I'm planning to create a timekeeping program for my (monochrome) TI-89T. It will feature the three basic clock app features: a clock, a timer, and a stopwatch.

The plan is to have it draw the time in medium-size font on the Graph Screen. A lot of the screen will be left empty - we're talking roughly 88x76 pixels of blank space. And I don't want the program to be boring, since I'll be using it to track my productivity: if the screen's gonna be in my face all the time, it might as well show something pretty.

What 'screensaver'/general procedural patterns/animations would be nice to display in that empty box? The only idea I have is for it to display Conway's Game of Life. Anyone have any ideas?

You should draw procedurally generated fish swimming across the screen

Idea: A custom Mandelbrot renderer and zoomer built with BASIC-based 1000-decimal-place numbers. What could possibly go wrong?



Noted, thanks.

I wonder which type of screen would be the most susceptible to screen burn? 8X, 86k, CSE, CE...? There are many different types of LCD screens and even controller boards used in each calculator revision.

The point is not to prevent screen burn-in, it's to have a pretty animation to display to keep things interesting.

I understand, but seeing as that was the original point of the screensaver, I'm just curious.
Edit: Ah, the title of the thread has changed. I might give it a try on a TI-84 Plus.

Idea: Sierpinski triangle; Bouncing triangles (& other polygons?)

I'm not sure how performant it would be, but a simulation of boids would be fun.

That's crazy, I literally found out about Boids yesterday. It seems really cool and fun to program, I'll see what I can do. But I don't think it will be very performant if written in BASIC...