I don't think the plethora of games was perplexing, only your news headline, Nick :)

~ferich

Eschew obfuscation.
:)

--BlueCalx

Also, maybe these programs aren't as "insightful" and "wise" as the definitions above give. :)

~ferich

I think any 2-D racing game is worthless if it is over 600 bytes. Just my opinion. A 300-400 byte game would be perfect for people who play big RPG's on a TI83.

I have some errors to report. Galaxian caused my ram to be cleared on the Ti 83+. I am running 1.03 Rom with IoN 1.1. I ran Galaxian and before anything happened it said error: memory
1: quit
2: goto

I pushed one. The screen filled with black lines. I shut off the calc. I turned it back on and it said ram cleared. AHHHH! One more error happened today after i refilled my ram. I opened Tetris Attack played a little hit clear and then it said Ram Cleared. Does anyone know why any of this happened?

love ya,
beasty

P.S. Keep the quality Ti 83+ games coming. MARIO! MARIO! MARIO! MARIO! mARIO! hehehe MARIO!

The first one is because you have too much crud on your calculator. Delete some. :)

As for the second... that's unexplainable, but I can probably attribute it to your having too much crud in some way. I just can't think of it right now.

--BlueCalx

PS - Code Mario yourself :P

Update your rom verson from 1.03 to 1.12 or higher. That should fix some things. Download it at ti's website in the flash area. (www.ti.com/calc).Click on the ti 83 + and you know what to do from there.

P.S. Don't push the programers to port mario.
P.S.S. I think thats one of the hardest games to port.
P.S.S.S I am not tring to get a flame just a warning so they will not quit again or for good.

You won't get a flame. That was a good comment.
And, from what I've heard (and seen), Mario is darn difficult to port.

--BlueCalx

Yes it would be hard but not entirly imposible(read my post later down it might help).The only limit is memory but it is possible.Nothing is impossible but may be near.

-Chris Perkins

Don't you mean PPS, PPPS, etc?

No, what he really meant was P.M.S.

-Miles Raymond

I feel sorry for that guy then...I really do.

lol

Because of the 8k size limit, you're not likely to see mario on a TI83+. Sqrxz maybe, Penguins (*GASP*) possibly, but Mario no. Unless hays renames Sqrxz...

Someone will figure a way around that. You could split up the program into a few external data files or something...

It can be done I think but dont bother on requesting a port.By using advanced compression you might be able to do it,you know that the original mario levels were only a few 100 bytes.Also spliting up the game itself into differnt progs with different functions would cut down the mem use would also work<kinda like a library file>,but it would be tedious to keep up with,just putting my two cents worth in(I know very little about the 83+).
-Chris Perkins

Didn't Joltima use a J-EXT split? Although the final combined the two, it might be theoreticly possible to "bankswitch" a split version of Jext from flashrom. Just a theroy.

As for the Awesome Mario Compression, world 1-1 was 101 bytes, and all the levels were <4500k total.

Hehe, I knew my source code was a little confusing. JEXT was just a little PC program of mine to format strings (among other data) and nothing more. It stood for Joltima - External, simply because it was data that wasn't resident in the actual assembly file. When you get down to it though, it all wound up being a single .83p file. So I wasn't doing anything that special.

Splitting the program in parts was actually Bill Nagel's mad scheme when he ported it to the TI-86. In fact, a lot of 'big' TI-86 programs are made like this. I imagine the same could be done for large programs on the TI-83+.

The key is making sure the game doesn't need to be in a contiguous block of memory (since the TI-86 has a 9k section and a 16k section I believe, but they aren't connected). I'm sure a game like mario could be split up between graphics, program, and map.

Of course, there needs to be space to use. If a lot of the TI-83+ is used for swap space or system memory then it may not be possible. At least ports. I'm sure huge games could be created specifically for the 83+. On that note, I'm surprised there haven't been any TI-86 specific games spanning 64k or something.

-Justin

TI-86 games taking up more than 64k? Hehehe. That just might happen in the near future...

Good to know 8 worlds would stay under 4.5 megabytes...

:-)

There are many ways around it when making it a program, but it could easily be made an application, with plenty of levels to take up 16k. And it wouldn't die if your memory got cleared :)

SOS got around that problem on the TI-83, maybe someone could port it to the TI-83+. The problem was much worse on the TI-83, because of the lack of an archive all programs were in the operstion memory, and if 8kb had to be free, then half of the memory was filled up with free area. Using Send(9xxxxxxxx) worked, but it required a copy of the program to be made before the program would run.

I think like Joe W. like did.
he like called the shell like ION or something.
I think joe like reallocated the programs to a like space called like EXEC_ASSSEMBLY and stuff. Then he like sent the programs back to a like new location in memory.