Published by Jeffitus on August 24, 2019 at 4:26:40 PM CST | Discuss this article (1)

As always, there were many great projects worked on back in February. Be sure to check them out and give the authors your feedback!

• Binary Grid for the TI-83+ series: Jeffitus started work on his TI_Basic game Binary Grid, where the player must mentally convert decimal numbers to binary. The game works on all 83/84+ models due to its use of the homescreen, so go check it out!
  
• BOSshell for the TI-84+CE dev thread: beckadamtheinventor continued work on his shell in ICE for the TI-84 Plus CE. This month he began working on BOSshell version 5, as well as BOS-BASIC, an interpreted language to go along with the shell. This shell looks very promising, so go ahead and try out the latest version!
  
• DVD Screensaver [TI-84 Plus CE] [ICE]: TheLastMillennial wrote a DVD screensaver in ICE for the TI-84 Plus CE. Now you can remember the days of bouncing DVD logos by watching this one almost hit the corners! There is even a small Easter egg, and the source code is included in the download linked in the thread, so go visit it to download this program for yourself.
  
• Fruit Ninja CE [C]: Michael2_3B resumed work on his graphically impressive port of the popular mobile game Fruit Ninja! This month he was hard at work on the menus for the game. This game does look truly amazing so far, so go show him some some support in the topic!
  
• Grammer 2- The App: Xeda112358 posted an updated version of the powerful interpreted language Grammer, for the TI-83+/84+ series of calculators. This update contains some support for floats, which is a nice addition. The topic contains links to download the latest versions, so if you have a monochrome calc, try it for yourself!
  
• JPL: A game for Color and Monochrome calcs!: TheLastMillennial began the process of porting his spaceship game to the HP Prime, using the powerful interpreted language PPL. The game seems to run quite fast based on the screenshots, and the game's source is hosted on GitHub, so go check it out!
  
• Lumber Tycoon - My first C game: slimeenergy started and finished this simple game written in C for the CE. In the game, you continually chop down trees, sell the wood, and buy new axes. The game has some really nice features, such as day/night cycles, so go and download it from the link in the thread!
  
• NSPICE - A Circuit Builder and Simulator: M4dasOne posted this very impressive circuit builder for the TI-Nspire. So far it looks like this project has a lot of features, with many more planned for the future. Go and show M4dasOne some support in the thread, where you can find a screen recording, more information, and even download the first version and try it yourself!
  
• Nuclear Reactor Simulator [84+CE BASIC]: SM84CE continued refining his TI-Basic program for the CE. This month he worked on the "temp hold" feature, which just another in the long list of features in this project. Read the thread to see them all in action, and download the program for yourself from the archives!
  
• Pyscheron - A rebuild of E:ToR: Iambian announced his port of the unfinished monochrome calculator game Escheron: Twilight over Ragnoth. The port is written in Python, and the graphics look like they came straight from an old TI-83+! Go check out the thread for more info and to see screenshots.
  
• Swordfighter: Classic Sword Fighting in Your Pocket: [PixelPerfect] released this TI-Basic game for the TI-84 Plus CE. In this game (as the title suggests), you fight one-on-one battles with your sword. Visit the thread for a link to the download page and find more information.
  
• Tanks! CE: commandblockguy continued making progress on his port of the popular game Tanks from Wii play. This month he improved the collision system, added a fancy new start screen, and even posted an alpha release! Go check out the thread to see this game for yourself!
  
• TINotes:an easy way to create and manage notes in calculator: alienk wrote a web app that assists users in creating notes to send to their calculators! The website is quite easy to use, and works very well. Visit the thread to show some support and try out the site yourself!
  
• Xenon Development thread | ICE Shell: Alvajoy123 posted some updates on his ICE shell Xenon. This shell has many features, like a nice GUI and a terminal. Check out the thread for the todo list and more!
  
• Zombie Chase CE [C]: Spenceboy98 released an update to his game Zombie Chase. In addition to fixing the bug causing the calc to be reset, he also added some more features like bombs that act as lures and a new font for the game end screen. Show him some support in the thread, and download this game for yourself!
  
• [84+ CE TI-Basic] Typing-based calculator: ShinyGardevoir began work on an ambitious project, a program that allows the user to type in expressions, rather than having to use the dedicated buttons on the calculator. Aside from this, there are also plans to add more functions not built in to the TI-OS. Check out the thread for screenshots and to see how the project is coming along.
  

That's all for February; remember to vote for your favorite completed project, and we'll see you soon for the March PotM!

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Published by Tari on August 12, 2019 at 1:43:09 AM CST | Discuss this article

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Careful/longtime observers among readers might recall how sometimes we (the site admins) agree that some behavior of the site is weird but would be difficult to fix. Well, the time for improving that situation is now! partially here, but a long process to come.

What is new, is that today I believe reimplementations of core parts of the site are sufficiently functional and integrated to allow us to being switching parts of the site over to a new backend as they become ready.

