Published by mr womp womp 5 days, 1 hour ago (2021-05-04T17:53:57+00:00) | Discuss this article

According to their website, TI will be releasing a Python version of the TI-84 Plus CE for the American market!

A few weeks ago, Adriweb noticed this updated banner on the main American TI website seemingly confirming the rumors that Python was coming. Presumably the hardware will be the same as the TI-83 Premium CE Edition Python and the TI-84 Plus CE-T Python Edition. Software-wise, I would expect just added support for Python to the English 84+CE OS (and setting the flag so that the OS accepts the Python app).

It will be available in 10 colors, including 2 brand new colors!

• Bright White
• EZ-Spot
• Matte-Matic Black
• Radical Red
• Bionic Blue
• Measure Mint
• Galaxy Gray
• Rose Curve Gold
• Totally Teal
• Infinitely Iris
• Positive Coral-ation

It is slated for release in Fall 2021.

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Published by epsilon5 1 week, 2 days ago (2021-04-30T02:33:36+00:00) | Discuss this article


Let's just ignore the fact the contest ended a month ago, alright
Now that CC25 is over and the judging is (mostly) done, it's time to vote! Thanks to everyone who participated in this contest. The poll will be open for 10 days after this post is published. While screenshots are included, please try the programs out before voting-don't based solely on the visual appeal of the programs. A post with the reasoning for your vote and feedback for the participants would be greatly appreciated, as well. With that said, here's the lineup:

The Quest to Heal the Dragon by Privacy_Dragon (thread)

In Privacy_Dragon's CC25 entry, a text adventure written in Python, the player must prevent a sick dragon from burning down a forest. Be sure to check out the thread for more information and the development process!

MCadmin by ACagliano (thread)

ACagliano's CC25 entry, MCadmin, tasks the server admin of the Cemetech Minecraft server with preventing the server from overheating or crashing for 5 minutes. It features plenty of inside jokes, a nice graph, and real-time statistics of the server. Check out the thread and readme for more information.

Fire and Flames by slimeenergy (thread)
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In slimeenergy's CC25 entry, the player must burn down a certain percentage of various buildings with weapons including a lighter, napalm grenade, and flamethrower. With an isometric view of each level, stats screen, and tutorial, it's a very complete and polished experience, so be sure to check out the thread for more information.

Planet Saver by Alvajoy123 (thread)

Alvajoy123's CC25 entry, Planet Saver, is a game in which the player must guide the planet Earth through an endless storm of asteroids, complete with many animations, a custom font, and some screen-fading effects. Be sure to check out the thread for more information!

Flambé by Oxiti8 (thread)

Oxiti8's CC25 entry, Flambé, is not one game, but many. It features a variety of different minigames, from one where a stove must be lit with a match to one where the program itself must be launched within a time limit. Be sure to check out the thread to learn more about the development process.

Hot Chicks by commandblockguy (thread)

In commandblockguy's intentionally misleading CC25 entry, Hot Chicks, the player must prevent a group of chickens inside a chicken coop from dying of either heat or cold by turning a heat lamp on and off. Be sure to check out the thread and readme for more information.

Food Fighter by KingDubDub (thread)

In KingDubDub's CC25 entry, the player must kill waves of sandwich men with a flamethrower. There's also a mechanic in which the sandwiches drop ingredients that can be placed into their appropriate slots in the room to gain some bonus points. Check out the thread and the readme for more information on the project!

That's all the entries for this contest. Please remember to vote in the poll within 10 days, and to give the authors feedback wherever possible. Have fun!

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Published by epsilon5 3 weeks, 1 day ago (2021-04-16T22:57:41+00:00) | Discuss this article

NOTE: Cap'n Hook was accidentally omitted from the October PotM poll, and so is included in the voting for this month instead.

As usual, there were a lot of great projects in December of 2020. Be sure to check out the project threads in the forums, and give the authors feedback and encouragement!

• A dragon on the CE!: This month, Privacy_Dragon continued brainstorming ideas for an upcoming dragon game, as well as finding someone to create art for the game.
  
• Bubbles!: SomeCoolGuy continued work on his port of a bubble-shooting game to the CE, this month getting the basic mechanics of the game mostly completed, as well as the system that allows buttons to snap to the grid. Check out the thread if you haven't already, there's some great progress and screenshots.
  
• CE C Toolchain and Libraries for the TI84+CE/TI83PCE: MateoConLechuga & Co. (jacobly, Adriweb, and many others) finished a new release of the CE toolchain this month, v9.0. It adds some great new features, such as a garbage collect handler, bug fixes, and a major upgrade from ZDS to LLVM.
  
