It's time for this year's second Projects of the Month recap, showcasing a wide range of creativity from Cemetechians. This month featured everything from a TI-BASIC flight simulator to a calculator flame thrower. Be sure to check out the individual project threads and give them your support!

• "AI" on a TI-84 Plus CE: Classifying Handwritten Digits: KermMartian has published his CNN digit classifier to the Cemetech archives, so you can now give it a try! If you're interested to learn about the behind-the-scenes work needed to bring AI to a calculator, be sure to also check out the project's accompanying video and blog post.
  
  
• Attack of the PETSCII Robots for the TI-84 Plus CE: prime17569 has been working on a port of The 8-Bit Guy's Attack of the PETSCII Robots, a top-down action / puzzle game. They also have plans to include the game's original sound track and effects, utilizing MIDI output over USB. A beta version of the game is already available to download from the forum topic as well!
  
  
• Binary counter in tibasic: kelograph wrote a counter program which increases a ten-digit binary value by one until the maximum value is reached. The program's speed and size were both improved with help from mr womp womp.
  
  
• A Calculator Flamethrower.: TheLastMillennial built his own flamethrower, including a TI-84 Plus CE and Vernier temperature probe to ensure the device is used for educational purposes only. The temperature probe provides a way to monitor the temperature of the barrel to keep it from overheating.
  
  
• ETHDRVCE | Ethernet on the TI-84+ CE: ACagliano is looking for beta testers for a rewrite of their Ethernet driver. The rewritten version improves error handling and state tracking, along with a simpler API. They have also provided an example program for those interested in testing the library.
  
• First Fantasy: Mana Force (xLIB CSE & CE Textlib RPG): DJ Omnimaga released a new version of his RPG for the TI-84 Plus CE, making use of the Celtic CE library and greatly improving the speed of many portions of the game. This update also fixes a crash when displalying HP greater than 9999, along with some other smaller changes.
  
  
• MinecrafTI for the TI-84 Plus (MinecrafTI84): kelograph shared a TI-BASIC Minecraft clone for monochrome calculators, with gravity, three block types, and world saving / loading. Give it a try and let kelograph know what you think!
  
  
• Minesweeper for casio fx-cg: Potchkee published a version of Minesweeper for Casio fx-CG calculators, written entirely in Casio BASIC. The game includes configurable board size and more!
  
  
• Reversi (Othello) with FX & Animations – HP Prime G1/G2: komame is working on a version of Reversi for HP Prime calculators. The game features smooth and well thought out animations and is already looking quite promising.
  
  
• Shards of Grandeur PC RPG: 123outerme has published another major beta version of their RPG game. This beta adds significant amounts of gameplay, improved animations, and new music tracks. 123outerme has also added a new battle mechanic dubbed "Runes", which serve as a delayed move effect inflicted as a part of another battle move. The beta is available to download on GitHub!
  
  
• TI-81 ViewScreen modded for reading screen signals using a logic analyzer: rootboy is working on reverse engineering the TI-81 viewscreen connection with hopes of being able to read the data going to the calculator's screen with a separate device. rootboy has suggested using this as an alternative method of dumping the calculator's ROM, making use of a program which outputs the contents of the ROM to the screen and the converting the data using a Raspberry Pi.
  
• TiFS v1.3 (Texas Instruments Flight Simulator): Aeroslate published a new version of their flight simulator, which uses wireframe graphics and is written entirely in TI-BASIC. Version 1.3 adds rudimentary physics and speed, along with an optional addon for a day-night cycle.
  
  
• TInymon for TI83: Targz has announced the culmination of a five year effort to create a turn-based monster catching RPG for the TI-83. The game features between 5-8 hours of gameplay, link trading, and more. An impressive feat for the limited hardware of the TI-83, it's certainly worth giving a try!
  
  
• Train Simulator Controller: Continuing in his endeavor to create an immersive and realistic train simulator controller, KermMartian has begun to design a dashboard to house the other controller components he has worked on. With a goal of making the dashboard accurate to that of the UK Class 800, he spent time reverse engineering proprietary file formats and measuring 3D buttons to design and prototype a dashboard, finishing with a 1:10 scale prototype.
  
  
• [84+CE] TugaCE - Turtle Interpreter: merthsoft worked on a interpreter for a custom Turtle language, written in C for the TI-84 Plus CE. The program is progressing quite rapidly, and the forum topic also includes a number of quite satisfying demo screenshots to inspire your own Tuga creations.
  