What you can do

As of right now, you can opt-in to using the new backend where available by going to cemetech.net/7.

If you opt in, carry on using the site normally and report problems to admins as usual (by posting in the website bug reports subforum). After a time of running opt-in to try to shake out any bugs I've missed, I will flip the switch to make this the default configuration. Then we can do more concerted work to replace other parts.

If things get particularly broken after you do this, try clearing the cookies for Cemetech in your browser which will revert any opt-in.

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Published by Michael2_3B on July 3, 2019 at 5:33:23 PM CST | Discuss this article (1)

As I'm sure you know, 2018 is long over, and so the poll for the Projects of the Year 2018 has also finished! We know it's been a while, but we are finally here to share the results!

5th Place goes to:

• TheLastMillennial, who created Advanced Brightness Utility! This program allows you to darken and brighten your calculator screen beyond what the OS allows you to.
  
• Michael2_3B, who created BasicNote CE! This text-editor, programmed completely in TI-Basic, allows you to write and store notes directly on your calculator and comes with many helpful text-editor features.
  
• Ryadel, who created the Arcade Bartop Machine DIY tutorial using Raspberry Pi! This is a full, professional tutorial on how to make your own arcade machine for all the DIYers and hardware and arcading enthusiasts.
  
• 123outerme, who created Gateway to Legend, which is an incredible open-source puzzle-RPG for the PC.
  

4th Place goes to 3 different authors:

• _iPhoenix_, who created The Button! This is a king-of-the-hill style browser game where you compete for ownership of the button.
  
• Xeda112358, who created Grammer 2! It is a new programming language for the monochrome calculator, which offers you more control over the calculator and has many features.
  
• commandblockguy, who created Mahjong CE! For anyone who played the original computer game, this is a fun recreation of it where you must strategically find and match tiles together on a 3d stack.
  

3rd Place goes to:

• jonbush, who created FlowCE! This is a recreation of the popular mobile puzzle game Flow, where you connect dots together.
  
• BoomBrush, who created the TI-84 turned into 3G mobile phone! This is an incredible accomplishment and we recommend you check it out.
  
• ckosmic, who created Chip-84! This is a Chip-8 interpreter for the TI-84+ CE. It has all the opcodes that chip-8 supports along with a very cool UI.
  
• _iPhoenix_, who created Attack of the Snails! In this game you must run from human-eating snails, but you get more points the closer to danger you are.
  

2nd Place goes to MateoConLechuga, who has tackled the problem of TI84+ CE USB interfacing! This is an incredibly useful library that allows C and Assembly programs to interface with devices and flash drives over USB!


We are proud of all the projects and their authors that competed in the poll, and although they were all quite outstanding, it seems one of the projects blew everything else out of the water. So without further ado,

1st Place, our grand prize winner for the Project of the Year 2018, is TI-Boy CE by calc84maniac! This project garnered an entire 17 votes, making up 54% of the total votes in the poll, while the rest of the votes were pretty spread out. We are super proud of calc84maniac, as he has finished this remarkable Gameboy emulator for the CE. TI-Boy can run many different Gameboy games right on your TI-84+ CE, which is really impressive. Go and take a look, if you haven't already!

Congratulations to everyone who competed this year!



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Published by KermMartian on June 30, 2019 at 1:02:33 PM CST | Discuss this article (16)

Cemetech member mr womp womp reports a few new updates to our venerable TI-84 Plus CE calculators in advance of the 2018 Back-to-School season. We anticipated one of them, while the others are (welcome) surprises. Specifically:

• The TI-84 Plus CE is now available in a new color, Teal, at least in the United States. Mr womp womp notes that the packaging on this new color more closely resembles the packaging on the new TI-83 Premium CE Edition Python (see below). The lede of "Enhanced Graphing" certainly shows where TI's focus lies.
• TI has released OS 5.4 for the TI-84 Plus CE family. At the moment, most of the new features advertised were available in past OS versions, so please report any and all actually new features that you discover.
• Finally, and probably most excitingly, the TI-83 Premium CE Edition Python has been released. Back in March, we first wrote about this new calculator, based on research from around the community, including via TI-Planet. It appeared that TI would be releasing a TI-83 Premium CE (the French TI-84 Plus CE) with Python support built-in, no longer requiring the cuboid Python Module TI used as a stopgap solution to add Python to existing TI-83 Premium CE calculators. They have indeed released such a calculator, which includes an ARM coprocessor and extra-fast Flash alongside the TI-84 Plus CE's existing ez80 processor to run Python directly. If you can muddle through French, you can read (or just look at the pictures from) TI-Planet admin critor's writeup and teardown.

What do you think of these new developments? Are you going to try to get a TI-83 Premium CE Edition Python, even though it's not available in the US (it's only 80 Euros!)? Did you find a new TI-84 Plus CE OS 5.4 feature? Let us know in the attached topic!



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