Published by KermMartian on June 15, 2018 at 12:05:49 AM CST | Discuss this article (7)

As we continue to look forward to rolling out Minecraft 1.13 on the Cemetech Minecraft Server, we are keen to bring you the best possible experience. Some of our most die-hard members no doubt know that we've encountered interest and occasional low TPS (ticks per second) during busy periods. We have done a great deal of investigation to try to narrow down the cause, so far with minimal success. "But did you try-" yes, we tried that. "Ah, but how about-" yes, that too. "I bet you didn't-" yes, we thought of that as well. Therefore, using our current Minecraft 1.12 server, we're going to apply the scientific method and determine which (if any) plugins are responsible, or if the builds and machines in the world are to blame.

But we need your help. It's summer, which means you no doubt are rolling in free time, so we need you to come visit our Minecraft server and continue working on your towns, your builds, your adventures, and your exploration.

• Starting this Saturday, June 16th, we will start with Phase 1 by disabling some of our least-important plugins, primarily those that have some aesthetic effect only, or at most some minor effect on gameplay. We encourage as many of you to come and play as possible.
  
• In Phase 2, starting next Thursday, June 21st, we will disable another set of plugins, and due to the set of plugins we're disabling, we'll be turning our current graylist into a whitelist (i.e., if you're not already a Member, you won't be able to log into the server).
  
• Finally, Phase 3 will begin the following Tuesday, June 26th, during which we'll switch the server to pure Vanilla. It should go without saying that we expect the same maturity and mutual respect that is enforced by our plugins: we will have a zero-tolerance policy towards theft, grief, vandalism, or any rule-breaking, and you will be permanently banned from both the 1.12 and 1.13 (and later) servers.

Therefore, just in time for the hot summer sun and brutal humidity, you should get back into Minecraft, think of something impressive to build, or gather your fellow Cemetechians for some cooperative (or competitive) Minecrafting: you'll be helping us make the Minecraft 1.13 server as fast and enjoyable as possible. See you on the server!



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Published by Nik on June 1, 2018 at 9:17:00 AM CST | Discuss this article (5)

(Hey, before you read this post, please take a minute to appreciate the fact that we caught up with those articles and remain up-to-date!)

So, the last month has been incredibly busy. And I mean it - I had to remove lots of projects which would have otherwise been featured here. The post would just get too long without these removals. In fact, I had so many tabs open while writing this summary, that my browser ran out of memory and crashed.
But hey, keep making those projects! We love them! An (unfortunately heavily shortened) insight into what was made in April:

• Advanced Brightness Utility: So, have you ever wanted to have full control over your CE's screen? Make it really bright when the sun is shining on it? Or really dark when you're staying up late and programming or playing games? TheLastMillennial has you covered! This little program allows you to set your calculator to levels of brightness not achievable by the TI OS.
  
• Agario: As a new Cemetechian, misoloo started off with a clone of Agar.io for the CE. The game runs amazingly smoothly and features a decent AI. Very few additions remain until a release is possible, so you should head over to the thread and show some support and encouragement!
  
• Age of CEmpires I: Long time Cemetechian and Admin PT_ has resumed work on his Age of Empires clone for TI-84 CE calculators! Most of the graphics are finished, and you can see the eye-candy in his thread. If you like this classic strategy game on your desktop PC, this is one you don't want to miss!
  
• Arduino Stabilized/Guided Rockets: A while ago, theprogrammingcube has already made and launched model rockets, however, he is taking this to a new level by mounting an Arduino and other electronics for guidance. The thread features some nice images and videos which you should see!
  
• BasicNote CE: Michael2_3B continued working on his text editor project. There was lots of progress and of course some eye-candy! You should go and have a look yourself, because this may very well turn out to be on your calculator once it's released!
  
• Blast Calculator Security Suite: Are you a CALCnet user? Have you ever considered the possibility to catch a virus on your calculator? This is a possibility, so you best protect your calc now! This program for the CE calculators by ACagliano might very well be the first real antivirus program written for calculators. It is in the earliest stages of development, but we are eager to see the progress on such a complex undertaking!
  
• Columns CE: Iambian's port of the classic arcade game has seen lots of progress! The thread features some extraordinarily polished graphics and the project is very close to completion. We can't wait to see how it turns out, and highly recommend you to have a look yourself!
  
• Gateway to Legend: 123outerme provided a first public pre-release of their desktop role playing game! There was lots of progress, another bunch of stunning videos of the gameplay and overall, the project is nearing completion! This is one you should check out!
  
• Arduino-Based Drone: Nik posted a thread for a project he has been working on. The title is pretty self-describing - it is a drone that was made from scratch and controlled by an Arduino. The post is somewhat messy, but it provides a project summary, and a video of a flight. If you're into this kind of thing, go and have a look!
  