• Dragonbot, a discord bot I am making: Privacy_Dragon announced a new project this month, a Discord bot. In addition, there are instructions in the thread on how to add this bot to a Discord server, so be sure to check it out and support the development of Dragonbot.
  
• ez80 and z80 syntax highlighting for Visual Studio Code: Liberal_Eater released a new update for a syntax-highlighting add-on to aid in ez80/z80 development in Visual Studio Code this month, improving the "problem watching" feature, which checks for possible errors in the uncompiled code, as well as making some behind-the-scenes improvements.
  
• HexaEdit CE: Captain Calc completely rewrote his HexaEdit CE program this month, improving the backend code, updating the GUI, and adding new features. Be sure to look at the project if you haven't already, or are interested in a new tool that enables you to view the hex equivalents of variables on your CE.
  
• iPhoenix's Cemetech Userstyles: _iPhoenix_ improved his Cemetech userstyle this month, creating a fix for the high CPU usage of the snow animation within the site, adding real-time previews to the post editor, and adding a spoiler effect to posts with [size=1] or [size=2] tabs. Check it out if you're interested in an enhanced and modernized Cemetech experience.
  
• Isomorphic Keyboard: _iPhoenix_ created a new type of keyboard this month- an isomorphic keyboard. It aims to make chords easily to play and be more accessible to beginners, requiring less practice to memorize chords and scales. There's a link to try out the keyboard as well, intended for mobile devices with multi-touch capabilities (although it works fine on a PC as well).
  
• Jetpack Joyride for the TI-84 Plus CE: King Dub Dub continued progress on his port of Jetpack Joyride for the CE, focusing on improving the code behind the project. Many bugs were fixed, as well as the addition of lasers and some new GUI elements. There's a download link and plenty of screenshots in the thread, so go look at them and show KingDubDub some support!
  
• Latest News on TI-Trek: ACagliano and the rest of the TI-Trek team made some great progress this month, adding the TrekFilter, repeat offense logging, general optimization and improvements, to the service, engine/speed configuration in the calculator portion, and a new utility that allows users to build custom icon packs for the game. This is a great project that has a lot of progress, so go look at it and give ACagliano and the rest of the team feedback and encouragement.
  
• Memorized the Sequence: ShinyGardevoir created a new game for the TI-84 Plus CE/TI-83 Premium CE calculators this month, in which the player memorizes a sequence of numbers and inputs it back into the calculator. It looks like a great learning project and way to test memorization skills, so give ShinyGardevoir feedback and encouragement.
  
• Sonic TI-Blast: Oxiti8 released a few new versions of the Sonic TI-Blast game for the CE this month, adding a new stage, transitions, and color. In addition, there have been some bug fixes and other improvements made as well. The program is available for download, so be sure to play it if you haven't already.
  
• Tanks! CE: commandblockguy ported Tanks! to CEmscripten this month, meaning that the game can be played from a web browser, without needing a ROM. There's a link to do so in the thread-take a look if you want to try out the game on your PC.
  
• TI-84+CE Mode7 test: tr1p1ea announced this month that he'd have a demo of MarioKart (TrakOiram?) available in the New Year, a promise that I'm pleased to say has come to fruition. Go try it out!
  
• TIGHT: TI GrapH Theory: kg583 announced a new project this month, TIGHT. It is a TI-Basic library that "allows for the creation, manipulation, and analysis of discrete graphs", utilizing lists and subprograms. It already has some basic graph operations done, as well as a Github page. There hasn't been much recent activity on the project, so go post in the thread and give kg583 some encouragement.
  
• Two-player Pong/Breakout mashup: Candledark announced this month (a little questionable but I'll say it was in December) a new project, which is a mashup of Pong and Breakout. More interestingly, Candledark has made a new way to create configurable controls within games or programs using the C libraries, which certainly could be useful for shells and other projects. There's a screenshot and some plans for the future in the thread, so take a look at it.
  
• VYSION CE: epsilon5 completed a 1.0.0 archives release of his new shell for the CE calculators this month, VYSION CE. It has a lot of cool features, like a full filesystem, an optional cursor-based GUI mode, customizable wallpapers and GUI colors, stable program running, a file explorer, a desktop, and much more. Be sure to take a look at it if you haven't already, and give epsilon5 some support as he rewrites VYSION for 2.0.0!

That's all for this month! Remember to vote in the poll for your favorite project of the month, and stay tuned for the Projects of the Year 2020 post.

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Published by TheLastMillennial 1 month, 3 weeks ago (2021-03-16T03:42:50+00:00) | Discuss this article

November was another busy month for Cemetech members with lots of great releases! Without further ado, here's what went down!

