I am surprised we don't have a topic like this yet:



I have the same internet plan since half a decade I think

Has anyone here with decent Japanese skills got the chance to try Ys VIII out? It came out last month on the PS Vita, but only in Japan. I am a big fan of the Ys series since the mid 90's and played the Turbografx-CD games, the SNES Ys III, PS2 Ys VI (ew at its intro, but we can fix that through cheats apparently) and a bit of Ys VII and Origin. Oh and of course Memories of Celceta.

What worries me right now, though, is that there has been no announced release for North America and Europe, although the PS4 version is supposed to come out in Japan in 2017. And if you remember Ys Origins and Oath in Felghana releases, it took 6 years before it gets localized in North America and they did it by purchasing fan translations. And in the case of Ys IV, it took 20 years before we get an English release and Ys V has yet to come out outside Japan. So I hope for Ys VIII we don't have to wait 6 more years before seeing an English release. D:

Anyway so far the OST is kinda cool, although I still miss the special touch that Ys I, II, III, IV and to a lesser extent VI had. Granted, it no longer abuses violin like every JRPG released between 2005 and 2015, and I'm happy about that because almost all JRPG music sounded the same for a while, but there was something special about songs like Release from the Far West Ocean, Ballacetine Castle or Dark Fact Final Battle extended theme.

They say Borderlands is an RPG, Bioshock is an RPG, Overwatch is an role-playing game as well, Omega Quintet is an RPG, Super Paper Mario is a JRPG, Destiny is an RPG, Halo is an RPG, Madden NFL series are RPGs (arguably, sports games nowadays have a lot of RPG elements), Watchdogs is an RPG, GTA is one as well.

By that logic, wouldn't that mean that Tetris is also an RPG? I mean, it's getting ridiculous how every single game that comes out are now labeled as role-playing games by many people and sites. I almost snapped when people started saying that Bioshock series are RPGs. Even some retro games like Metal Gear on the NES and every single side-scrolling platformer on the Sega Genesis that are not Sonic are being reclassified as RPGs by some people. The next thing you know is that 10 years from now all the games above will be called JRPGs if any Japanese people are part of the development team.

Personally I think that Borderlands and Zelda could be called an RPG to a certain extent, due to how many elements they have from that genre and the level of freedom and customization we got, but to me, RPG also rings like adventure/fantasy/sci-fi. When I search a gaming website for a list of console RPGs and Watchdogs/GTA shows up it gets very hard to find what I really want, even more so if what I am seeking for are Japanese role-playing games.

I think they should just do like they did with JRPGs (splitting them from western RPGs) and split first-person-shooter RPGs into a sub-category such as simulation RPG or something.

Now that makes me wonder, though: What about Super Mario Bros 3? Like SMW, this game is not 100% linear, you can explore and stuff, but in addition to that you even get a large item menu to "customize" your character with a power-up, even outside stages.

For the QCC2016 articles series (Quelle clignotrice choisir, which stands for Which "flashyculator" to choose, in reference to the blinking exam LED soon to be required at exams, hence the made-up calculator word), Critor posted a benchmark of how much time certain rudimentary math and algorithmic functions or programs take to execute on various calculator models allowed at the France final exam (BAC)

https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=49&t=18866

Basically, for those who don't speak French (it should be self-explanatory with the screenshots and code examples, though), the first test uses a graph and shows how many seconds it takes to draw the graph. The screen resolution is then taken into account, so you can also see how many milliseconds per pixel it takes to graph the equation. The second test uses a rudimentary school program with loops and is tested both in regular and CAS mode, depending of if the calculator supports it.

Note that the TI-84 Plus uses the same CPU as the TI-82 Advanced/TI-84 Plus-T so the benchmark should be valid for it too, and in North America, Graph 25+E is fx-7400G+ without exam light, 35+E is fx-9750gII without exam light and 75+E is fx-9860gII without exam light.

You can also see how certain calculators have no difference or almost none for the BASIC math engine execution, such as the TI-84+CE vs the TI-84+, but that drawing speed is way faster. On the other hand, on some models graphing speed is similar to others, but the math engine performances suck.

Anyway it looks like for maths and graphing, the HP Prime wins by far, but the Classpad II (fx-CP400) is an absolute disaster, especially in CAS mode where the program takes 19 times longer to execute than on the TI-83 Premium CE. I am surprised the monochrome TI-84 Plus series isn't faster, though

So I ran into this, which is supposed to be an horror comedy movie, and this scene is a little disturbing



Anyway, the story is even weirder https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tusk_(2014_film) (WARNING: SPOILERS)

A bit exaggerated, but I thought it was funny and reminded me of what we see if anime

Despite the recent DMCA takedown notices that Nintendo of America sent about Pokémon Uranium and Another Metroid 2 Project (AM2R), the TI calculator community has been rather lucky about fan games and demakes. However, did you know that in the past, calculator developers were also hit by cease and desist letters, e-mails or DMCA takedown notices by big game companies for copyright infrigments? This retrospective article will look back in time at some games that ended up on the wrong end of a C&D:

-Monopoly (Kirk Meyer's version) http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/0/2/2322.html
In 1998, Kirk Meyer, a notable calculator programmer of that era, was working on a TI-z80 ASM version of Monopoly. However, Parker Brothers did not like this and he was ordered to stop all development due to copyright infrigments. However, for some reasons he still managed to release an unfinished copy a while later. It's possible that he had an agreement with them later on or was allowed to publish what he had, but nonetheless, this marked one of the earliest instances of a calculator fan game being hit by a cease and desist letter. You can download the game at http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fileinfo/69/6993.html .

-Golden Sun: The Chosen One (Omnimaga) https://www.omnimaga.org/other-calc-related-projects-and-ideas/the-chosen-one/msg4890/#msg4890
Some older TI community members who were active on Omnimaga back in 2005 might remember this. Back in the days, Tenniskid493, decided to work on a Golden Sun clone for the TI-83 Plus. The game was to be called Golden Sun: The Chosen One and featured some of the nicest xLIB BASIC graphics at the time. However, Camelot did not like that and sent a cease and desist e-mail to TK493 telling him that if he released the game, he would be on the wrong end of a lawsuit. He had to change the name to The Chosen One and remove all Golden Sun content from the game. Like many calculator RPGs, this one was never finished nor released, but this incident was the same year as MaxCoderz' April Fools joke about Metroid getting a C&D (remember that, @tr1p1ea ? For other people, see below.) and it was enough to give the chills to authors of other calculator fan games originally released by other big companies.

