FIRST COMMENT SUCKAS
this looks cool
when is mario for the 86 gonna be finished?

Is Mario going to come out for the TI-83+? Please reply.

good point, we have been waiting for a long time for the mario 86 to be finished. Don't get me wrong i am very happy with the mario that is already out, but is it a P.U.D. or discontinued? just wonderin'

i heard that Bill Nagel like made it last year for the 86 or something

Bill Nagel is gone. And there is a way better version of mario by ben mickle, and he WILL finish that one.

where did he go to?

kind of off subject.... but does anyone know how to do the derivatives on the 89? they would be VERY helpful on my test on monday but i can't find out how to do them on there.

You can use the NDER function, available from the calc menu to find numerical derivatives. For example to find the numerial derivatve of x^2+2*x with respect to x at the point (1,3) type in NDER(x^2+2*x,x,1 and press enter.

You can't find symbolic derivatives on the 86, but you can on the 89 or 92, or on HP48 or HP49 calculators.

Wow, and I thought that he dropped the project. . .things are looking better as for having Mario on the 83. Great Job!! I just hope that the graphics can improve (no offense I hope)

~Dan C

Will there ever be a version compatible for the 83+? It would be greatly appreciated

TI is already phasing out 83's so why do so many new games coming out for them? I don't have a problem with this but it would be nice if programmers focused on the 83+. The 83+ has so few good games when 83 has so many. It would be nice to see good games like mario coming out for the 83+.

Off topic, dont post so many new news items that it pushes "important" news items off. For example don't push the POTM nominations off because that is the only place to vote for them (the link on the awards page is outdated.)

Here here!

TCPA is focusing alot on the 83+ and we are working as fast as we can to provide the TI community with great, quality games for the 83+ to stay tuned!

Andrew Magness
TCPA -tcpa.calc.org

I still see that no one has tried to use the mario compression system that the original NES version used. Under that system, all the levels (1-1 to 8-4 plus bonus levels) spanned across less than 4000 bytes. (world 1-1 was only 101 bytes!) I understand the compression pretty good enough, but suck with Z80 ASM. Anyone intrested?

I don't know assembly, but get the maker of Super Mario Quest for the TI-89 to use the compression too, that would be cool.

what type of compression is it?
is it just for the tile maps or what?
i thinksome sort of RLE compression would work good on tilemaps

SMB 1 uses block based compression, each block is made up of 2 bytes. The first byte is the position byte, X and y, the next byte is the data and the next page bit.

is this on the nintendo??
you will need 1 byte for the x then 1 byte for the y
and an 8 by 8 sprite needs 8 bytes to show it
mabye the second byte you mention is a pointer to the data
but the sprites still take up space

On the actual NES, the first byte was the position. Position for x and y went from 0-15, so 0-F and 0-F = 00-FF. One byte for position. The next byte was the type of object at that coordinate. Objects include ? block with coin, 8 horizontal bricks, a tall pipe, flagpole, etc. It went 0-127 (0-7F). The last bit put everything on the right page of the two page sets. After it went back to 0, another 2 page set was created.

FINALLY! I've been waiting for this update! This is, in my opinion, the TI-83 equivolent of Super Mario 86...and I had that opinion even when the two-level beta was first released! I find the graphics style...well, unique...I like 'em! Damn my brother for losing his 83! Guess I'll try an emulator. Thanks much for the update, Tom!

mario? you copied nintendo

This is a little of topic. But are there going to be levels to all these games. Like for breakout or bytes. I beat the levels too many times and I want a new challange. PLease reply
And the games I have are all for ION or the TI-83+

Take the source code for the 83 game levels (Diamonds, Breakout, Bytes -- Joe W's games) and run them through ION's asm.bat.