Oh my god, I'm so glad you're back! There are so few programmers that make anything for the TI68k calcs anymore Anyway, I'll give it a test a bit later and let you know if I find any problems!
Well, a bit of good news. I thought the source code for nFrotz had been lost because I never got around to putting it in a repository. A few days ago, however, I stumbled across it in an old computer backup! So, after a year of hiatus, I am in the process of getting the code moved into the repo and will resume work on it! Thank you for everyone who's supported the project and I'm sorry that it's taken so long for me to resume work.
joeym, I will take all of your suggestions into account. Thank you for the feedback! Also are you using the CX or classic? A few of the things I plan to implement in the next release:
Fix the bug pointed out by mdr1!
Add an options menu, with the option to disable the particle effects
The ability to scroll up a bit so long blocks of text don't get cut off
4. An improved entry editor with the ability to type " ' "
If you guys think of any other features that you'd like me to add, please let me know!
This is looking awesome! Was it made with assembly?
Thank you so much! Right now, it's written in C and compiled with tisdcc, but I'll probably hand-optimize the time-critical parts in assembly once I have everything working. I'd write it all in assembly, but I'm guessing that this will turn into a very large project. I may have to turn it into an app because I'll need enough RAM to hold the note data and the song data.
They should be separated, assuming this is x/4 time, where x is anything.
Thanks for the help! I'll have to modify the renderer to group them properly. So my guess is that they are grouped based on what beat they're on? I'll have to do some research into how grouping is done in irregular time signatures.
As a lover of music, programming, and calculators, I'm always looking for ways to combine the three! Though I've wanted to do this forever, last week I finally decided to get to work on a program which allows you to enter notes in music notation, and play them back through the linkport! Currently, you can only enter quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes, but it renders them using proper stem direction, note grouping, and ligature marks (the lines that connect eighth and sixteenth notes). Oh, and beats line up! Here are some screenshots of score in action (the inverted portion is where the cursor is):
Of course, I still have a lot of work to do, but I'm happy with how it's turned out so far. Right now, I need to fix the stem length for sixteenth notes, since the ligature marks can make the stem look too short (for example, second screenshot, first group of sixteenth notes, last note). Also, I need to add thirty-second notes and rests. And music playback is an eventual goal, which will use Ben Ryves's sound routines for 4-channel sound. But it's not bad for a start!
Now, I have a question for music-savvy people. In the first screenshot, the first two eighth notes are connected by a ligature mark to the following four sixteenth notes. Is this correct, or should they be separated?
4. You prefer dating other guys over girls, in which case the girls don't stand a chance with you either 5. Girls would rather take their calculator to prom than take you
Supporting text adventures with screens is certainly on my long-term todo list, but it may be a bit difficult on the regular NSpire... perhaps I can convert the images to grayscale. Now, let's talk about the bugs. For the cursor, were you doing anything in particular when it happened? What part of the screen turned gray? Also, are you using a CX or classic? I'll try to reproduce the bug. For quitting, I'll add ESC as an alternate way to quit. Which game were you playing when it happened? Thank you very much for your feedback!
Hey mdr1, thank you so much! I'm glad you like it so far . If I get time over winter break, I'm going to continue working on it. My first priority is implementing screen scrolling because, if a long block of text is printed, it tends to get cut off. As I think about it, I may implement text scrolling as an option as well. Also, Lionel, I'm sorry that I missed your feature about nFrotz before. Thank you so much!
I'm sorry about the delay, but I've been pretty busy with my summer classes. Anyway, I'm proud to unveil the release of nFrotz v1.0! It is available on ticalc.org here:
Wow, this is awesome! Also, those people were complete dicks to you... I guess there wasn't much moderation at ticalc.org at the time... Still, I'm glad to see that you never gave up. Great work, Kerm!
This is terrible This will certainly cause problems for the TI-NSpire community, especially if new devices come preloaded with it. Is there any chance of getting around this?
Thanks guys! I appreciate the kind comments. Anyway, here are the screenshots that I promised. The ones showing the particle effects will, of course, look a bit weird since they're frozen in time!
Spoiler For Spoiler:
The built-in file browser:
A screenshot from the credits of some text exploding:
Zork I running with white text on a black background:
The same as above but with inverted colors:
Finally, the black hole that consumes the game when you quit:
I've been hacking away at the source code for a few weeks now, and I'm happy to say that I'll be releasing nFrotz v1.0 sometime in the next few days! I just need to get the source code cleaned up and a few last minute things ironed out. Oh, and I'd better write the readme too! When I get home, I'll take some screenshots and post them. The new features are:
Working status bar at the top (as opposed to just printing it out)
Invertable console colors (black on white, or white on black)
Built-in file browser that scans the whole calculator for .z files, so no need to navigate to where the game file is. You can also still launch games from My Documents.
Better file saving which is compatible with all game files. It stores save games in the nFrotz folder (assuming it exists)
Storing of command entries, so you can use the arrow keys to select a previous input
Perfect compatibility with .z1, .z2, .z3, .z4, .z5, .z7, and .z8 files, with experimental support for .z6 and .zblorb files.
Compatibility with games made with the Inform programming language
A whole bunch of unnecessary, yet cool, particle effects (explosions, self assembly, and a black hole effect).
Do you have any last minute features that you'd like me to add? Lemme know!
Ah, thank you very much, guys! Using the latest revision did the trick. I did, however, find another unfixed bug in Nspire I/O. It seems that nio_cursor_draw() doesn't take into account the offset of the console position, so if the offset is anything other than 0, the cursor is drawn in the wrong place.
I have, however, fixed the bug and have tested it for all of the different cursor types. compu, where would you like me to send my revised cursor.c?
