Found in Maine, could Skyler the Blue Lobster be Netham45's cousin? http://tvanouvelles.ca/lcn/lebuzz/archives/2014/08/20140827-072301.html

EDIT: English link http://www.nbcnews.com/news/weird-news/blue-lobster-caught-maine-coast-gets-new-home-n190016

I don't know what to say...  http://www.pyongyangracer.co/



Yes, this is a legit game, even if I posted this in the humor/jokes section instead of gaming discussion. I guess Tvtropes was right in saying this game is so bad it's good and I would say to the point of hilarity.

Have you ever wished that you could have a raycaster run at 2 FPS in pure TI-83 Plus or Casio BASIC? Well, unfortunately that will never be possible, but if you have an HP Prime and thought it would be the case on that calc too, then get ready: Critor has just released PrimeCaster 3D, a variable wall height raycasting engine for the HP Prime!



Because guess what? You read it and see it right: This raycaster even supports variable wall height, and as if it wasn't enough, it supports shading too! You can jump, climb stairs and from what I can see while moving around, it seems that some floors show reflection of walls.

The frame rate is very slow, though, but given the fact this is written in HP PPL rather than C and ASM, it's ridiculously impressive. You can adjust the frame rate to whatever you like and the raycasting quality will automatically adjust itself to match the frame rate you want, but above 3 FPS on-calc it starts being hard to see anything. This is why the maze game will look nicer on the simulator than the calculator at the same FPS (the screenshot above has been altered to show approximately how fast the quality shown in it runs on a real calculator. You can also change the weather or lightning effect by switching between darkness, fog and light (the latter which turns off all shading)

In order to allow a game to use this engine, level design would have to be made so that wide-open areas are obstructed by walls, cutting the view down, as it runs faster in smaller rooms. Also, some elements such as shading support and variable wall height would probably have to be eliminated or toned down. Regardless, this awesome program shows once again what the HP PPL language of the HP Prime is capable of and gives an idea of what kind of game could be achieved in it!

Download link: http://tiplanet.org/forum/archives_voir.php?id=87246
Source: http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=15033

This video demonstrates what could eventually become a Casio fx-CG10 BASIC remake of Illusiat Original and Illusiat 81, utilizing SourceCoder's new ability to create custom g3p pics for North American models. It only cycles through the 16 possible dungeon rooms right now (the three battle and title screens are missing), but since a game using them would be heavily based on the original Illusiat from 2001 and the TI-81 remake, you move from one room to another instantly from a single arrow key press rather than tile by tile, in order to keep on-screen drawing to minimum.

On the fx-CG10 and fx-CG20, RecallPict doesn't erase anything on the screen other than the last recalled pic, so text in the HUD remains intact. This is why the HUD will be pretty much identical between battles and overworld. The original game had no menu nor NPC convos. The TI-81 remake also lacked NPC convos (they could probably be shown on a different screen, though. Of course, outside battle F1 and F2 would not work.

Also, in the first Illusiat game there is only 1 type of monster and bosses looked identical to it (although monsters varied in HP/STR/EXP), so in a PRIZM remake I would probably only need 2 or 3 battle pics.

I tried to reduce the pictures quality to reduce file size, since this much pre-rendered material takes A LOT of Flash memory (close to 180 KB right now). Of course, I could always provide 3-bit versions of the pics above as well, which would take even less space.

Anyway, this is one reason why I thought it would be nice if custom g3p pics would be made cg10-compatible rather than cg20-only. Another reason is that there are several cg20-only BASIC games already available that would be nice to be ported to the cg10.

Don't get your hopes up for a PRIZM remake of Illusiat 81, but Kerm and others who worked on deciphering the g3p format made this much easier so it has more chances to happen than in the last 3 years or so.



inb4 comments about how text takes 6 times longer to render than a 65536-color pic)

For a while, North American Casio PRIZM models, known as the fx-CG10, could only display 3-bit images created directly on the user's calculator and official pictures available on Casio's website. The fx-CG20, on the other hand, could display any picture created by community users. As a result, many BASIC games available on French Casio websites such as Planète-Casio could not run on North American models.

The picture limitation was to ensure that the calculator complies to exam rules in the United States. The TI community was relunctant about publishing any converter that could circumvent that restriction, in fear that such program falls under the wrong hands. However, last year, two new color calculators with full image support were released in the United States and in addition to that, despite the PRIZM and TI-82/83/Plus lacking any PTT/exam mode to restrict program/apps/images, they are still accepted in most tests. As a result, one fellow TI website, Cemetech, opened a topic asking people's opinion on whether SourceCoder 3 should get such conversion feature or not. In the end, the feature idea was finally welcomed, unlike two years ago, and you can now enhance your Casio FX-cg10 BASIC games like there's no tomorrow!



The animated GIF above demonstrates a program looping through multiple images I experimented with. Games like Shining in the Darkness for the Sega Genesis or Myst for the PC should theoretically be possible, but if you can keep your pictures small enough, perhaps you could do more type of games (the variations of the dungeon picture in the GIF above are for a potential Illusiat 1 remake).

Two image formats are supported: 3-bit and 16-bit colors with no transparency. Images are compressed, so files with less colors and more uniform patterns will generally be smaller. You can also store as many pictures as your calculator Flash can hold. When using RecallPict, images will appear as backgrounds and replace the previously recalled background without erasing anything else that was drawn on top of it (text, lines, circle, axises, etc). Every image is 384x192, so no sprite.

As with mViewer GX, TI-Connect and other SourceCoder 3 image conversion tools already available, we highly recommend community members to restrict their use of such feature for programming games, learning tools and experimental purposes.

