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The CodeWalrus Programming Newsletter - Spring 2015 Edition

Started by Dream of Omnimaga, June 30, 2015, 10:30:58 PM

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Dream of Omnimaga

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The CodeWalrus Programming Newsletter - Spring 2015 Edition

Announcement
Hello and welcome to the the second edition of the CWPN, the CodeWalrus Programming Newsletter - Spring 2015 Edition! With over 17,000 posts since November 11th, CodeWalrus forums have been host of many great projects and releases so far, along with emerging calculator programmers. In addition to that, we had a programming contest called the 4x3 challenge, where people had to write a game that mimics a screen resolution of 4x3 pixel then work within that extreme limitation. With 14 entries (7 for calculators and 7 for other platforms) and tight competition, we can see that this was a success despite originally being intended as a mini-contest. The results have already been posted at http://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=546.0 , with unknownloner being the winner, JWinslow23 finishing 2nd and Scipi 3rd. Thanks to all participants for their great entries! Remember to check the entries out at http://codewalr.us/index.php?board=34 !

New TI-Nspire emulator
Vogtinator has started working on a new TI-Nspire emulator called Firebird Emu. Beforehand, there were two emulators available from the community: Nspire_Emu and KarmTI. This new emulator brings the best of both worlds by being open-source and up-to-date like Nspire_emu, while being as user-friendly as possible like KarmTI by having a full GUI. Official topics: http://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=520.0 , https://www.omnimaga.org/ti-nspire-projects/new-ti-nspire-emulator/ and http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=16652

First Fantasy: Mana Force release for the TI-84+CSE
In April 2015, a color remake of Mana Force was released for the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition: First Fantasy: Mana Force. As stated in the previous newsletter, this version sports many changes and adds various spells and bosses, in addition to the enhanced graphics, while staying somewhat true to the original in style, which featured character jobs/classes, most notably. You can download it at http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/463/46383.html . The official sub-forum is located at http://codewalr.us/index.php?board=25.0 and there is also a Cemetech topic at http://www.cemete.ch/t11405

An HP Prime Minecraft 2D clone at the horizon?
If the trend continues, it looks like alexgt might bring us a clone of Minecraft in 2D for the HP Prime! It is still in early stages right now, but we can mine blocks and the game scrolls at very smooth frame rate. But given HP PPL power (which even allows one to make a real calculator shell or file manager like Doors CS and MirageOS), I guess it's not surprising to see such program on the calculator. Check out the official topic at http://codewalr.us/404 (yes, that's the topic ID, not a 404 page).

Android for the TI-Nspire
Joshuamax from Omnimaga has managed to port Android to the TI-Nspire, and while it runs quite slow,  it is apparently still very useable. The official discussion is at https://www.omnimaga.org/ti-nspire-projects/calling-all-linux-kernel-developers!/msg401583/#msg401583

Escheron reboot
Back in 2007, a new calculator series called Lost Legends was started. However, the original coder moved on and the project died in late 2008 after receiving little to no updates. The second game in the series was eventually renamed to Escheron: Shadow over Rangaroth, and the project coding was taken over by Iambian from Omnimaga. Unfortunately, after major setbacks, the project went into hiatus for a few years then got downscaled. However, the new result: Escheron: Twilight over Rangaroth, now coded by Iambian and Geekboy1011, is still very impressive and if, this time, it doesn't fall into another project rewrite loop, then this could be one of the best TI-84 Plus RPG ever released. The official sub-forum is located at https://www.omnimaga.org/escheron-bw/ and a Cemetech topic is also available at http://www.cemete.ch/t11487

First TI-83 Premium CE and TI-84 Plus CE ASM games
With the new CE calculators out, people on Cemetech have started porting games from the CSE or made new versions of them. Among them, there is Calcuzap and CMonster, by Patrick Davidson, Portal CE, Puzzle Frenzy CE and Pac Man CE, by MateoConLechuga, and Robot Finds Kitten, from DrDnar. You can view the Cemetech news article about them at http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11705 .

Other projects being worked on
Don't forget to check out http://codewalr.us/index.php?action=forum to find more projects in the works. Besides the featured ones, we got one sub-forum for calculator project showcase and one for non-calculator material.

Staff changes and site updates
There haven't been any official staff update during Spring, but the Elite Coders group was expanded with Cumred_Snektron, DarkestEx and alexgt being added to the team. Congrats to them for being awarded the EC badge! Also, there were issues with social login on the forums in the last month or so, making it impossible to login with Facebook, Twitter and Google. This has now been fixed and you can now use Github, Reddit and Steam as well. Other than that, the site design has been made more mobile-friendly, although work on it has been kept to a minimum due to the release of Simplemachines 2.1 being on the horizon.

Stay in touch!
If you have any submission ideas for next newsletters, feel free to PM a CodeWalrus staff or e-mail us at a d m i n @ c o d e w a l r . u s. They will be forwarded to the whole team in our staff sub-forum. Also, besides the forums, we got an IRC channel called #CodeWalrus , which is reachable from EFnet (where other big TI calculator channels are located). You can also use the IRC chatroom directly from the WalrusIRC shoutboxes on the website, depending of your account settings (you need 5 posts to use the embedded shoutbox, but the IRC channel is reachable by anyone).

Credits
-DJ Omnimaga - CWPN founder
-DJ Omnimaga - Contributor
-Special thanks to people who have contributed to CodeWalrus, projects and news, and of course, the staff.

You can view a forum version of this newsletter as well as past ones at the following URL: http://codewalr.us/index.php?board=32.0 or http://codewalr.us/index.php?board=32.0;wap

If you would like to subscribe or unsubscribe to the site newsletter and e-mail annoucements, go to the forums, click Profile, then head to the Notifications section and the option to check or uncheck is "Receive forum newsletters, announcements and important notifications by email.". If you do not have a forum account, you can now setup that option while registering. Don't hesitate to sign up and say hi or showcase your projects. We hope that you feel at home if you do!

CodeWalrus website: http://codewalr.us
  • Calculators owned: TI-82 Advanced Edition Python TI-84+ TI-84+CSE TI-84+CE TI-84+CEP TI-86 TI-89T cfx-9940GT fx-7400G+ fx 1.0+ fx-9750G+ fx-9860G fx-CG10 HP 49g+ HP 39g+ HP 39gs (bricked) HP 39gII HP Prime G1 HP Prime G2 Sharp EL-9600C
  • Consoles, mobile devices and vintage computers owned: Huawei P30 Lite, Moto G 5G, Nintendo 64 (broken), Playstation, Wii U

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