• A dragon on the CE!: Privacy_Dragon has started a virtual pet-like program based on the book series Dragan Duma. They're just brainstorming right now but it looks promising!
  
• BOS for CEmu: beckadamtheinventor just combined two of his projects: noti-eZ80 which is an open-source boot ROM, and BOS which is a custom OS, into a single ROM image you can use in CEmu! It's an awesome project that even has USB support for Linux devices. Be warned it's not designed for use on a physical calculator, but you can have as much fun as you want with it in CEmu!
  
• Calculator In Minecraft: Many of us are aware of redstone programming in Minecraft, a mechanic analogous to circuit design in 3D space. _iPhoenix_ has taken this to a whole new level and created a working calculator that can add, subtract, store numbers, and even looks like a TI-84 Plus CE! It's an impressive project with an equally impressive writeup, go check it out!
  
• Day of Week Calculate tool: Privacy_Dragon has released a smaller version of their tool that will tell you what day it was on any date. It's more accurate than TI's built-in DayofWk( command and pretty small so go try it!
  
• DIY Astrophotography Camera: Creating your own camera from scratch is no easy task, but Botboy3000 is making good progress figuring out how the odd components work and developing a circuit that will control them. That doesn't mean help isn't appreciated, if you've got advice, Botboy3000 would love to hear it!
  
• ez80 and z80 syntax highlighting for Visual Studio Code: Liberal_Eater has updated their syntax highlighting extension for VS with some creature comforts such as documentation appearing when you hover over it, and the ability to search for documentation. Go try it out if you enjoy programming ASM in Visual Studio!
  
• Jetpack Joyride for the TI-84 Plus CE: Great progress has been made on porting the popular mobile game Jetpack Joyride! This month, King Dub Dub added missiles, corrected the size of the coin sprites. Despite the headache of updating the project to the new toolchain, development is going quickly with lasers planned in the near future!
  
• Latest News on TI-Trek: ACagliano has continued his steady development of the first major online multiplayer TI-84 Plus CE game TI-Trek. This month they've started adding particle effects like cracks on the screen. They've also released a new beta version which adds a chatting system and a custom firewall! There's a lot of great progress with lots of screenshots so go check it out!
  
• Maze Dash CE [C]: matkeller19 has released a port of the mobile game Maze Dash to TI-84 Plus CE! It's an awesome puzzle game nearing 300 levels total so you have plenty of content to last you for hours! Go try it out with the download in the thread!
  
• Mode-7 style Pseudo-3D on Ti-83+: Everyone loves 3D programs on calculators, so Crazy_Fox2 has been working on a Mode-7 style 3D racing game! This month they've worked on optimization and managed to improve the speed by 75%! There are a few videos of demo content so go give it a look!
  
• Organizer CSE/CE: RoccoLox Programs has released a patch to their powerful program that keeps track of calendar events, tasks, and contacts. Now the date will show up normally again so you won't be left wondering what year you've landed yourself in!
  
• Pi84--, BUILD your OWN Linux-powered TI-84+ calculator!: Muessigb has released the PCB files for their custom TI-84 Plus modification that turns it into a Linux machine! Now you can create the project yourself, assuming you already have the software to view it. Visit the thread for more information on it!
  
• Random Demos: jacobly graphed some polynomials.
  
• RoulCE: New member ZebraVogel has started work on a roulette wheel program for the TI-84 Plus CE. The wheel sprite is very beautiful and the performance is really great already! Go show the author some support!
  
• Story game for the TI-84+ CE: Inspired by Storycubes, Privacy_Dragon has released a game written in C that provides 16 random words from a 100-word database. With these words, you get to create a story out of them! It's a neat program so go try it out with the download link in the thread!
  
• Suzan: Wavejumper3 has started work on creating a chat-bot in TI-Basic. Despite the awful setback of the program getting deleted, a backup was saved so progress can continue! Go show the author so support!
  
• Tanks! CE: Massive changes have been made to commandblockguy's port of Tanks! from the Wii. They've switched languages to C++, adjusted the code so objects are stored in memory better, and object collision is improved! There's far too much information to fit in a brief description, so check out the thread and see what's changed, there's even a screenshot of progress!
  
• tihle: calculator emulation without ROMs: Tari has updated his amazing project which lets you emulate .8xp programs without requiring a calculator ROM! He's worked on improving the interactive debugger. Check it out and play some calculator games!
  
• VYSION CE - the ultimate CE shell: epsilon5 has finally revealed a secret project he's been working on for two months, a Windows-like shell with a full filesystem, a taskbar, and tons of customization! For those unsatisfied with Cesium, this may be the shell for you. The shell looks beautiful so go visit the thread and check out the screenshots!

That's all for this month, catch you in the next one for the final PotM of 2020!

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