  
• A utility for measuring the clock frequency of the CPU on TI-89T & V200: twisted_nematic57 released a utility for measuring the clock frequency of TI-68K calculator CPUs. The program also includes a setting for running without GUI popups, allowing it to be useful as a subprogram.
  

The results from the Projects of the Year poll are in! There were some strong contenders and a three way tie for third place however, there was a very clear winner.

3rd Place winner CEaShell 2 was created by TIny_Hacker and RoccoLox Programs. CEaShell 2 received major improvements including significant optimizations, quick launching any program using an [on] + [0 - 9] key combination, file searching, and even app icons! It's a popular shell so go try it on your own TI-84 Plus CE!

3rd Place winner Hexes Hex Editor was developed by StephenM. They created a powerful TI-84 Plus CE tool to not only edit RAM and view ROM but also highlight what sections of memory belong to a file, display sprites, and even remember your place when you revisit the program.

3rd Place winner Graph3CE was made by KermMartian. This is a powerful 3D graphing tool, a feature that has been lacking from the TI-84 Plus CE since its release! It allows six z= equations, different color schemes, tracing, and rotating the graph.

2nd Place winner Sonic 2 CE was ported by grubbycoder. They made a faithful port of Sonic 2 that runs at full speed on the TI-84 Plus CE! It includes all zones and acts. This feat has every detail documented on their writeup (archived version).

1st Place eZ80 Studio by RoccoLox Programs and TIny_Hacker handily won this year taking the crown of Project of the Year 2024! They collaborated to create a beautiful IDE for writing, editing, and assembling code directly on your TI-84 Plus CE! eZ80 Studio includes syntax highlighting, a custom font, as well as light and dark mode.

Thank you to every member who participated in the poll and posted a project this year! Every winner listed above will receive a custom user bar created by TIny_Hacker! You can visit the projects from Projects of the Year 2024 in this article.

January was an unusually busy month at Cemetech. Perhaps inspired by New Year's resolutions, Cemetechians worked on and finished many PC, calculator, and hardware projects, from games to utilities. A particular focus was on ports of projects between platforms (calculator or otherwise), and as you explore the following list, you may start to detect a pattern:

• [Minecraft] Abba Caving Calculator: tifreak8x released updated monochrome and color versions of his program for keeping score during Abba Caving matches. This Minecraft minigame espouses a "winner takes all" philosophy (hence Abba), scoring players on how many ores they can collect in a 20-30 minute match. If you host Abba Caving matches, or just want to check that you've been scored correctly, download this program from our archives!
• Assembly Icon Editor: Cars and Ice Cream released a couple of beta versions of this Celtic CE-based program to edit icons in existing TI-84 Plus CE assembly/C programs. As they point out in the topic, there are plenty of icon editors for TI-BASIC programs, but none that let you customize the icons of your ASM and C programs and games. You can grab the beta in the topic, and be sure to share your feedback.
• binsprite.html: merthsoft continued his work on this web-based sprite and icon viewer, which can take a binary or hex string for a sprite or icon of any size, and render the image. This month, he added support for sprites in the TI-BASIC color palette and viewing sprites with a grid, fixed bugs, and more. You can use it directly on Merth's website, and of course provide your compliments and bug reports in the topic.
• [84+CE] Block Dude: merthsoft had a productive month: he found and fixed a bug reported by fellow PotM participant Cars and Ice Cream, and released a new version of the game. If you've never played Merthsoft's color-screen port of this TI-83 Plus/TI-84 Plus PuzzPack classic, now's your chance.
• Bubbles!: SomeCoolGuy fixed a longstanding bug in their TI-84 Plus CE Bubble Bobble port, unblocking them to finish the game's Survival mode. They cautioned that school commitments will likely continue to slow development, but it's always nice to see projects that threatened to slide into abandonware resuming development.
  
• CE-NICCC: ST-NICCC for the TI-84 Plus CE: prime17569 used Zerico2005's PortCE toolkit to port their port of the Oxygene ST-NICCC 2000 3D polygon demo for the TI-84 Plus CE to PC. This port-of-a-port looks great, and as an added bonus, prime17569 posted a comprehensive tutorial on how to use PortCE to port your own TI-84 Plus CE games to PC. Of course check out the demo, for calculator or PC, but also make use of this great tutorial!
  