-Space Station Pheta http://maxcoderz.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=24389#p24389
Threefingeredguy got lucky on that one, but it still gave all of us a good scare, plus it happened shortly before the Golden Sun incident and after April Fools 2005's MaxCoderz joke. The authors of the original Space Station Pheta discovered that 3fg was porting it to the TI-83 Plus and were happy that he loved the game enough to port it, but not the fact he didn't ask them first. They, however, were nice, and allowed him to continue on. But there was a catch: Development was restricted to the TI-83+/84+ per the original game maker's request. Unlike Golden Sun, this game came out and we were graced with a great calculator classic. Nonetheless, think twice before porting it to a color calculator!


Feel free to share more in the comments below this article if you remember similar fan game DMCA/C&D incidents in the TI community or if you saw any happen in the Casio or HP community. But before we stop writing, let's now look at other similar incidents that happened in the TI community, but instead of involving a calculator fan game and a big game company, involved the TI community vs Texas Instruments themselves:

-TI-News C&D from TI requesting site name change http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/4/40/40306.html
Although this also had something to do with a ROM sharing C&D, TI asked them to change their names too in the process. That part of the C&D was countered, though, so TI-News could keep their name. Can you imagine if TI started disallowing all sites to use TI in their names or domain name?

-TI-83+/84+ Private RSA key factoring
This is the most widely known episode of DMCA takedown notices in the TI community, as it made news on several sites outside the TI community. TI requested that people take down the private RSA keys from their website. With the help of the EFF, the initial DMCA takedown notices were countered, no reply was received then as a result people were able to host the keys again. However, over the years TI responded by locking their calculators even more against hacking (such as using 1024 and 2048 bits RSA keys instead of 512, which cannot be factored in a reasonable amount of time with today's technology)

-Ndless 1.1 and OS 1.1 hosting (this one is a bit of a grey area, but is included anyway due to the nature of it)
Hosting Nspire OS 1.7 and 2.0 without TI's permission? No problem. OS 1.1, on the other hand? Cease and desist letter! Back in 2010, TI-BANK hosted copies of all TI-Nspire OSes on their website for future posterity, as TI was taking down legacy files from their website one by one. Back then, Ndless 1.0 and 1.1 only ran on OS 1.1, so TI sent a lawyer letter to TI-BANK requesting the removal of the latter. It was seen as a direct attack towards Ndless rather than IP protection, because the C&D letter only targeted OS 1.1, despite all other OSes being very easy to find on TI-BANK.


The following were fake and pure satire, but still relevant to copyright issues:

-Playboy sues Ticalc.org for usage of the POTM acronym http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/1/14/14996.html
One of the first Ticalc.org fake news (red-border).

-DMCA takedown notice for using Keyfont in Omni logo https://www.omnimaga.org/news/ti-sends-dmca-takedown-notice-to-omnimaga-for-key-font-usage/
April Fools Day 2010. This one was a parody of the RSA key factoring incident, to make fun of TI actions against the TI community at the time.

-Metroid (MaxCoderz version) http://maxcoderz.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=507
April Fools Day 2005. Joe Pemberton receives a cease and desist letter from Nintendo forcing him to stop development of Metroid for the TI-83/83+ to avoid legal action being taken against him. Thankfully this was fake (although the game never came out anyway), but it scared us enough to make me consider renaming Zelda: Dark Link Quest to "The Dark Curse". This April Fools joke is still mentionned every few year on April 2nd in the TI community.

This topic has been moved to Randomness.

https://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=1494.0

I posted this several years ago on Omnimaga and Cemetech already, but when I saw this I thought this would be the occasion to necro-cross-post this here too. When you take animated screenshots or record video footage of gameplay, tutorials or whatever, here are some advices:

-Once capture starts, wait at least 15 minutes before taking any action on the emulated calculator. People will be very happy to wait until the program you wanted to show is ran. Plus nobody cares about dial-up and 3G bandwidth anymore, anyway.

-Also, people usually don't mind waiting an additional 5 minute if you mess up several times when trying to select commands in the CATALOG or programs in the calculator PRGM menu, same when you type on the home screen, so don't worry about this too much either. People will be fine.

-An extra advice I'm adding also is about tutorials: Instead of inserting text using your favorite video editor and displaying it instantly, record yourself opening a tiny Notepad window, where you slowly type (and correct several times) your tutorial text.

-For Youtube videos, your intro should be at least 5 minutes long and be the only part of the video that is recorded horizontally.

-It's all about the clickbait, so it's fine if 99% of your gameplay showcase or tutorial video is just talking about random stuff for 15 minutes before you finally get to the point, then conclude with 5 extra minutes of talking. It also gives the watcher the extra challenge of trying to find the actual content by skipping through the video over and over.

EDIT by DJ: Topic split from Birthday thread https://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=1529.0

Quote from: Travis on August 11, 2016, 07:45:37 PM
Thanks everyone. I decided to give the HP Prime a try, because it seems possible that I could create some nifty programs with good performance on it. Once I learn my way around, we'll see, provided I can get computer/calc transfer working.

Wow nice that you got a Prime. I need to start coding on it again. You can do amazing stuff that rivals some CE ASM and C games, in HP PPL.

This time, the Monthly CW Project Award did not result in a tie. 14 members voted in the July 2016 edition and the results are now out:

Internet on the Casio PRIZM is the winner of the Montly CW Project Award for July 2016. Congratulations @Juju and great job to everyone else for their contributions!

Monthly CW Project Award winners list as of August 11th 2016:
June 2016: (84+CE) ICE Compiler v1.1
July 2016: (fx-CG10/20) Internet on Casio PRIZM

After 9 years of developement, Pokémon Uranium is now released!