Link to SourceCoder 3

Source: http://www.cemetech.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10516

Casio Australia has announced that a new OS for the ClassPad II calculator model, version 2.00, will be released soon. As reported by Casiopeia, it will come with the following improvements and additions:

Sliders & pinch zoom in graphs
Interact with secants and chords in the new Interactive Differential Calculus application
Plot the values of the tangent's slope and see the idea of a derivative function forming
Explore the connection between a function and its derivative function
Graphs can now be viewed horizontally
3D Graphing, with wire mesh and surface colouring
Physium periodic table

It is unclear if this new OS will improve BASIC language speed (which is particularly problematic on the ClassPad series) and if the Physium application will be built-in or available as separate add-in. However, if Physium comes in the form of an add-in, then could this mean that third-party ASM and C programs could eventually be made possible by the community in the same fashion as on the Casio PRIZM? Back in late 2010, a few Omnimaga members studied the add-in format on the Casio PRIZM then managed to create third-party ones before the calculator even came out, bringing ASM/C to the Casio fx-CG10/20 community.

You can download the OS here.

Source:
http://www.casio.edu.shriro.com.au/classpad_update_cropped.pdf
via http://www.casiopeia.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1669
& http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=168394


UPDATE (July 31st): mViewer GX has been ported to the ClassPad II, as it appears that the calculator has built-in image support. It is still in alpha stages, though, so bugs would have to be reported in the appropriate thread. Also remember to use common sense when using any calculator image converter.

It also appears that Physium is part of the OS, so no add-in support after all, meaning that Casio might have taken the same route as TI when it comes to locking down their calcs.

Partially due to lack of interest from the TI and especially HP community, it will have taken more time than on the Casio PRIZM, but due to HP not having declared war against the community, it will have taken much less time than on the TI-Nspire series. The day where ASM is now possible on the HP Prime has finally arrived!

After recently buying a Prime, I've now spent several hours making my own armfir.elf. The result is attached.
The code fills one third of the screen with red, one third with green, and the last third with blue (with some glitches...), then enters an infinite loop. Yeah, this PoC sucks, I know - it sucks just as much as my Nspire DummyOS did, more than three years ago.

Usage: copy the armfir.elf file into APPSDISK.DAT. Firmware transfer, enter recovery mode by pressing the Reset button in the hole on the back, pressing the Symb key, releasing the Reset button, and holding Symb until the Recovery mode screen appears. Then, use usbtool (Windows only).

As usual: works for me, but use at your own risk

Right now, no exploit has been found in the official HP Prime OS by the TI and HP communities, so unlike with Ndless on Nspire OS 3.1 and 3.6, the only current way to run assembly language on the HP Prime is to send a third-party OS to the calculator.

You can download the proof of concept file here.

Although it doesn't do anything much, it still demonstrates how you can install any modified OS on your HP Prime then execute any kind of assembly code in it. Could a patch that can alter the official firmware via Lunar IPS, for example, eventually be made so that ASM launching commands get added? Could the community also be the ones who will fix all the firmware bugs like what happened with the HP 50g? In any case, if anybody decides to learn ARM assembly or C to create advanced softwares for this calculator, remember to stick to recreational, educational and development softwares: programs that can tamper with the HP Prime's exam mode will result into HP blocking third-party and modified firmwares like TI does with Ndless and such programs are against Omnimaga forum rules.

Source:
http://www.hpmuseum.org/forum/thread-1789.html
http://tiplanet.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14939

Although I do not post news regularly anymore and that there are other staff that can post news too, I might still post calculator game features/spotlight articles from time to time on the Omnimaga front page. However, to get featured, I need your help too, so I thought I would post a few guidelines to follow if you want to increase your chances to get featured at one point or another:


1) The most important rule is that you must include an animated screenshot or Youtube video of the game in action. A screenshot of the title screen or menus is not enough. If making such screenshot is impossible (such as Casio ASM games), just film your calculator directly. Large GIFs will be replaced with links or still GIFs to save bandwidth, but they're still accepted for reference.

2) Your program must include a description and state which dependencies (if any) it requires. It will be quoted or summarized in the news article.

3) Obviously, a download link and executable must be available too, preferably on an existing calculator site. I am also less likely to link to an external website if that website regularly participates publicly in Omnimaga bashing, illegal online activities (keygens, ROMs, vandalism/takeovers) or if it loads atrociously slow since months.

4) The game must be at a certain level of quality and originality. The requirements for this are rather vague, but for example, I won't feature three 2048 clones in a row and an ASCII BASIC RPG should at least rival Illusiat 6 in quality (although preferably Illusiat 12 for magic animations). Demos and betas are fine, as long as there is significant gameplay in them (I won't feature a platformer game with just 3 rooms, for example).

5) If you are regularly active on Omnimaga, this increases your chances to get featured, since that's the calculator site I visit the most, so I'm more likely to notice your game updates.

6) Keep a good forum behavior. If you are constantly being rude or spammy then you'll notice that fewer forum members tend to reply to your projects. If you constantly jump at members throats or start controversy by trolling, Omnimaga users will reward you by no longer interacting with you or even outright ignoring you. When fewer people reply to your project thread, it's much harder for me to notice it in the Recent Posts list.

7) You must PM me on Omnimaga if you want to get featured. E-mails, Facebook PMs or PMs on other sites will be ignored.

8) There is no estimate about when your program will finally make front page headlines. It depends of how busy I am and how long it takes for admins to approve my news articles. Asking non-stop will get you added on my /ignore list.

9) Do not PM me for site/program install support. There are Omni admins for the former and readmes and sub-forums for the latter.