It was about time, but it has finally be done! To post new topics and polls on the forums, you had to go on the topic list. SMF software have this limitation of now showing these two links on the topic view (where you see the posts). A mod could fix this, but only for the default theme and not with the poll button. Looking at this modification and old SMF support board threads allowed me to solve this and now it is finally possible to post new topics when inside a topic too. Inside topics, an option to add a poll was alerady avaliable, but it was for the topic you were browsing. Now it is possible to start ones on new topics from there too. In other words, like on PhpBB and IPB. This should be less annoyances for users now.

In addition to that, the order of the buttons were changed in overall. Now all buttons involving creating new replies, topics and poll should be first.

These changes were applied to all our 3 custom forum themes.

Ok, so after a few weeks of trial, it definitively seems like the Latest Topics and Posts feature of EzPortal is buggy. Despite being set at 250, the topic list will only show a random number between 15 and 30 of active topics, and the new posts list somewhere between 80 and 130.

This problem has been reported to the EzPortal team a few weeks ago, but no fix has been released yet.

Because of the increasing Omnimaga forums activity resulting mostly of Axe, Ndless and gbc4nspire releases, active topics of an entire day will sometimes not fit completly in the list and if you don't frequent the board every day, the list may become unreliable, especially for members who are logged in and have access to the 5 hidden sections. For the post list, you will generally only see the last posts of the last few hours. Friday, we have hit a peak of 241 posts in one single day, a record on this incarnation of Omnimaga and probably the highest number since 2006, and we still get days with over 100 on a regular basis. So if you are not a frequent visitor, we recommend you for the time being to sometimes pay a visit to our board index as well, checking every sub-forum you're interested in, in case you may miss awesome stuff. I myself almost missed Age Of Culture II 0.98 demo the other day (YES! This game is still alive.), so watch out!

Hopefully this will be resolved soon.

After being dormant for several years, the RPG downloads section of the website have finally seen some activity again recently. Until last week, only the other sections, including obviously our own programs, were updated anymore. After the addition of Ndless (redirecting to ticalc.org archives and including a mirror) and Goplat's Emulator (due to UTI disabling forum attachments for guests), a few more files were added to the RPG and programming tools section again. First of all, there is WabbitEmu 2 stable version with a readme, uploaded with Buckeye permission so it is easier to find for people who couldn't find it on Revsoft, and finally there is a program by our former staff Trevmeister66, who did an unexpected return in the TI scene last month, who released a fast program to work with dual-layer ASCII graphics easier.

In addition to this, we added Builderboy recent Java dual-layer ASCII helper to our own products section. It lets you find the closest possible combinations of characters for the sprite you would like to have. For those who are not familiar with TI-BASIC, dual-layer ASCII refers to this kind of graphics:


Aside from these programs, a new download section has opened up on Omnimaga: Calculator Videos! This section will contains all Omnimaga calculator videos created over the years, ranging from tributes to calc programming to footage of calculator games, such as the Youtube TI-83 Plus BASIC RPG Nostalgia Serie. This section, however, requires a forum account.

UPDATE (March 9th): Added  {AP}'s xLIB/Celtic III map editor in our TI programming tools section. I meant to do this ages ago since it has been avaliable for download since December, but finally forgot. Should be easier to find, now.

TI has finally released the v2.0 of its Nspire OS! It has many new exciting features that can be seen here:

http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/homePage/nspire-software-os.html

This new version still allows downgrading, since the boot2 code hasn't been modified. Also, the 84+ mode has been updated to v2.54MP. Also note that it doesn't yet work on Goplat's emu (something about new code concerning USB...). Naturally, Ndless doesn't work on this OS, since only v1.1 is supported.

They also have released a new version of the Nspire handheld in itself, which now uses touchpad technology, and has a completely new keyboard layout!!! The old Nsire non-CAS won't be left out as TI will also propose the touchpad on its own, thus allowing us to get the touchpad without having to buy a new calc.

http://education.ti.com/images/product-family/nspire-family-banner-2-Touch.jpg


Download is avaliable here.

For Ndless users with Windows 7, Texas Instruments also released a new version of the TI-Nspire Computer Link Software on their website here, which no longer freezes when exiting under Windows 7. We do not know what other improvements were made to it, though.

You can download it here.