It's a fan game based on Pokémon franchise, featuring 150 new creatures, but with a twist: all of them are of nuclear type! During your usual gotta-catch-em-all quest, you will also have to save everyone from numerous nuclear meltdowns around. And no, sorry, despite being irradiated, our walruses aren't in the game.

Because of what recently happened to AM2R, we recommend that you take a small break from Pokémon Go,  hurry up and download this game before it's taken down:

http://www.pokemonuranium.com/download/

Source:  https://twitter.com/RPGSite/status/763567631009918976

Some of you might be unaware of this, but I did not create two forums in the past, but rather three. Aside from Omnimaga group in 2001, its website in 2004 and CodeWalrus in 2014, I also founded TIMGUL in 2007, which stands for "The International Music Generator Users Lounge". Similar to Omnimaga's history of catering to TI-BASIC and xLIB programmers in its early days, TIMGUL did the same with the music making scene: From 1998 to 2004, Codemasters and Jester Interactive released the MTV Music Generator and Music 2000 software series for the Playstation 1 and 2, PC and even portable iterations known as Pocket Music for the GBC and GBA. Those softwares, especially the Playstation version of MTVMG and Music 2000, were basically the TI-BASIC of the music making scene, and TIMGUL was a community of users creating songs using those softwares.


Despite this console "game" series being discontinued three years prior the site's creation, the userbase grew to the point where the site hosted over 1000 songs and 12000 posts by the start of 2009. Unfortunately, drama then ensued, as well as multiple data losses, including corrupted song files and months of posts. Things stabilized in Early 2010 and TIMGUL enjoyed a revival under new administration, but after I stepped down from Omnimaga in 2011, the remaining administrators of the latter site chose to stop maintaining TIMGUL hosting and their backups became corrupted. Without warning, the site vanished for weeks, until me and Juju offered to host it. With all late 2011 and early 2012 songs data gone and its userbase being completely depleted, we chose to close the site and put it in read-only mode, until its new host also shut down in 2013. Afterwards the posts made between July 5th and April 24th 2012 were also lost.


Tonight, however, we are happy to announce that  CodeWalrus has put what's left of The International Music Generator Users Lounge archives back online. While it uses a different, read-only SMF database, you can now access TIMGUL like any other CW sub-forum or from the Downloads navigation at the top of each page. TIMGUL featured not only hundreds of songs made with the aforementioned vintage music making softwares, but also tutorials, help and support, contests and more. It is currently unclear if the TIMGUL database will merge with CodeWalrus, due to the challenges this would pose, so as a result, it is currently not possible to link old accounts and topics with new ones, but old TIMGUL users are free to register a CodeWalrus account and showcase their old or current work in our current music section, which we will expand based on future demand.

TIMGUL Archives
CodeWalrus music discussion and showcase

So who is following the Olympics this year? Personally I don't know on which over-the-air TV channel the competitions are available yet so I'll need to check that out, since I neither have cable nor satellite. I'm quite interested in soccer and the running competitions, though.

My concern, though, is will the Zika virus spread over the world once Olympics are over or will they manage to keep it out of reach from athletes and spectators? And I hope no athlete gets sick from the polluted/contaminated water because apparently it's really bad. It would suck if athletes had to forfeit as a direct result of pollution-related diseases.

This song:

https://soundcloud.com/placeboing/basketball-remix

It's a remix of this video, by the way:



I had to share because it's kinda funny.

So in the past few years, I often thought about reviving Illusiat 13, but finally never would get around it due to various reasons, such as having other projects, ideas or didn't feel like coding. For those who don't know, Illusiat was a series of role-playing games (JRPG style), written in TI-BASIC (some which uses ASM libs) for the TI-83 Plus and TI-84 Plus monochrome calculators back in 2001 and 2002. There were 12 games at the time in the series, then in 2009 I rebooted the series with a 13th one, which tried to remain true to the 6 previous games by using ASCII art graphics, but was much more elaborate and complete. Unfortunately, 90%-95% into project completion I stopped working on it, except to fix some bugs that were present into the version that came out as-is.




This game is the second most elaborate TI RPG, behind Escheron, because of its length and content (SPOILER WARNING), so as a result, It's 135 KB large, so it requires an ASM library to copy archived programs to temporary RAM files. As a result, it will not run on the TI-84 Plus-T nor the TI-82 Advanced. It only runs on the following models:

(half-speed, full archive required)
-TI-82 Plus
-TI-83 Plus
-TI-83 Plus.Fr

(normal speed)
-TI-83 Plus.Fr USB
-TI-83 Plus Silver Edition
-TI-84 Plus
-TI-84 Plus Silver Edition
-TI-Nspire Clickpad/Touchpad with the TI-84+ keypad

So I am asking: Would anyone today still be interested by such game?

Sorry for the delay, but the July Monthly CW Project Award survey is now up! This month, there were a lot of projects that saw progress once again on CodeWalrus forums.

(84+CSE) Sorcery of Uvutu
(84+CSE/CE) Zargul
(84+CSE/CE) Calcuzap
(84+CE) gLib 3D Library
(84+CE) First Fantasy II
(84+CE) TI-Planet's Project Builder/C Compiler
(84+CE) Don't Touch the Spikes
(84+CE) SeaShell
(84+CE) Switch Operator
(Nspire/Other) Ivoah's Train game
(Nspire/68K/Other) X3D engine
(HP Prime) MinePrime (Minecraft clone)
(fx-CG10/20) Internet on Casio PRIZM
(Hardware) PC Case Windows Mod
(Hardware) CVSoft's Automatically Controlled Amateur Radio
(Hardware) Unicorn's Lattepanda cooling system
(Hardware) SID + Midi on Arduino
(Other) PersianTree PalmOS Emulator
(Other) Clouttery
(Other) Claw Development System
(Other) Ponyquotes
(Other) Non-Euclidean Voxel Engine
(Other) BBCode to Wiki Markup
(Other) c4's 3D Game Engine
(Other) TI Forum Posting Stats History Archival

All 25 entries are competing against each others, regardless of the platform. Last month, ICE language won, which is why it's not included in July's poll. Have you spotted projects this month that you think are more notable in particular or that you liked in particular? Select 5 options in the poll attached to this topic then click Submit! And don't forget to visit each topic again to give authors encouragement and suggestions!