• JPL: JPL is a game for the monochrome calculator series by TheLastMillennial which allows you to build and fly your own spacecraft. He continued work and made some progress this month. While there is a lot left to do, he has found the motivation to complete and release the project as soon as possible. You should visit his thread and have a look yourself, though!
  
• Life Simulator: What you might expect to be another Conyway's Game of Life program is actually a totally different thing! 21tmccauley's Life Simulator for the CE calculators is, in fact, a simulator of a typical person's life. The project was picked up again after a longer delay, but it has seen lots of interesting changes, and we are looking forward to seeing what direction this project will go in!
  
• Pi84--: Muessigb's Raspberry Pi powered calculator has seen some hardware revisions, and the first boards are almost ready to be assembled. He also posted a list of the most important components and refined his design. This is a project that we are following with great interest, and if you want to build an own TI-84+ or just like reading through people's hardware projects, you should visit the topic!
  
• Stock Sim CE: LAX18 has continued porting his Stock Sim program to the CE calculators. He got a lot of the work done, and documented it with beautiful screenshots. He also significantly optimized the program. We invite you to have a look on your own, though!
  

That's it for now! Enjoy browsing through this list, and I can only repeat, lots of projects were not featured, simply because they physically don't fit into this post - but hopefully we can show them next month! Finally thank you all for creating and participating in these and other projects, and making this place awesome!

Note that TheLastMillennial's Advanced Brightness Utility is the only project that was completed in April, and, as such, is automatically nominated for the Projects of the Year 2018 poll.

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Published by Michael2_3B on May 15, 2018 at 3:53:48 PM CST | Discuss this article (6)

The poll for the Projects of the Year 2017 has finished, and it is time to finally share the results! Before we start, we would like to thank all of the users here on Cemetech for taking part in these projects and all of the polls. Even if you haven't worked on a project lately, we still would like to thank you all for being such supportive members in this community.

The competition was quite neck-to-neck this year, with a grand total of 34 votes coming in, for a poll including 13 different projects. Here are the results:

6th Place goes to 3 different projects:

• First of all, there is the Kerbal Space Program USB Control Panel created by Botboy3000. With this homemade control panel, you can play KSP using all of the cool old-fashioned buttons. If you are interested in KSP or hardware projects like this, definitely check out this control panel!
  
• There is also Fishy and Scogger, created by Iambian, which are versions of his previous games ported to the TI-84+ CE! Fishy CE is about eating other fish in a pond and becoming as big as you can, and Scogger CE is about hopping over lily pads strategically until you've hopped over each one. Definitely check these out!
  
• Created by TheLastMillennial, Text to Morse Code is a fun project that flashes the CE's screen based on the dots and dashes you enter. It's a cool idea so go check it out!

5th Place was taken by a single project, Asteroids CE v1.8, created by LAX18. This is shoot em up style game where you must either shoot the asteroids or avoid them, and last as long as possible! There is both an ICE version and a TI-Basic version.

4th Place was shared by 2 projects:

• Shades CE, created by Cemetech member Michael2_3B, is a zen style game with a goal of combining tiles in a Tetris/2048 fashion to get points, and avoiding stacking up too high. The author has released version 1.2 which improves the game even more!
  
• OldNewTimer also won 4th place, with his creation of Sound on the TI-84 Plus CE! This was a very surprising and eye-catching project, which uses some snap circuits and a photo resistor attached to the calculator to create a variety of sounds.

3rd Place, which is by far the most competed for ranking, is given to 5 different projects:

• Sorcery of Uvutu, by 123outerme, has been being worked on for years and has taken a considerable amount of effort. This RPG for the TI-84+ CSE really does deserve this ranking, and be sure to check out all the screenshots and other information in the thread!
• KingInfinity also won 3rd place, with his port of the game 1010! from the iPhone to the CE! This arcade game is similar to Tetris, but with slightly different game mechanics. The calculator version has beautiful graphics and is loaded with awesome features! You don't want to miss this!
• Aspirin CE, by Unicorn, is a fast-paced reaction game that is based on the original game, Aspirin. There are multiple difficulties and features to enjoy in this game!
• From one of our newer Cemetech users, squishy won 3rd place with his Symbolic Derivative Solver for TI-84+ CE! We are very proud to see a new user get this ranking. As the title suggests, squishy's project is a very easy to use math program capable of quickly solving derivatives. Be sure to show them some support!
• For the final 3rd place ranking, TheLastMillennial has created JPL: A game for Color and Monochrome calcs! In this game you must build your own craft, then fly it through checkpoints. Check out the game for more instructions and some fancy screenshots.

2nd Place, a very honorable rank, goes to CalcMeister's ICE On-Calc Sprite Editor! With the rise of the ICE programming language, especially after it won Project of the Year 2016, and gained popularity throughout the calculator community, a sprite editor was the obvious idea next step for CalcMeister to develop. As the title suggests, this program lets you create sprites for use with the ICE compiler, all without leaving your calculator! If you are an avid calculator programmer, or you simply enjoy creating sprite art, you definitely don't want to miss this project. Definitely check it out, as there are downloads and screenshots linked!