UPDATE (March 6th 2010): It appears Ndless is not compatible with TI Computer Link Software version 1.4. You will get an error about a missing navnet.dll when attempting to install it. DO NOT upgrade to 1.4 if you are planning to continue using Ndless 1.0. ExtendeD is currently working on a fix for this.

This was planned for a while, when our TI-Nspire calculators would finally be ExtendeD (sorry Critor, I couldn't resist from reusing your joke), I would post a Youtube video showing it in action. For now, since the only major ASM program released is Calc84maniac emulator, almost the entire video shows it in action, but as most people who followed the Nspire scene in the past months knows, this is just the beggining.

Here's the tribute video, set to the song "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now", by Starship, below:

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpmbEsbhhHk" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpmbEsbhhHk</a>

In a few days you will be able to download the video in WMV format in our downloads section, in a recently added, but still currently empty video section, only for registered users.

So thanks to everyone who contributed to bringning ASM on all our Nspire and Nspire CAS handled, nothing's gonna stop the TI community now!

Right after the Nspire exploit release (to allow ASM/C to be ran on TI-Nspire calculators), comes Calc84maniac's gbc4nspire, his Game Boy Color emulator for the TI-Nspire! Yes, you read it: not just regular Game Boy, Game Boy Color too! Of course, due to the Nspire limitations, there are no colors, but GBC games can still effectively be ran on your calculator now. The colors are converted to 16(?) level grayscale. Not only the emulation speed is the same as the old GB/GBCs, but the emulator still could run faster if speed restriction was removed.



<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7siYMHDdJI" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7siYMHDdJI</a>

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlDw5FQDIPM" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BlDw5FQDIPM</a>

It goes to show the Nspire potential and this is only the beginning. Much more than a Game Boy Color emulator will be doable. Why? Because this is the first ASM program ever released for this calculator model, calc84maniac has just started to learn ARM assembly and will most likely improve over time, as will do the other new TI-Nspire ASM/C programmers out there.

So now, those who thought they would have to rely on the 84+SE emulator built-in their calculator to play games have been proven wrong.

In addition to this emulator release, Goplat has updated his TI-Nspire emulator since then, and it is now compatible with the exploit. However, no offense to United-TI, but here at Omnimaga, we were nice enough to not force guests to register to download calculator files and attachments, so those who don't feel like having to sign up on a forum just to download a calculator development software can now download Goplat's emulator directly in our archives. We have provided a link to his UTI profile for people who want to locate updates easier, though, since our copy might not always be in sync with his latest.

We also added the exploit to our download section, as well as the GBC emulator, sort of. Both downloads redirects to the respective Ticalc.org file info pages, so it is always up to date, as these softwares might be frequently updated for a while. A mirror link to copies hosted by us is avaliable on each download pages, though, in case ticalc is down when you try downloading these files. It should make them easier to find, too, by our visitors.

gbc4nspire (in Our TI programs and utilities)
Ndless (in TI Shells, Kernels and Plugins)
TI-Nspire Emulator (in TI Programming Tools)

UPDATE! Some pictures of the emulator running on real TI-Nspire, followed by Youtube videos showing it in action on the machine, were added above. Thanks mostly to TI-BANK members (altough the picture author is unknown) for providing these pics and both them and #ti for the videos.

In case people are wondering, yes, ExtendeD and geogeo has finally released the tools to allow your TI-Nspire to run third-party C and ASM applications such as Calc84maniac's upcoming Game Boy Color emulator gbc4ti. Ndless will open up over 9000 endless possibilities for this calculator model that had so much potential, but was locked down by TI to the point where even a TI-81 could do more enjoyable and sometimes even faster BASIC games.







BrandonW also released an utility called Nspire8x that allows communicating with a TI-Nspire from a TI-84+ calculator.

Could we eventually see 3D games like on the Nintendo 64 coming out on the TI-Nspire in the future?

UPDATE: In the download section, we added a link to Ndless, forwarding to the ticalc.org info page. In case ticalc.org is down when you want the file, a mirror download link was provided, too.