You only have until August 10th to vote and you need at least 20 posts to do so, so hurry up!

https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=18874

Apparently someone got his hands on OS 4.3 for the TI-Nspire in China and apparently, it features more powerful TI-BASIC linking commands to interact with other devices connected to the TI-Nspire. They were tested with the TI-Innovator and apparently worked.

Now the next question, though, is did they patch the exploits used by nBoot and Ndless?

UPDATE (08/02/16): Although this OS blocks Ndless, it seems like it doesn't block nBoot+ControlX. Critor had no issue launching them from the new Boot2 4.3, as demonstrated at https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=18877&p=206173#p206172

He also demonstrated how installing OS 4.3 on a calculator that already had nBoot+ControlX installed will not prevent you from downgrading back to OS 4.2. The Ndless installer currently doesn't work on OS 4.3, so downgrading will be necessary for the time being. Also note that the exploit used by nBoot was patched in hardware revision W.

This topic has been moved to Site Discussion & Bug Reports.

https://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=1492.0

I'm a few weeks late on this but I just discovered that the Sega Saturn has been hacked after 20 years:

http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/saturn-optical-drive-emulator.62274/



That makes me wish the Sega Saturn was more popular outside Japan. It never really did well over here and now it's kinda expensive. Also I heard that finding consoles that still works fully is hard (for example, your game saves were saved on the Sega Saturn itself, but the save content was kept alive with a backup battery like in old NES carts, so if the battery is dead then your saves are gone).

I am curious if anyone will attempt making homebrew games once this is polished?

So some people are making a Starcraft-based RPG and it's supposed to come out in 1 month. I assume it's gonna be a MMO of some sort, but it's kinda cool. Blizzard was not OK with them using their IP but eventually settled an agreement that they can go forward with development as long as the game is called Starcraft Universe, that they don't make any money from the game and that it requires installing the free-to-play Starcraft 2.

I'M glad that Blizzard didn't shut them down completely, at least. I wonder if this will use SC2 engine or a totally new one? I doubt my PC will run it if it uses a new engine, but still, the idea is cool nonetheless.

http://www.geekqc.ca/starcraft-universe-un-nouveau-rpg-dans-lunivers-du-jeu-de-blizzard-sera-bientot-disponible/

For those who are younger and have only experienced CD's, the rebirth of vinyl records and the arrival of digital music downloads, did you know that back in the 80's and 90's, music was also available on audio cassettes and recorded on tape? There was even an older format prior that called 8-track (which I never experienced myself).

Tapes are known to often sound like crap compared to vinyls or even CDs, because of the tape deteriorating over time and the hissing sound that cassettes typically made during playback, but with the right storage, recording equipment and cassette player, they actually didn't sound as bad as what many people experienced. Most people just used those cheap $30 boomboxes or recorded music from the radio on cheap cassettes from the dollar store. Or they just didn't take care of their tapes carefully.

Back in the days most people bought cassettes instead of vinyls and CD's, though, because they were much cheaper. I'm personally not a big fan of tapes because they tend to deteriorate more over time but now it seems that tapes are making a comeback and there's still a factory producing them:



Some Bandcamp artists still sell them too. I'm curious if they'll eventually become popular like vinyls? That would be kinda weird

I found this article

http://www.windowscentral.com/starcraft-diablo-ii-and-warcraft-3-remasters-windows-10-may-be-works

I don't know if it's true and if it's still in the plans, but if it is it would really rule, especially considering how crappily those games run on newer versions of Windows. :O

I wonder, though, if the SC1 remaster won't just be an extra Starcraft 2 expansion or something? Also since SC2 is free to play they would probably need to also make SC1 remaster free to play and make certain parts of the game paid in order to be popular.

So I upgraded to Windows 10 yesterday. It said the system requirements are identical as Vista so I figured I would be fine, since my PC could run Windows 7 more than well. After several hours the upgrade was done. To my surprise, Starcraft: Brood War actually ran on Windows 10, sort-of, and it did not have the color bug from Windows 7 that caused colors to look funny. Of course Battle.net no longer works and I get memory violation errors upon exiting, but I guess there are fixes for that anyway.

Overall, I don't have issues so far, but the overall performance seems sub-par to Windows 7, despite Windows 10 being advertised as being faster and requiring similar specs as Vista/7/8/8.1. Startup now takes over 2 minutes instead of 30 seconds (excluding the time it takes once the desktop appeared to load background processes) and apps seems to take longer to start sometimes. I made sure that as many "Send data to MS" and "Sync" as possible are disabled to speed up performance further, but I'm sure I forgot some stuff (I noticed Windows 10 came with OneDrive, which I disabled. I'm glad it did not have my account info either because I bet it would have synced all my files without my permission otherwise).


So what has been the experience so far for people who upgraded?

We are continuing our series of news catchup articles. A few days ago, we covered TI-Nspire CX, TI-84 Plus CE and TI-83 Premium CE releases in two articles. Now we will cover Casio, HP, monochrome TI-Z80 calculators, a TI-Nspire CX release that we missed in the previous articles and even a NES game!


TI-83 Plus & TI-84 Plus

The Day the Walrus Flew v2

This is a major update to c4ooo's game, posted several months ago. Give it a try if you haven't already.

Download link and discussion


This is the Only Level

JWinslow23 has released This is the Only Level for the TI-84 Plus a while ago and it provides a lot of fun and looks very great.

Download link and discussion


KOS-Tunnel Game

While this is just a Tunnel clone, it is probably one of, if not the first KnightOS game that isn't a port of an existing TI-OS game. Could KnightOS game development be taking off? It's also a fun game.

Download link


Draw 'n' Map 2016

Released in 2006, Draw 'n' Map has recently been updated. It is unclear if it's Spellshaper or lolje who uploaded this new version to Ticalc, but it's nice to see that at least one of them is still around! This tool is a very in-depth sprite and map editor if you use xLIB or Doors CS 7 BASIC libraries for the TI-84 Plus.

Download link


TI-Nspire CX

PocketSNES (new versions)

This is a major update to gameblabla's port of the Super Nintendo emulator for the TI-Nspire CX. It now comes with minimal and full versions and versions with or without sound. With the minimal version, Super Mario world now runs almost at full speed and Mario Kart is now bearable.