• [84+CE] Celtic 565 Color Gradient: merthsoft (yes, him again) has shown his passion for colorful visual demos many times, and he's done it again with this gradient-generating tool for the TI-84 Plus CE. In fact, it turned into collaboration and/or competition: mr womp womp promptly posted a faster version, then Michael2_3B took the concept of these two-color gradient generators and upgraded to any number of randomly located color points, allowing complex full-screen gradients to be generated. You can check out the different versions in the topic, and perhaps even contribute your own.
  
• Computational Music Theory: Did you know that merthsoft studied both music and computer science, and is an active musician? This time around, he combines these two passions, expositing a way to represent music as graphs (or regex-ish strings). If you're interested in learning or teaching theory of computation, or music theory, or both, this looks like a great approach! Hopefully he'll flesh it out with additional examples soon.
  
• [84+CE] Cowsay BASIC: merthsoft continues his productive month and unprecedented three-in-a-row streak in alphabetical order in this list with a port of the Linux tool cowsay. Simply give it a string to say, and a cow will say it for you. Perhaps merthsoft will later add all the other animals the original program supports...
  
• FamiCalc - an NES emulator for the TI-84 Plus CE: Zaalane has been stealthily working on an NES emulator for last year, and has now announced the project. It can already run a decent swathe of NES games at 30FPS on the TI-84 Plus CE, and although Zaalane hasn't yet provided an official release, you can built it yourself from the Github repository. This is sure to be one of this year's most popular programs.
  
• [84+CE] Fish CE: We can't get rid of him! merthsoft also released a TI-84 Plus CE port of his previous Simple Fish Tank program for PC, written in C with source code available on Github. You can customize the colors of this relaxing animation, and your fish are even saved between runs. Screensavers aren't passé yet, and you can prove you're hip with this program!
  
• Graph3CE: 3D Graphing for the TI-84 Plus CE: KermMartian fixed a few bugs in this 3D graphing utility for the TI-84 Plus CE, bringing it ever closer to a major release. He still has some bugs to fix, but you can download the latest beta in the Cemetech archives to add this missing math feature to your calculator.
  
• HD Picture Viewer [C] [TI-84 Plus CE]: TheLastMillennial has polished this long-running TI-84 Plus CE project and released version 2.1.0 beta.1 on Github. Among the improvements are code refactoring, speed optimizations, and bugfixes, including to the zoom feature. Now's your chance to suggest any features or improvements to the program ahead of the next major release, and if you haven't tried it before, this is a great tool to view images on your calculator.
  
• Introducing: Wolf Manager: AchakTheFurry is joining the shell game with a hybrid BASIC wolf-themed shell. They have announced an ambitious list of desired features, from theme customization to password protection to sending and receiving programs. We look forward to seeing how this shell evolves over time.
  
• Making an F-Zero Deluxe Cartridge (SNES Cartridge ROM swap): I have a soft spot for hardware projects, and Botboy3000 never disappoints. Botboy is attempting to make a physical cartridge of the SNES game F-Zero, namely a version that was only ever released electronically, and then only in Japan. Botboy3000 worked through some hardware challenges, sorted out an issue with insufficient RAM by replacing the RAM chip, and even added a nifty custom label to the cartridge. Follow along in the build log, and if you want to replicate Botboy3000's work, hopefully they'll post a tutorial soon!
  
• midiCE: TI-84+ CE as a USB MIDI keyboard: TIny_Hacker announced a project about which they published an excellent video at the end of 2024: using the CE C toolchain's USB support to turn a TI-84 Plus CE into a USB MIDI keyboard. It is a comprehensive tool: various keys provide simple note input, piano-style, percussion input, sustain, octave-switching, and even remappable controls. If you're a musician, or just curious to try it, you can grab the program in the Cemetech Archives, the source on Github, and be sure to check out the video!
  
• MinecrafTI - a Minecraft game for the TI84+CE: Minecraft is one of the most-requested games for graphing calculators, and unsurprisingly, has been the subject of many completed and not-so-completed projects. kelograph adds a TI-BASIC version to this pantheon, with a beta that has four materials to place and mine (wood, leaves, water, and grass), gravity, and persistent worlds. It looks great for TI-BASIC: be sure to share your feedback, and we look forward to further progress soon.
  