For those who are nostalgic, in addition to allowing users to choose between our new theme and the old one we had until a few days ago, I have created and added a 3rd one for the nostalgics: a SMF rendition of the last theme we used on our old Invisionfree board from April 9th 2006 until the board shut down on January 1st 2008. Obviously, since Invisionfree layout is different from SMF, the new rendition of this old theme differs a bit from the old board, such as fewer gray gradients and posts text size, but it should look very close. This dark rendition of our December 2005 theme that was known back then as "Omnimaga BlueGray" and the banner, reused later (and slightly modified) on our new Omnimaga board, had a lot of graphic contribution from our former staff "Master Jc", who used to run the now defunct Calc Haven site. The banner was done by him, then modified to fit on multiple screen resolutions. The background was made by him then modified to be useable as a tiled forum background and finally, the gray-ish gradient formerly used for board titles used parts of his banner in it. When Omnimaga was revived under SMF in 2008, the old banner hue was changed slightly to a less purple-ish color and the background for the site was recycled into some sort of symetrical fractal.

So those who feel like doing some sort of travel back in time can now do so, even guests! And who knows? Maybe we will eventually revive the first BlueGray theme as well as the ones that matched the color scheme of our first sites ever?

People who register an account at the forums now have the privilege to access additional members-only sections besides the Randomness section. In addition to that the Starcraft forum has been made invisible to guests too. Here are the 3 new sections:

-Calc games strategy guides
-Other gaming discussion
-Anime And Mangas

The first one will be for TI calculator game walkthroughs, like for console games on sites like IGN and GameFAQs. Here, tutorials on how to modify BASIC (or even ASM) games code and their save files to cheat will not be allowed. If a game contains secrets codes, fine, but this section will be for guides to help you beat calculator games the legit way. Warning! It will contain spoilers! The second section is for gaming in general other than Starcraft. The other one is for our anime freaks, which are in greater number than we expected, especially on IRC.

As for the Starcraft section, eventually a patch will be released to allow you to easily play on our server, as alternative to Battle.Net and iCCup, for those who cannot use them. The Randomness section remains as it was, altough it is now regrouped with the four other sections invisible to guests.

As for the rest of the non-calc related sections, they were revamped in a way that it is smaller. Both music forums were put as sub-forums into one music forum, same for the computer projects and ROM hacking sections, which were put into a non-calc development section, along with a brand new web development sub-forum. The pixel art, intro and miscellaneous sections remains as they are, for now.

On other news, the forum themes feature of the site was fixed so that those who still want to use our old board theme can switch back to it if they want. Basically, in your profile, go to "Look and Layout Preferences" then in the new skin option at the top, click the link and you will have access to both Omnimaga v4 (2008) and Omnimaga v5 (2010) themes, the later being the default Omnimaga site skin. Eventually a remake of our old board theme may be added as well.

I hope you enjoy!

Those who have been using the "New Post" features in the navigation bar have probably noticed the unreliability of it in the way that once you viewed it, if you visit the site later, it's over, all these posts are gone from the list, not even waiting until you actually read them. This renders the feature pretty much useless for people who don't frequent the board at least once a day and it was alerady useless for those who did, considering they get notified of all new replies on the front page list anyway. So we may have found a solution to this problem: using a mod allowing us to create custom pages, we could create an empty page then assign the page name (index.php?action=activity) to EZBlocks that shows only on that page. So what we did is have a copy of the recent topics block show up there, but have set the amount of topics to show up to 250. In addition to this, we also added another block that lists latest activity by individual posts, so it is easier to see if someone replied to a topic (and if a spambot goes loose).

On the old forums, we had a feature called Today's Active Topics. This did something similar, except it only showed topics with activity in the last 24 hours. The front page list could show up to 250 topics if we wanted, but the front page is all we could use it on and it was not a good place to have a list that large.

Now why the feature is on trial? Well, because we are not even sure these EZBlocks supports such high values. If we set such block to like 900, it will only show topics from a certain point, as if there was a cap. However, if people keep creating new topics or replying to ones that aren't currently in the list, they will appear in it and the oldest ones showing up will remain, hopefully, until we hit 250. Basically, we'll see how high the count can go, then cap the settings at this number, or hopefully 250. The same will be done with the individidual replies list.

So now, if you click the "New Posts" options in the navbar, it will take you to the new activity page instead of the unreliable thing we had, and this time, it will also be avaliable to guests:

http://www.omnimaga.org/index.php?action=activity

This should be handy too on these very high moments of activity, where unread topics gets bumped out of the front page list and you miss them completly. I seen some times where there were 25 topics with new posts in 8 hours and  we can sometimes have about 30-35 topics with activity in the last 24 hours, if not more. On the old board, we've hit 55, once.

I hope you like and that it works as we want!