Download link and discussion


Casio fx-9860G

Kirby's Dream Land

A very elaborate Kirby clone for the fx-9860G calculators. It is not finished but it's still very enjoyable to play!

Download link (and discussion)


Sokoban Ultimate

This is a simple, but well-done Sokoban game for the fx-9860G with 84 levels available.

Download link and discussion


HP Prime

Sirius Ranger

This is a sandbox game for the HP Prime inspired from Minecraft, and there are enemies that can shoot at you. The terrains are side-scrolling, but generated in a very advanced fashion, as it supports curved and very detailed lands.

Download link (and discussion)


Nintendo Entertainment System

Happily Ever After

So now here is a game that is not for calculators, but rather for the NES. Happily Ever After was supposed to be a movie-based game slated to be released in 1994, but it finally disappeared off the radar and never came out... until last year, when a copy was found. From what we can see, it definitively looks much more fun than many unreleased games like Cheetahmen 2 or NBA Elite 2011.

Download link


For notable releases for other platforms, click below:
TI-Nspire CX
TI-84 Plus CE and TI-83 Premium CE

Continuing our news pending queue cleanup, it's now time to mention some notable TI-84 Plus CE and TI-83 Premium CE releases. As you'll notice, the ez80 TI scene has been pretty busy in the last few months!


SokoMario

This is a Sokoban clone with Super Mario in it. It isn't finished, but the author showcases some of the Sprites library capabilities in this hybrid BASIC game.

Download link


2048

This one is self-explanatory: It's a 2048 game for the TI-84 Plus CE, written in C, and it looks as good as the original.

Download link


Minesweeper

A nice-looking Minesweeper clone by Merthsoft which stays very true to the original PC game.

Download link and discussion


Zombie Chase

Several years ago, Spenceboy98 made Zombie Chase for the fx-CG10 and fx-CG20 calculators. Written in C, he has now ported it to the TI-84 Plus CE series.

Download link and discussion


Flappy Bird

A nice looking port of the infamous mobile game

Download link


Stacker

This arcade game was notorious for being rigged, with the last row seemingly impossible to stack properly due to the game never stopping the block exactly when you press the button. It's unclear if Unicorn's CE port emulates that "feature", but it's surely gonna entertain you for a while.

Download link and discussion


1000 Bornes

This is a calculator port of the old and popular French card game called Mille Bornes. It's a car-themed game which is explained in further details here.

Download link and news


Pegs

Remember this game from Detacheds Solutions' PuzzPack app for the TI-84 Plus? It has been ported to the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition two years ago, but it has now been remade in C for the TI-84 Plus CE series of calculators.

Download link and discussion


Game of Life

A TI-84 Plus CE implementation of the cellular automata program known as Conway's Game of Life

Download link and discussion


Archive Undelete CE

A few years ago, this program was released for monochrome calculators to help people recover their programs lost due to archive corruption. While we always recommend that everyone back up their softwares often, this tool can be very handy in dire or unexpected situations.

Download link and discussion


TI-Innovator

The TI-Innovator is a device that includes a TI MSP432 Launchpad development board and is compatible with the TI-84 Plus CE and TI-Nspire calculator series. Those who liked to mess around with Arduino boards might be very interested by this, but remember that the TI-Innovator was made by TI, meaning that the retail price might end up on the high side. Still, it is very nice to see Texas Instruments show interests in the hobbyist community and recognize that those devices can be very handy in school for learning purposes! The video above showcases it in action.

More information


For notable releases for other platforms, click below:
TI-Nspire CX
Miscellaneous calculators (and NES)

Be careful @Streetwalrus and @aeTIos when you clear the spam account approval queue, because so far this month we had two user accounts marked as spam, even though they were legit members. I spotted both and approved them (and sent validation e-mail), but just letting you know before you quickly reject all accounts without checking carefully.


If someone makes a legit account on the forums and gets rejected, just send an e-mail to   a d m i n [at] c o d e w a l r . u s   then try registering again.

To celebrate Sonic's 25th anniversary, Sega will release a new Sonic game that has a retro feel, to pay tribute to Sonic roots:



What do you think about it? I personally think this could be good, but it depends of many factors. Some Sonic games were filled with bugs in recent years, and the 15th anniversary GBA port of Sonic 1 was one prime example. I hope that Sonic 25th anniversary won't suffer the same fate. I personally liked Sonic Generations a lot. I hope it's not made by the same team as Sonic 1 GBA, Sonic 2006 and Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric.


I also hope it comes out on the NX or Wii U.

We have been slow on calculator release news in the last few months due to various factors, such as life duties, programming, Summer vacations and two episodes of ghost busting that happened in Quebec City last weekend when myself, @Juju and @Patrick Davidson met in person. But it's now time to start clearing the CodeWalrus news pending queue of 39 programs (it's possible that we missed some, but yes, the pending queue really reached 39), so let's start with TI-Nspire material!


nBoot

We had waited before newsing about this particular software due to lack of tutorials and the high risks of using it without one, but it's now time to mention nBoot. If you're stuck with Boot1 3.0.0.99 on your TI-Nspire, once you have read the tutorial the nBoot will give you total control of your calculator, from hardware revision A to V. An example of use for this tool, once you read the tutorial, is that you can now boot straight into Linux on your TI-Nspire CX. Once you have read the tutorial, you can dual-boot, for example, with Linux and the Nspire OS, although according to the news, it won't necessarily give you by itself alone the power to run a CAS OS on a non-CAS calculator model. Make sure to read the tutorial before using this.

Link to tutorial and downloads (Reading the tutorial carefully is VERY important, else you will brick your calculator!)


Wolfenstein 3D

The long-time classic 3D first-person shooter has been ported by @gameblabla !

Download link and discussion


Spears of Destiny

This is the prequel to Wolfenstein 3D, released after the original game. You can now play the 21 levels on your TI-Nspire using the demo version.

Download link and discussion


Witching Hour

Another port using the Wolf3D engine, with enhancements such as a textured ceiling and floor for more realistic effects.

