Author Topic: A new age of calculator gaming  (Read 9334 times)

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Offline AngelFish

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A new age of calculator gaming
« on: April 19, 2011, 02:35:22 pm »
As many of you have seen, there has been a recent upsurge in the number of games available for the newest calculators, the Casio Prizm and the TI-Nspire CX. The introduction of these calculators has gotten the community into a bit of a buzz because of their unprecedented color screens. A recent poll here on Omnimaga and on Cemetech indicated that ownership of these devices is roughly equal among members, suggesting that the recently reborn Casio community will remain prosperous for some time to come. Each device currently offers different things: On the Nspire CX, C and Assembly programming is still not widely available, but the OS includes a new interpreted language called Lua. The Prizm, on the other hand, has almost unrestricted programmability, but the only languages thus far are Assembly and C, both of which have been successfully demonstrated.

Here are some example of notable projects from both sides:



Casio Prizm:

Obliterate, a port of Kerm Martian's popular Obliterate game for the 84+ and 84+SE calculators.

Minesweeper, a port of the perennial computer game everyone has spent at least a few hours trying to beat.

PrizmLife, a simulation of Conway's famous cellular automaton.

Java, a native port of the Java Virtual Machine to the Prizm.

A video of the Conway's Game of Life clone:



TI-Nspire CX:


Block Dude in Lua, a re-write of Block Dude in Lua.

15 Puzzle, Goplat's clone of his 15 Puzzles game.

ExtendeD has also done a game called 9sweeper which is an Nspire port of Minesweeper.


« Last Edit: April 19, 2011, 07:27:20 pm by DJ_O »
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: A new age of calculator gaming
« Reply #1 on: April 19, 2011, 02:44:08 pm »
I'm glad finally there are some Prizm games coming out and I hope Kerm finishes his port of Obliterate because that will be awesome, especially if gCn gets ported to the CX.

Java might also be nice providing it runs faster than Casio BASIC.

As for the CX the Lua language seems pretty fast so far, from what I've seen. I just hope that it gets ported to Ndless for those who don't want to upgrade to OS 3.0 and that TI won't prevent us from using it on OS 3.0 in the future.

Offline Munchor

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Re: A new age of calculator gaming
« Reply #2 on: April 19, 2011, 02:50:52 pm »
Qwerty.55, I really have to agree this is a new age, colours! We are no longer forced to use mono, 3 or 4 levels of greyscale. The 83/84+ (SE) calculators programming will still continue in high rates for some time, but this calculators are the future.

Offline FinaleTI

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Re: A new age of calculator gaming
« Reply #3 on: April 19, 2011, 02:52:50 pm »
This is great! I really need to get around to learning C so I can develop for my Prizm. Or maybe I should just wait for Java support...


Spoiler For Projects:

My projects haven't been worked on in a while, so they're all on hiatus for the time being. I do hope to eventually return to them in some form or another...

Spoiler For Pokemon TI:
Axe port of Pokemon Red/Blue to the 83+/84+ family. On hold.

Spoiler For Nostalgia:
My big personal project, an original RPG about dimensional travel and a few heroes tasked with saving the world.
Coding-wise, on hold, but I am re-working the story.

Spoiler For Finale's Super Insane Tunnel Pack of Doom:
I will be combining Blur and Collision Course into a single gamepack. On hold.

Spoiler For Nostalgia Origins: Sky's Story:
Prequel to Nostalgia. On hold, especially while the story is re-worked.

Offline Munchor

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Re: A new age of calculator gaming
« Reply #4 on: April 19, 2011, 02:55:27 pm »
Also, Qwerty.55 forgot about Basic!

Offline renatose

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Re: A new age of calculator gaming
« Reply #5 on: April 19, 2011, 03:08:26 pm »
They're still few for the nspire 3.0 :P
Once I get some time after mid semester tests I'll get into Lua programming and bake some more ;)

Offline z80man

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Re: A new age of calculator gaming
« Reply #6 on: April 19, 2011, 03:10:35 pm »
Even with all of the new hardware we still have some of the same old issues with calc gaming. This being most notably hardware restraints. Even though these two new calcs have powerful procs and much more ram compared to the 83+ we also need to account for the greater need of memory and proc power due to the new color, high-resolution screens. Just as an example the Prizm can only fit about 5 16-bit images in its ram due to its limited 2Mb size. So we aren't really dealing with high power devices yet like ubergraphX, but we are getting closer.

