpha version of my trivia game out, and it's still far from perfect (though quite usable.) It's slow and it's raw, but it works.. I was hoping to see at least hints that other people were planning on doing stuff which integrates with the hijack kernel, and I'm a little disappointed that we're sitting around here waiting for new releases of the kernel when the real magic of the kernel is already in there... I see any changes Mark makes now as "bells and whistles" and maybe a few refinements... The real power is now in the hands of all of us Joe Linuxes around here, so let's do something with it instead of waiting for v9241 of the hijack kernel.


Disclaimer: This post is in no way directed towards those who have already spoken here, it's more of a general comment on the stagnant state of development on the Empeg lately.