Download link and discussion


KillMinds

Gameblabla has ported a puzzle game based on SupraKillMinds for the Sega Genesis, which was based on Quartet.

Download link and discussion


nSquareCells

Ajorians is back in business with this new TI-Nspire puzzle game!

Download link and discussion


SMS Plus

A new console emulator for the TI-Nspire CX, ported by gameblabla, this time emulating the Sega Master System at full speeed without frame skipping nor overclocking necessary.

Download link and discussion


Temper

The Temper Turbografx-16 emulator port now supports CD-based games, providing that you manage to remove the audio that can be removed from games. Some games might fit without having to remove any audio from them, though. Basically, it's now possible to play Ys I through IV on your TI-Nspire with Temper.

Download link and discussion


nSquirrel

An high-level imperative, object-oriented programming language for the TI-Nspire, ported by @Duke "Tape" Eiyeron . Now you have even more programming freedom on the TI-Nspire CX!

Download link and discussion


UPDATE: Added nBoot in the list, now that a tutorial is available.


For notable releases for other platforms, click below:
TI-84 Plus CE and TI-83 Premium CE
Miscellaneous calculators (and NES)

So not many people might know this, but from 1989 to 2006 there used to be a service and device in Quebec, Canada, called Videoway. It served as TV channel decoder, interactive TV, news, astrology, stock exchange, classifields and had a lot of video games playable on it. It was pretty much the ancestor of Internet in Quebec province. It was discontinued in 2000 and the service remained online until 2006. However, since it was shut down, all games that used to be playable on it disappeared permanently.

Bizbille - Mordicus - Temporel Inc. - Gaston Labrosse - Taupe - Styx - Fléchette - Bowling - Boycott - Plunk - Colorimage - Mr. Chin - Questionnaire - Parchesi - Mot mystère - Super Pendu - Le fou du roi - Hamburger - Polux - Pirouette - Fou-brique - Globe-Trotter - Tikkaro - Échecs - Dames - Black Jack - Poker - Hockey - Crocomaths - Bizzmut - Bon bain - Onyx - Fortuna - Patapom - Formes magiques - Poussin coquin - Tac-o-tac - QBert - Nucléaire - Zipper - Évasion - Dé-plus (Yatzee) - Logix

From Wikipedia: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidéoway

I don't know if the games were remotely streamed or rendered by the device, but they were 8-bits in style, reminiscent of ColecoVision and MSX games. Most games were French translations of popular arcade console games from the 80's:







WARNING: SEIZURE!






Anyway I decided to share because this is an old piece of technology history that has been forgotten or unknown by many, but if you are into retro gaming then maybe you would be interested. Something I wonder too is if it can be hacked but I bet it must be hard to find such device nowadays.

The downside for gaming on this is that you had to use the TV remote that came with it, so some games were akward to play. It also costed $8 a month or so IIRC. But I had fond memories of this before I got my first game console.

I am serious

EDIT: Now that I am back home to write a longer post, for those of you who were not around in the TI scene for long enough, he's the guy who has the highest amount of downloads on ticalc.org and made Phoenix, Galaxian, Orznuid and Pac-Man 99 for the TI-8x series, and we enjoyed talking with him and touring some parts of Quebec City. Oh and yes he had his TI-85





Edit by p2: Just turned the "Dj Juju" into "DJ, Juju" ^^

[spoiler=Rant]I have decided to step down from CodeWalrus staff, due to irrecoverable differences with Streetwalrus view of CW. When the site started, it was intended to make it a priority to keep hostility out of the chat and forums regardless of user status and that I would do anything to make it happen. Unfortunately I was betrayed and as a staff my hands have been tied since the beginning, just like on Omnimaga during my final year as admin. I have no power here and never did. So the site is now under their hands.[/spoiler]

Well, it seems like the province of Quebec is now like China in terms of Internet freedom of speech. According to juju, they now passed a bill that allows the government to block any website that competes with Loto-Québec.

https://openmedia.org/en/quebec-mise-sur-la-censure-dinternet-que-contient-le-projet-de-loi-74-et-comment-peut-leliminer

Loto-Québec is the state-ran lottery company and Quebec laws make it illegal to compete against it unless a certain portion of the revenues are shared with Loto-Quebec and that the contest is in French. This is why so many chance-based contests on the Internet excludes Quebec province from eligible participants, since it's too much hassle to get around our stupid laws. But now it's worse because any website caught competing against Loto-Québec can be blocked at will by the government.

I know it just includes lottery-related stuff right now, via a website list, but IMHO if that bill is declared constitutional, then I think that opens the door for even more censorship by the government in the future and perhaps without people noticing. What if they started blocking or throttling any website that is not pro-liberal?

So the tie-breaker poll almost ended into another tie, which would have forced us to extend it in some sort of sudden-death fashion, but finally it ended with a single vote difference, with 17 votes distributed across the two entries.

ICE Compiler has the extra vote and has thus won the Montly CW Project Award for June 2016. Congratulations @PT_ and great job to everyone else for their contributions!

Monthly CW Project Award winners list as of July 12th 2016:
June 2016: (84+CE) ICE Compiler v1.1

While the massive car crash news was fake, it seems this one is, sadly, real: https://www.google.ca/search?client=opera&q=pokemon+go+robbery&sourceid=opera&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

Basically criminals are using the app to lure people into robbery, eg such as spotting landmarks used by the game and waiting for their victims there or such tactics. There were also reports about deaths/injuries by people who tried to catch their favorite non-walrus incarnations of or others. And the icing on the cake is that this app is so popular its userbase now outnumbers Twitter app on Android.

So while I am exaggerating a bit with my topic title, could Pokémon Go lead to a massive spike in deaths and make some countries ban the app altogether or such things? What I think is that the police should maybe use the app to spot landmarks located in crime-ridden areas and patrol the areas in questions a little more often.


Anyway, regarding the game, I caught my first two pokémons on my PC desktop. But I don't feel like patrolling the entire neighborhood to find more right now

The results for the June 2016 Monthly Project Award survey are now public at https://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=1430.0 , but both the following projects are tied with the highest amount of vote:

(84+CE) CEmu
(84+CE) ICE Compiler v1.1

A total of 90 votes were made by 20 members and we encourage all of them and the others to vote for this second round in order to determine the winner once and for all. This poll will run for three days, meaning that it ends Tuesday July 12th at 1:54 AM eastern daylight time, so hurry up!