List of stuff I need to do before September:
1. Finish the Emulator of the Casio Prizm (in active development)
2. Finish the the SH3 asm IDE/assembler/linker program (in active development)
3. Create a partial Java virtual machine  for the Prizm (not started)
4. Create Axe for the Prizm with an Axe legacy mode (in planning phase)
5. Develop a large set of C and asm libraries for the Prizm (some progress)
6. Create an emulator of the 83+ for the Prizm (not started)
7. Create a well polished game that showcases the ability of the Casio Prizm (not started)

Offline Munchor

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Re: A new age of calculator gaming
« Reply #7 on: April 19, 2011, 03:17:18 pm »
They're still few for the nspire 3.0 :P
Once I get some time after mid semester tests I'll get into Lua programming and bake some more ;)

Bake'em up! Anxious for them.

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: A new age of calculator gaming
« Reply #8 on: April 19, 2011, 03:28:34 pm »
Also, Qwerty.55 forgot about Basic!
Well the thing is that games are nearly impossible in TI-Nspire BASIC and there are currently no Prizm BASIC game in the works.

Offline renatose

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Re: A new age of calculator gaming
« Reply #9 on: April 19, 2011, 04:26:37 pm »
The first will be a tic tac toe with AI, a remix of my own "Tic Tac Toe Reloaded" for the 83 in TI-BASIC.
That'll be like a warming up to learn the basics of Lua and maybe creating some "library like" functions in Lua to ease the programming process of the subsequent games ;) (Mastermind is an Idea for my 2nd lua game)

Offline AngelFish

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Re: A new age of calculator gaming
« Reply #10 on: April 19, 2011, 05:58:49 pm »
Also, Qwerty.55 forgot about Basic!

No, I didn't. The Nspire BASIC is so crippled that it almost felt cruel to mention Casio-BASIC in the same sentence.

...Then I remembered how fast Casio-BASIC ran. :P

I don't think either one will see a whole lot of use outside of math/science programs, though.

Also, I only posted about some of the more notable projects that have been officially announced. There are a few major projects that I'm aware of that have not been announced and were thus omitted.
∂²Ψ    -(2m(V(x)-E)Ψ
---  = -------------
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: A new age of calculator gaming
« Reply #11 on: April 19, 2011, 06:06:02 pm »
I'm fairly sure a lot of Casio BASIC homescreen games like Nemesiat could be done. However it depends if there are more bugs in the interpreter.

Also it's best to make sure the projects are not too much in early stages to announce them. For example, if you plan to make Doom for the prizm, wait until you have some of the engine done before posting it.

Offline turiqwalrus

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Re: A new age of calculator gaming
« Reply #12 on: April 19, 2011, 06:11:41 pm »
well, if you're going for stuff on the homescreen, you still are limited to the characters that aren't affected by the locate glitch(unless it gets fixed at some point :D)
for example, this is making my mazerunner game relatively annoying :(
« Last Edit: April 19, 2011, 06:12:12 pm by turiqwalrus »

Offline ruler501

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Re: A new age of calculator gaming
« Reply #13 on: April 19, 2011, 06:15:44 pm »
I'm making a Lua game for the Nspire. I'll tell you guys more about it when I get farther along. I slow at coding too much to do IRL
I currently don't do much, but I am a developer for a game you should totally try out called AssaultCube Reloaded download here https://assaultcuber.codeplex.com/
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Version: 3.1
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PS+ PE+ Y+ PGP++ t 5? X R tv-- b+++ DI+ D+ G++ e- h! !r y

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Re: A new age of calculator gaming
« Reply #14 on: April 19, 2011, 09:11:42 pm »
Wow!  I'm so glad we figured out the Lua interpreter for the CX.  Great job, everybody!  Keep up the good work.

The colors! :hyper:
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