• Cyber Clicker Game [Python]: PaulGamerBoy360 simultaneously announced a Javascript version of a Cookie Clicker-style game and a Python port-in-progress, but as the topic's actual and quite descriptive title indicates ("Need Help Porting My Cyber Clicker Game to Other Programing Languages"), PaulGamerBoy360 is looking for help debugging why the game isn't working. If you're a Python ninja, perhaps you have some expertise to donate?
  
• New crypto mining website. We need beta testers!: To this toy (?) project, Mcdonalds_lover_32 has added converting to other currencies and rehosted it at a new domain. Cemetech members previously figured out how to earn themselves infinity coins, so we edon't recommend investing your life savings.
  
• Nix Flake for the CE C toolchain: clevor is an adamant supporter of NixOS, and has been steadily accumulating a set of calculator projects that can be built by his Nix flake. It now supports 14 open-source calculator projects, most recently adding some of the projects on this list. If you use Nix and want to build popular open-source calculator projects from scratch, this would be a good addition to your repetoire, and if you have an open-source project you'd like to give clevor permission to include, be sure to post in the topic.
  
• QPI for TI-84 Plus CE: slonechkin completed their port of this exact math program from the HP Prime to TI-BASIC. The program is simple to use and requires the user to input a number which is then printed in an exact form: you can download it from the Cemetech archives, and post any questions or feedback in the topic.
  
• Random Things: StephenM added a PowderToy-esque falling sand program to their set of small projects. You can place water, sand, or water, then run the simulation. StephenM has provided a download so you can give it a try.
  
• [TI-BASIC] Shades 84+ CE Port: Michael2_3B released version 1.3 of this long-running (8 years now!) TI-84 Plus CE project, now powered by Celtic for faster, better graphics. Michael2_3B also fixed a significant bug, so you can play for hours and be confident that this cross between Tetris and color theory will register your moves correctly. As always, grab it in the topic, and enjoy!
  
• [84+CE] Spirographic Generative Art: merthsoft uploaded a version of this beautiful program to Cemetech, complete with a more comprehensive readme, and shared videos and screenshots of the program in action. If you're working your way down this list, and you've already tried his binsprite.html and Fish CE, here's another attractive and well-made project to try.
  
• TerrariaCE: Terraria is another popular calculator project request, and StephenM has been working on a TI-BASIC version for the TI-84 Plus CE. Since the original is already a 2D project, it provides an easier transition to the TI-84 Plus CE, with automatic terrain generation, a day/night cycle, biomes, scrolling worlds, and more. You can't download it yet, but you can enjoy the eye candy in the topic.
  
• TokenIDE Now Open Source: More than nine years after merthsoft open-sourced his popular TI-BASIC IDE, he has added support for creating sprites using the xLIBC palette (which works well with his binsprite.html project in this list!). If you prefer an offline TI-BASIC IDE, this is a great option: links to grab it from Cemetech or Github are in the topic.
  
• Train Simulator Controller: KermMartian has continued this long-running project to build a physical train dashboard for playing Train Simulator, complete with real controls, gauges, and buttons from IRL trains. As he nears the end of collecting all the components and building their associated interfacing electronics, he has returned to the question of the actual housing this all will live in. After painstaking work to reverse-engineer the dimensions of the dashboard in a UK Class 800 train, involving building a converter for an undocumented 3D model format, and writing a Python program to manipulate and measure geometry, he built a 1:10 papercraft model of the setup, and plans to progress to 1:5 scale and 1:1 scale soon.
  
• [84+CE] Triss CE: merthsoft couldn't resist one last entry on this list, another screensaver: Triss CE. The original was written for the erstwhile and awkwardly named TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition; the new version takes advantage of Celtic CE for attractive full-screen graphics. If you've used older Windows versions, it might look familiar, but even if you haven't seen this before, you should download it and be mesmerized by the constantly changing patterns.
  

What project will win Project of the Month for January 2025? Will Merthsoft be able to beat this new record for the number of projects by an author in a single PotM post? Will we ever get a color-screen version of the TI-89? Stay tuned, and don't forget to vote for the best completed project of the month!

Hello everyone and welcome to the best projects of 2024! Each project won a majority vote for each month. Be sure to vote for what you believe is the best of the best!

First some honorable mentions. These aren't a part of the poll but they were either extremely notable, or got edged out by one vote!