So in response to many requests for MP3s from TIMGUL and to a lesser extent a place to discuss MTV Music Generator, I was contemplating putting TIMGUL back online.



TIMGUL stands for "The International Music Generator Users Lounge" and it was a place where people showcased their songs made using the following softwares (although there was also a smaller section for former MTVMG users to showcase their Ejay/FL Studio/Cubase/Reason/etc songs later in the site's life):

Music (Playstation 1)
Music 2000 (PS1/Windows)
MTV Music Generator (North American version of Music 2000)
MTV Music Generator 2 (PS2)
MTV Music Generator 3 (PS2/Xbox)
Music 3000 (PS2)
Funkmaster Flex's Digital Hitz Factory (North American version of Music 3000)
Pocket Music (GBC/GBA)
Music 2002: Club Edition Slinky (Windows)

It also included video and text tutorials. The site was created by me and lasted from 2007 to 2012, although I did not moderate it all the time during that period. It suffered several data losses so as a result, only about 400 of the 1200 songs uploaded there are still available. All posts made from July 5th 2011 to April 2012, unless @Juju can find his 57o9 backup, are gone, but all songs posted during that period were lost long ago anyway.

A similar website, called Consolemusician, existed from 2004 to 2007, but it was much less active and it covered every single music creation software released for game consoles rather than the MTVMG series itself.

What I would like to do is put the site back online, but in read-only mode. Then I would clean up the entire showcase section so that all topics with missing songs that are not available on Youtube are moved to a different sub-forum, to make it easier for people to find working download links. I would also invite every member to CodeWalrus to avoid having to run two different sites that have a music showcase section, especially considering we can just expand the music showcase section based on people's need.

Anyway I think what's left of the site takes about 6 GB, perhaps even less, so of course such project would require Juju to stop using 50% of the CW diskspace as his personal disk space. An actual merge could also be possible, but this would result in the recent posts section stopping working for a few weeks, so I'm unsure if I would like to go that route.

http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/authors/110/11052.html

If you thought that Kerm and PatrickD had many files, think again. On top of that he has an author profile since less than 6 years since his ID has 5 digits.

Woah, is that real?



Apparently it's in Australia and opened on June 4th. It reminds me of virtual reality but with holograms.

I am skeptical though because the video author disabled ratings and comments.

It almost ended all in late April and at another point in the past, but I finally managed to have stuck around for 15 years. July 4th 2001 was the day I got my first graphing calculator: a TI-83 Plus. I always dreamed of making games at the time and that dream was finally about to come true. When I started programming that beast, I was just 4 days away from turning 15, which is around when most people start calculator programming, and it's hard to believe I spent half of my life in the TI community in some ways.

Thanks to those who helped making this possible 

The first Monthly CW Project Award survey is up! For June 2016, despite most members being busier than usual with school finals, there are 28 projects that saw updates:

(84+CE) Bejeweled CE
(84+CE) CEmu
(84+CE) Desert Bus II: I Am a Tree
(84+CE) Don't Touch the Spikes CE
(84+CE) FastClr routine
(84+CE) First Fantasy II
(84+CE) GalagACE
(84+CE) gLib 3D Library
(84+CE) ICE Compiler v1.1
(84+CE) SeaShell
(84+CE) Sprites v3.3
(84+CE) TI-Planet Project Builder with emulator
(84+CE) Wal-Rush! CE Sprites Edition
(84+CSE) Zenonia 4
(Nspire) gpSP Nspire (GBA emu) fork
(Nspire) nSquirrel v1.1
(Nspire) PocketSNES TI-Nspire Port
(Nspire) Temper (PCEngine emu) TI-Nspire port
(Nspire/Other) WalrusRPG
(Nspire/68K) X3D
(Prizm) PrizmIRC
(Prizm) Utilities for the Casio Prizm v2.1
(Other) Clouttery Battery monitor
(Other) Interactive Pony Outline Color Cheatsheet 2.0
(Other) Pet the Dog PICO-8 port
(Other) PICO-83
(Other) Rabbit, Fox and Hunter
(Other) Walrii Fish Nom (Coin Man reskin)

All entries are competing against each others, regardless of the platform. Have you spotted projects that you think are more notable in particular or that you liked in particular? Select 5 options in the poll attached to this topic then click Submit! And don't forget to visit each topic again to give authors encouragement and suggestions (if any).

You only have until July 8th to vote and you need at least 20 posts to do so, so hurry up!

So I was making a screenshot of Illusiat 12 earlier and I almost cringed at the intro, because back in 2005, this was the game I spent the most effort translating to English (the French version came out in 2002) and I thought I did a good job. But looking back 11 years later, I kinda lol'ed because the intro is literally butchered like in some memorable NES classics. Here is the intro:



-Black mage, it's time to name yourself.

-<character naming sequence>

-You have great power in you. The legendary limits are about to shatter, Monster are getting invincible... An unknown force is coming. You must destruct it but to do that... You need to break the universal limits. To help yourself you need to take the sword in the forest behind your house.

-<Character goes behind house and grabs the sword>

-You have the sword that will help you in the


Yes, the text literally cuts off there. I don't know if it's a line of code that was deleted by accident or a typo but I thought the whole thing put together years later was funny. It caught me off guard earlier when I played the game again because of how bad The Reign of Legends 2 translation is compared to this (but few people probably witness it since the game has severe loading time problems). The first bits of text literally looks like something you found in old Capcom classics like Ghost N Goblins. I'm starting to wonder if I actually misspelled Congratulations in one of my games now...



I wonder if you have memorable video game engrish you liked in particular (other than Zero Wings, since we all know that one)?

