RetroChallenge October 2021

Wow, how time flies. I continued to work on several fronts throughout the month but didn't have much to share. I completed a number of Pull Requests into Total Replay to provide game help which ensured that I completed Hacktoberfest, but as I went I tried a few different methods of keeping my local repository updated with changes from 4am's upstream master. This helped improve my understanding of the mechanics of Github - Github desktop and I would like to be able to say that I have a solid process to follow that I can now document for others - but I'm still not sure if there may be a better way. I guess I can document what I do and take feedback from those that may follow. With the end of the month looming on the calendar, I reviewed my goals and accepted that I was probably unable to meet them within the timeframe left. But I took a shot at converting my rough notes on an activity flowchart into an actual interactive flow chart to see what it may look like. The result all

Day 5 Revisited the cover art and game help lists to confirm they have latest titles Day 6 Created Info tab on the Games without Cover Art sheet Day 7 Wrestled with GitHub PR & branch. I don't really understand how to use GitHub desktop to keep my local repository synchronised with an upstream repository in a way that keeps the synchronisations from appearing in my commit lists for PR requests. I feel like I'm doing something incorrectly. I've found three different ways to update my local repo but my Game help PRs have 1 file and an increasing number of commits. If anyone has experience in this and can explain it, I would appreciate it. If I can't work it out - how are the untrained masses going to follow my documentation? Day 8 Submitted PR#3: Game help for Raster Blaster - a classic pinball game. This uses the paddle buttons for the flippers which are also triggered by the open and closed apple keys on the Apple //e keyboard. Frustratingly, closed apple which appe

Day 3 I took a break from RetroChallenge and started my #Hacktoberfest activities by creating a game help page for Crazy Mazey - which just happens to be the first game I ever owned. PR #1 done and merged. I reviewed the Poll results and was shocked to see that 1/3 of responders had not heard of Total Replay. Not as surprising was that 1/2 of responders did not know that Total Replay needed help. This is my target audience! Day 4 I continued my #Hacktoberfest activities by contributing a game help page for Crime Wave. PR #2 done and awaiting merge. As part of #Hacktoberfest, I get to contribute to the Total Replay project and consume my own dog food by testing the documentation I have created. So this really is relevant to RetroChallenge. The list of games that need game help had not been updated for a long time, so today I updated it for the list of new games that have been added to Total Replay and corrected any filenames that had been changed. I created a new Info tab and archived

Day 1 I captured some initial ideas about a flow chart that will hopefully lead potential contributors to what they could contribute to. I tried to submit a poll to Facebook, but perhaps did not press 'done' to actually publish it as it did not show up. Day 2 To measure the baseline of awareness in the target community I posted a poll to the Apple II Enthusiasts group on Facebook seeking feedback on what stops people contributing to the Total Replay project. https://www.facebook.com/groups/5251478676/permalink/10161399678118677/ I posted this to Twitter and mentioned it to attendees of the WOzFest 21 virtual event. I updated the missing Cover Art list to be up to date and cross checked with 4am and we discovered a minor issue with two filenames that had caused some confusion - these have now been corrected. I looked up how 4am could accept pull requests to be accepted as valid for #Hacktoberfest and provided this information to the Slack #TotalReplay channel.  I enquired abou