• January: Bad Apple on Crab Fit
  commandblockguy once again found another thing to play the Bad Apple animation on, this time on an event scheduling planner called Crab Fit. Previously he managed to do this on a Google doc using the comment feature. There’s a longer video of the impressive feat in the topic, so be sure to check it out yourself!
  
  
• May: Gimme 5: All Stars
  Captain Calc created a Wordle-inspired game, which features puzzle sharing, beautiful graphics, different game modes, and more! If you enjoy word puzzles, be sure to give it a try.
  
• August: Calc-Kill Extreme
  linkjt9 released an arcade-style fighting game for the TI-84 Plus CE, including some rebalancing from player feedback. It's written in ICE and makes great use of the language's graphics features; if you're a fan of fighting games, you owe it to yourself to check it out.
  
• December: "AI" on a TI-84 Plus CE
  KermMartian has written the first TI-84 Plus CE program to use a convolutional neural network to identify hand-written digits drawn with a USB mouse! Even more impressive, it all runs directly on the calculator, and he completed the majority of the project over the course of a 56-hour train trip!
  

Now on to our Project of the Month winners!

• January (Project List): tivars_hexfiend_templates
  If you want to view or edit any TI variable for the TI-8x family then you'll love LogicalJoe's addition to the TI-Toolkit project! tivars_hexfiend_templates clearly labels every aspect of the file and allows easy modification.
  
• February (Project List):
  There were no completed projects this month, but you can still view all the progress that was made in the Project List.
• March (Project List): Sonic 2 CE
  grubbycoder has finished a faithful port of Sonic 2 running at full speed on the TI-84 Plus CE! This includes all zones and acts. This feat has every detail documented on their writeup (archived version)
  
• April (Project List): KhiCAS for Numworks calculators
  parisse is well known for porting their powerful Giac/Xcas computer algebra system (CAS) to flagship calculators like the HP Prime, TI Nspire, and Casio FX CG50. Now they've added Numworks as a supported calculator! KhiCAS adds CAS, a spreadsheet, as well as 2d & 3d graphing and interactive geometry. All this can be easily added to your Numworks using their web installer!
• May (Project List): Basic Basic Revolution: The Graphical
  An impressively graphic-heavy port of Dance Dance Revolution was made by StephenM entirely in TI-Basic! The game is quite challenging and you can easily play it without any need for the Artifice jailbreak!
  
• June (Project List): mini-utils: A minimal set of minimal x86_64 Linux utilities
  clevor threw himself into the deep end of x86 assembly by re-creating commonly used Unix programs such as cat, mkdir, and rm from scratch! Although not recommended for production use, this project could be useful for those also attempting to learn how to write code for a complex instruction set computer.
• July (Project List): CEaShell 2
  TIny_Hacker and RoccoLox Programs have released a major improvement to their popular shell for the TI-84 Plus CE! This includes significant optimizations, quick launching any program using an [on] + [0 - 9] key combination, file searching, and even app icons!
  
• August (Project List): TI-Toolkit Token Sheets
  A massive collaboration was organized for this addition to the TI-Toolkit project. kg583, LogicalJoe, Adriweb, and the team carefully documented over 800 tokens across every calculator in the TI-83 and TI-84 family. Their work is stored in an XML file which is intended to be a more generic reference tool for applications requiring tokens.
• September (Project List): Designer
  If you want to quickly make a sprite or program icon directly on your TI-84 Plus CE then you need Frederik's program Designer! It has a powerful but intuitive UI that allows easy access to every xlibc color, direct memory visualization, and even a converter so you can send your sprite to your computer.
  
• October (Project List): Hexes Hex Editor
  StephenM created a powerful tool to not only edit RAM and view ROM but also highlights what sections of memory belong to a file, displays sprites, and even remembers your place when you revisit the program.
  
• November (Project List): Graph3CE: 3D Graphing for the TI-84 Plus CE
  Just before the 10th birthday of the TI-84 Plus CE, KermMartian released a powerful 3D graphing tool which has been a lacking feature since release! It allows six z= equations, different color schemes, tracing, and rotating the graph.
  
• December (Project List): ez80 Studio
  RoccoLox Programs and TIny_Hacker collaborated to create a beautiful IDE for writing, editing, and assembling code directly on your TI-84 Plus CE! It includes syntax highlighting, a custom font, as well as light and dark mode.
  

There were many amazing programs this year. Remember to vote for your favorite project!