**drumroll please**
1st Place, our absolute winner for the Project of the Year 2017, taking up nearly 30% of all of the votes and shooting far above any of the other projects this year, goes to Rico!!! This member ported the popular classic arcade game, Donkey Kong! As you can see, this project looks like a perfect clone of the original game and we are overjoyed to see such a classic game look so shiny on the CE! Harnessing the power of C and the C toolchain and libraries, this project definitely deserves the ranking it got. The screenshots look incredible so don't wait another second to give it your best shot!



Congratulations to everyone who competed this year! The following prize recognition badges have been applied to all the first-, second- and third-place winners.



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Published by Nik on April 21, 2018 at 11:55:16 AM CST | Discuss this article (4)

The last article I've written was the summary of the Projects of the Month in March 2017, so it seems only fitting to pitch in with the one for March 2018. I would also like to use this occasion to say sorry for neglecting this work for a year's worth of projects and thank Michael2_3B, _iPhoenix_ and PT_ (so many underscores!) for taking it over meanwhile. There is now much more organization and structure to PotM summary writing, so we should be able to handle it much better as a team now!

So, let's have a look:

• BasicNote CE: Michael2_3B's port of his own earlier monochrome version of BasicNote has seen some major progress, including scrolling and multipage support. It is amazing how a TI-Basic program can seriously compete with similar Assembly programs, and we can't wait to see further refinements and progress!
  
• Calcumon Pi: Just in time to be featured as a March project, new Cemetechian Flyer_95 greeted us with his own shot at a Pokemon-style game for the monochrome calculators. Of course, as you would expect from a calculator game, the creatures are math-themed, which adds its own, very special flavour to this game.
  
• Columns CE: Iambian decided to bring one of the arcade classics, Columns, to the TI-84 CE. The thread features a screenshot of really shiny graphics with fully functional gameplay. The game is almost ready for a release, and there is really not much more to say about it, except that you don't want to miss it.
  
• 3D-Printable Model Rocket: 3D-Printing seems to be the next "big thing" in the industry, and, in full spirit of this, Botboy3000, who is known at Cemetech for his excellent hardware tinkering, started a new project to create a fully-printable model rocket. If you like flying things and lots of BOOM! as much as I do, this is one you should be watching really closely!
  
• Pi84--: Going by the mantra "Build your own Linux-powered TI-84+ calculator!", this extremely interesting project by Muessigb attempts to not only indistinguishably recreate a TI-84+, but also to give anyone the possibility to reproduce it! If you somehow have an empty case for a TI-84+, or a dead calculator of this model, and want to revive it while on a budget, look no more, as you have found your project!
  
• Self-Defined Object System: shkaboinka continued work on their language which aims to provide an entirely, never before seen way of programming. The project is large and complex, so updates on it are provided understandably slowly. Nevertheless, its rich history, dating back to 2015, helps make this a really interesting read, and we can't wait to see the eventual completion.
  
• TheButton: _iPhoenix_ created a browser game which is all about pressing TheButton! Your goal is to be the last one to have pressed it, and if you remain in this position for long enough, you may reach the high score list! In addition to the fun of the game itself, the thread is an interesting read, as it provides insights in what security issues and similar problems are to be solved when making a browser game.
  
• Boxman Arcade Cabinet!: Botboy3000 continued working on his arcade cabinet through March. He needs some help with art for the side panels, though, so if you are an artist, you should have a look and do something awesome! And even if not, the thread is an interesting read and has lots of nice eye-candy!
  
• C SDK and Libraries for the TI84+CE/TI83PCE: This project is so well-known, that there is really not much to say anymore. MateoConLechuga released a new update, and it is just nice to see such a project being maintained for longer times. And the update is one you don't want to miss!
  
• Gateway to Legend: One of the bigger RPGs for the TI-84+ CE has seen some progress! 123outerme implemented many things and provided an amazing demo video for all of you RPG lovers to see!
  
• HD picture viewer [ICE] [TI-84 Plus CE]: This powerful tool lets you view images on your CE calculator in extra quality! TheLastMillennial resumed work after some difficulties and got the project back on track. We can't wait to see further progress!
  
• [TI-83] Yet another Snake: New Cemetechian jw0k greeted us with his implementation of the classic arcade game for the TI-83! It is especially noteworthy because of its clean look and the fact that it is implemented in Assembly, which greatly contributes to its quality. The thread has a link to the GitHub repository, which contains the program and some nice screenshots!
  

Well, that's it for now. March was an interesting and busy month, and it is this amazing community whom you have to blame for that. Even if your project was not chosen to be featured here, you have contributed and made this place a more interesting place. Thanks! :-)

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