Portal NSpire

Strontium · April 21, 2015, 04:22:32 AM

Thanks!

I'm not too good at Lua though, but it doesn't seem like a very hard language to learn.

Dream of Omnimaga · April 21, 2015, 04:51:57 AM

Yeah when Lua arrived on the Nspire, many people jumped into it fast compared to Ndless and C and there were efforts in porting it to the Casio PRIZM. In any case, I wish you good luck!

Also we have a member introduction thread at http://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=32 if you want to introduce yourself

Snektron · April 21, 2015, 12:10:09 PM

Lua was actually the first lanhuagr i learned

Duke "Tape" Eiyeron · April 21, 2015, 01:23:26 PM

C on npsire sadly got major slowdowns as projects were simply ported to this calc. Thus that GBA emulator coming from PSP, the GB/C and Doom emulators/WAD players litterally killed the interest into doing origjnal games as we could access to thousands of games without that much problems. (Seriously, who wants to make/play an original RPG when the FF are playable... :/)

Snektron · April 21, 2015, 02:10:31 PM

Strange. nSpire runs on ARM right? you'd think c for arm would be good supported.

Duke "Tape" Eiyeron · April 21, 2015, 02:11:30 PM

I mean slowdown as the interest is pretty much almost quite probably nonexistant, I think so, I suppose.

Snektron · April 21, 2015, 02:17:13 PM

Oh on that brick. Well, c for the ti83+ etc isn't really much used too.

Lionel Debroux · April 21, 2015, 02:27:12 PM

The fact that very few TI-Z80 programmers use C is a consequence of the fact that the Z80 was not designed for C. The few C compilers targeting the Z80 ISA generate poor code which makes even mildly experienced Z80 ASM programmers laugh at the missed optimizations, which waste both space and time.
The eZ80 is a newer design, with several features making it a somewhat better target for C than the Z80 is, but still nowhere as suitable a target as the 68000, ARM and in general, most ISAs designed since the late 1970s.

Snektron · April 21, 2015, 02:31:28 PM

Yeah, i used z88dk for a bit. A simple test program that printed "test"was like 5kb

alexgt · April 21, 2015, 11:50:00 PM

HOW HAVE I NOT SEEN THIS?!?!?! I have been wanting a reason for using my Nspire and now I do as I am a big fan of portal prelude thanks @Strontium for making the levels

.

Strontium · April 22, 2015, 12:08:54 AM

Quote from: alexgt on April 21, 2015, 11:50:00 PM
HOW HAVE I NOT SEEN THIS?!?!?! I have been wanting a reason for using my Nspire and now I do as I am a big fan of portal prelude thanks @Strontium for making the levels .

I'm not sure if I will yet, I need to wait for @LD Studios to give me the source code first.

Dream of Omnimaga · April 22, 2015, 01:11:48 AM

Quote from: Lionel Debroux on April 21, 2015, 02:27:12 PM
The fact that very few TI-Z80 programmers use C is a consequence of the fact that the Z80 was not designed for C. The few C compilers targeting the Z80 ISA generate poor code which makes even mildly experienced Z80 ASM programmers laugh at the missed optimizations, which waste both space and time.
The eZ80 is a newer design, with several features making it a somewhat better target for C than the Z80 is, but still nowhere as suitable a target as the 68000, ARM and in general, most ISAs designed since the late 1970s.

Yeah back in the days, when only z88dk was available, I often heard horror stories about the compiled code that resulted from it. Apparently it was sometimes three times larger than BASIC and ASM and sometimes as slow. SDCC seems much better, but I heard that the speed is comparable with Axe, if not slower. Axe is more suitable than C for that platform because Quigibo designed it specifically for such processor.

As for Nspire, I heard that it's a major PITA to setup an Nspire environment compared to a HP PPL, TI-84+ BASIC or even ASM one. Plus the lockdowns discourages many people from doing Nspire dev. IIRC that was one of the reasons why Streetwalrus and aeTIos ditched Nspire development.

Lionel Debroux · April 22, 2015, 05:21:27 AM

QuoteAs for Nspire, I heard that it's a major PITA to setup an Nspire environment compared to a HP PPL, TI-84+ BASIC or even ASM one

There's a pre-built SDK for Windows, a build script for *nix, and a pre-built Docker-based version of the SDK for Linux. Could be worse

I didn't check when the pre-built SDKs were last updated, that said.

QuotePlus the lockdowns discourages many people from doing Nspire dev.

Yeah. Why bother deal with a closed, underpowered platform such as the Nspire (or even the Prime, more open, but still without usable access to native code because nobody bothers and also still way underpowered) when you can do far more with a much cheaper ARM-based development board ?
The power-price-openness gap between calculators and real computing platforms keeps only widening over time. Even some Chromebook models are only barely more expensive than the Nspire CX CAS / Prime; Chromebooks can somehow run standard Linux (instead of / in addition to Linux-based ChromeOS, that is), and unlike the dev boards, they feature all three of screen, battery and (full-featured) keyboard.

Unicorn · April 22, 2015, 05:37:23 AM

BUT! Chromebooks just aren't the same as a calculator.

Duke "Tape" Eiyeron · April 22, 2015, 05:57:46 AM

Eyup, calculators are allowed in school where computers aren't.