Welcome back to Projects of the Month! This March came packed with a ton of new projects for all sorts of different platforms, primarily the FX-CG50 and TI-84+CE.

• CE C Toolchain and Libraries for the TI84+CE/TI83PCE (convimg): MateoConLechuga has released version 10.1 of the convimg utility, which adds multithreading support for increased speed.
• [PRIZM] Cookie Clicker: Spenceboy98 has created a new expansion for his Cookie Clicker game for the Casio PRIZM, adding a whopping 478 new upgrades, some UI updates, and an autosave feature!
  
• Dungeons & Diagrams CE: euphory has created a mini dungeon crawler/Minesweeper game for the TI-84 Plus CE based on Zach Barth’s “Advanced Dungeons & Diagrams”. Here, you try to figure out the layout of the dungeon using various clues on the map. It’s well polished and has more maps on the way!
  
• First Fantasy: Mana Force (xLIB CSE, CE Textlib and Celtic CE RPG): DJ Omnimaga has ported many of the improvements in the CE version of First Fantasy: Mana Force back to the TI-84+ CSE. Worth downloading if you’re on a CSE and looking for an RPG.
  
• JezzBall clone for the HP Prime [Python]: komame has been working on a Jezzball clone for the HP Prime in Python. Collision is working, and there’s a title screen. Stay tuned for a future release.
  
• KhiCAS, a full-featured CAS for Casio CG50/Graph 90+e: parisse added support for step by step integration and derivation in the full version of KhiCAS this month.
• Memory game: Potchkee has created a basic memory game for the Casio fx-CG50. Memorize and play back the flashing patterns to go for a high score!
  
• MIDI Player CE: prime17569 has released a MIDI player for the TI-84+ CE that uses USB-MIDI to play audio right from the CE! You’ll need an external USB-MIDI host device with a speaker like a PC or mobile phone to hear it, but the tech can finally allow for CE games to have sound!
  
• Minesweeper for casio fx-cg: Potchkee has released several updates for their Casio Basic minesweeper game for the FX-CG50, improving the load times and adding more features.
  
• MTEd Text Editor: StephenM has created a simple text editor in Lua.
  
• Reversi (Othello) with FX & Animations – HP Prime G1/G2: komame has released their final version of Reversi Prime for the HP Prime. It’s quite expansive, with AI, a 2 player mode and solid graphics. It can even be run via HP Prime emulators, so give it a shot!
  
• RPG Starter Kit CE: tifreak8x has been working on updating his old TI-BASIC RPG starter kit for the CSE and CE.
  
• SD Picture Viewer [BASIC] [TI-84 Plus CE]: TheLastMillennial has made an impressive image viewer solely in TI-Basic! It uses dithering to display an impressive range of colors in CSE/CE TI-BASIC’s limited palette of 24 colors. As is to be expected, it’s a bit on the slow side, but is quite impressive nonetheless and worth checking out!
  
• SimU8 - A portable nX-U8/100 emulator written in C: LifeEmu has spent several years working on a highly portable nX-U8/100 emulator in C, which is the processor used in several recent Casio scientific calculators. It only emulates the CPU, but is light on dependencies and can be easily added onto or dropped into other projects.
  
• Sudoku: Potchkee has built a simple Sudoku game in ExtraPython for the Casio FX-CG50. It has multiple difficulty settings, and more updates are planned in the future.
• Sudoku CE: Cars and Ice Cream has also been working on a Sudoku game, this time in Celtic CE. On top of playing Sudoku, you can also create and edit Sudokus inside the program itself
  

As always, be sure to vote for your favorite project, and see you next month!

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!