Edit: ok here are the revised nio_cursor_draw() and nio_cursor_erase():
void nio_cursor_draw(nio_console* c) { unsigned short color = c->color[c->cursor_y*c->max_x+c->cursor_x]; unsigned char foreground_color = color; // The starting position of where to draw the cursor const unsigned short cursor_x_start = c->offset_x + c->cursor_x*NIO_CHAR_WIDTH; const unsigned short cursor_y_start = c->offset_y + (c->cursor_y*NIO_CHAR_HEIGHT) + NIO_CHAR_HEIGHT;
if((c->drawing_enabled) && (c->cursor_enabled)) { if (!((c->cursor_type >= 0) && (c->cursor_type <= 4))) { // Set the cursor type to a valid one c->cursor_type = 0; } int i, j; if (c->cursor_type == 0) { // Draw a box for the cursor for(i = 0; i < NIO_CHAR_WIDTH; i++) { for(j = NIO_CHAR_HEIGHT; j > 0; j--) { nio_pixel_set(cursor_x_start+i,cursor_y_start-j, foreground_color); } } } else if (c->cursor_type == 1) { // Draw a horizontal underline (underscore) for the cursor // Sanity check for cursor_line_width if (!((c->cursor_line_width > 0) && (c->cursor_line_width <= NIO_CHAR_HEIGHT))) { // Set the cursor width to 1 (regular cursor width) c->cursor_line_width = 1; } // Draw it! for(i = 0; i < NIO_CHAR_WIDTH; i++) { //for(j = NIO_CHAR_HEIGHT; j > (NIO_CHAR_HEIGHT - c->cursor_line_width); j--) for(j = 0; j < c->cursor_line_width; j++) { nio_pixel_set(cursor_x_start+i,cursor_y_start-j-1, foreground_color); } } } else if (c->cursor_type == 2) { // Draw a vertical bar for the cursor // Sanity check for cursor_line_width if (!((c->cursor_line_width > 0) && (c->cursor_line_width <= NIO_CHAR_WIDTH))) { // Set the cursor width to 1 (regular cursor width) c->cursor_line_width = 1; } // Draw it! for(i = 0; i < c->cursor_line_width; i++) { for(j = NIO_CHAR_HEIGHT; j > 0; j--) { nio_pixel_set(cursor_x_start+i,cursor_y_start-j, foreground_color); } } } else if (c->cursor_type == 3 || c->cursor_type == 4) { // Draw a custom cursor // This uses pretty much the same code as the regular character drawing unsigned char background_color = color >> 8; // Sanity check to make sure the user defined something for the character if (c->cursor_custom_data == NULL) { // Set the cursor to a full cursor int p; for(p = 0; p <= 5; p++) c->cursor_custom_data[p] = 0xFF; } // Draw it! int pixelOn; for(i = 0; i < NIO_CHAR_WIDTH; i++) { for(j = NIO_CHAR_HEIGHT; j > 0; j--) { pixelOn = c->cursor_custom_data[i] << j; pixelOn = pixelOn & 0x80 ; if (pixelOn) nio_pixel_set(cursor_x_start+i,cursor_y_start-j,foreground_color); else if(!pixelOn) nio_pixel_set(cursor_x_start+i,cursor_y_start-j,background_color); } } } } }
void nio_cursor_erase(nio_console* c) { unsigned short color = c->color[c->cursor_y*c->max_x+c->cursor_x]; char background_color = color >> 8; // The starting position of where to draw the cursor const unsigned short cursor_x_start = c->offset_x + c->cursor_x*NIO_CHAR_WIDTH; const unsigned short cursor_y_start = c->offset_y + (c->cursor_y*NIO_CHAR_HEIGHT) + NIO_CHAR_HEIGHT; // Draw a box for the cursor if((c->drawing_enabled) && (c->cursor_enabled)) { int i, j; for(i = 0; i < NIO_CHAR_WIDTH; i++) { for(j = NIO_CHAR_HEIGHT; j > 0; j--) { nio_pixel_set(cursor_x_start+i,cursor_y_start-j, background_color); } } nio_csl_drawchar(c,c->cursor_x,c->cursor_y); } }
I've actually been working on the code for nFrotz recently. I've added support for games made with the programming language Inform (which previously caused it to crash) and have made it compatible with zblorb files (though for now it ignores any picture data, or anything else besides the zcode for that matter).
I have, however, had some trouble with Nspire I/O. It seems that it doesn't like white, because whenever I try to use it, Nspire I/O prints in gray instead. Does anyone have any idea why this is happening?
Edit: here is a screenshot of a simple test I wrote in Inform 7.
Notice that the background is gray. If I keep the background white, the result is this:
No matter what I do, I can't get the background of the text to be white. The console is created with this code:
nio_InitConsole (&console, 54, 30, 0, 0, 15, 0); As I understand it, 0 is black and 15 is white, so I'm not quite sure exactly why it comes out gray. I suspect there may be a bug in Nspire I/O. Either way, if you'd like to test nFrotz in its current state, download the latest build here (apologies, I would attach it, but I don't have 40 posts yet) => http://goo.gl/P4LDm. For those who are curious, it can run .z1, .z2, .z3, .z4, .z5, .z6, .z7, .z8, and .zblorb files.
To run a game, follow these steps:
Rename the file you want to run as filename.z.tns
Send the renamed file and nFrotz.tns to your Nspire
Run nFrotz to install the .z extension (requires a version of ndless that supports extensions)
Run the game file and enjoy!
Many thanks to hoffa for starting the project. If you find any bugs, please email me at mww12 AT zips DOT uakron DOT edu.
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Anyway, I'll give it a test a bit later and let you know if I find any problems! 