A few years ago, if you visited Cemetech on a regular basis, you probably have read many user reports about Casio fx-CG10 and fx-CG20 graphing calculators mysteriously stopping working after being turned OFF and never turning ON again. There was a lot of speculation and rumors about what could be the cause, with people suggesting the possible following causes:

-OS 2.00 bugs (kinda like TI-Nspire OS 2.0.0, 3.0.1 and HP Prime Firmware v10077)?
-Overclocking causing capacitor damages?
-A problem specific to certain third-party ASM/C add-in bugs?
-Faulty hardware on early batches of Prizm calculators?
-Transfering files over USB too often?
-Powering the calculator via USB instead of batteries?
-Turning the calculator OFF requiring more power and causing one of the aforementioned hardware issue?
-Very short flash chip lifespan only allowing a few rewrites (like on the early Algebra FX 2.0 and FX 1.0 Plus hardware versions)

It was not very clear to most of us (unless you visited Cemetech Prizm-related topics on a regular basis) what was the exact cause, but in 2015, TeamFX might have found the exact cause: A certain hardware component located near the Reset button. In this post, it is suggested that overclocking the calculator just once could shorten its lifespan significantly, but that only the Prizm seemed to be affected, despite other models having the same faulty component. A new hardware revision came out in 2015, according to his picture, which fixes the issue.

Recently, @Juju got his Casio Prizm back and started developping softwares again, only to see his calc die for good two days later. The symptoms were similar to the past broken calculators, which sparked a lot of discussion about it in #codewalrus IRC with @gbl08ma . He seems to conclude that what TeamFX suggested might be the cause and mentions that on Cemetech, no bricked Prizm case ever got solved. Judging by what seems to cause the bricking and what causes the decrease of this calculator model lifespan, I suspect that my own Casio PRIZM will suffer the same fate within the next year or two (or before, since I'm about to lend it to juju for software development), judging by how I used it in the past.

So what we suggest is if you own a Casio Prizm that got manufactured before 2015, then don't overclock it and avoid using add-ins that overclocks the calculator automatically, especially that those add-ins used the old overclocking method that is less safe than the new one (it is unclear which add-ins in particular do). We also suggest to only let the calculator be powered via USB and transfer files when necessary.

Hopefully, more accurate info can be compiled together in the near future to clarify the issue and hopefully prevent the bricking of more fx-CG10/CG20 calculators.

So I thought I should clarify some stuff about the CodeWalrus Monthly Project Award that starts tomorrow night. Here is how it will work:

1-Basically, once June is over, a poll will be posted on the forums and front page, with a news article listing all active projects this month.

2-In the poll, you will check boxes for your 5 favorite projects or projects that you find the most worthy.

3-The number of projects you can select in your vote will vary on per-month basis, depending of how many active projects there were. For June, there are 28 so far.

4-The project with the highest score will win the June 2016 (or later months) Project Award.

5-Once a project won, it cannot win again until next year.

6-All projects compete against each others, regardless of the platform and language.

7-At the end of the year,  each monthly winner competes against each other in a final poll.

8-You need 20 posts in order to vote.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask below

So I thought it would be interesting to make a poll asking people when approximately they started programming for calculators, but you can answer even if you never touched a calculator too. I have set the poll by three years chunk so that each period spans a specific TI community era. For example, 1994-96 was when ZShell arrived and when ticalc.org was about to come to birth and back in the days, it seemed like the TI community was split into specific eras anyway (especially after 2008 where it's almost like a new TI community started)

Once you answered the poll, you should reply to this topic with more details, such as the specific year you started calculator programming (if applicable) and the year you started programming in general.


I myself started programming for calculators before other platforms, in 2001 with the TI-83+ and a few months later I started PC programming.

So I was wondering for ages how we could search for Super Mario Maker courses by name when we don't know who made it nor the course ID, but with the SMM Bookmark site and Google, I didn't realize how simple it actually was until I read about it at https://www.reddit.com/r/MarioMaker/comments/43962s/how_to_search_by_name_not_within_the_game/czgtesm

So for example, if you want to find a Rainbow Road level, then in Google search you just type this:

site:supermariomakerbookmark.nintendo.net/courses "rainbow road"

And it will return all Rainbow Road courses.

Hopefully this can be handy for some people

So in one of TI-Planet's TI-Casiez Vous article, I learned about the existence of the Casio Loopy game console. Yes, Casio actually made a game console before: https://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=65&t=18769

Apparently it only came out in Japan, only had 10 games and the target audience were girls.  The console definitively failed since they only targeted a then-niche audience and only had a limited game genre range. However, it's weird in the way that it's apparently a 32-bits console that lacks 3D support, but also it has a small thermal color printer on the front.



Most games on it were dating/clothing simulators. Not sure if anyone here would be interested in trying games for it if they're enough into anime and visual novel stuff. Maybe there could be something interesting for them?



Anyway I thought I would share. I am curious about if it can be hacked?

Judging by how Quora forces everyone to register, validate and login in order to view answers to questions, if Quora owned Microsoft, then this is what the Windows 10 upgrade nag screen would look like:



(poking fun at forced sign-ups, forced upgrades, upgrade nags and such crap here)

See topic title. I was wondering if any of you ever met other community members in real life? I am talking especially about people you originally met online, then later saw them in person (such as during a trip).

I know that some Omnimaga and Cemetech staff often meet each others at Maker Faire in September and that past ticalc.org staff often met each others as well. In my case I met Aaroneusthegreat in 2009 and I often see Juju since late 2010. Juju also met Deep Toaster (formerly Deep Thought) from Omnimaga in 2014 and there are chances that PatrickD visit Canada this July so hopefully I can see him

What about you?

Ticalc.org just turned 20 years old today. I remember joining that site in late 2001 when its archives were down then came back a few months later to finally see them back up. I didn't realize at the time the site had been around for so long already (back then, a site usually disappeared entirely after 2-3 years). I remember in 2006 when I was amazed to see it was still around after a decade, but time flows very fast it seems. Today, ticalc is still the main TI community hub for calculator file downloads and contributions and it's still regarded as the center of the TI community by many.

Fun fact: Their current design dates back in August 1999 and still uses uppercase HTML tags (I was sure they were removed a few years ago, but maybe @Travis re-added them for the 20th anniversary?). They also didn't use ads until November 2006 (they had an april fools joke in 2001 where they added them)

Anyway, here's the news and congratulations to ticalc.org for having been around for so long. http://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/14/148/148917.html