Great. Now all we need is
a) A TI-83 port damnit!!! ;)
b) A computer AI - that would seriously rock, even if it is a crap one ;)

Uh, it already HAS a computer AI. That's why it's won POTM, has about 34873878 news items (which is close to the number of times Patrick Davidson has released Phoenix ;-), and is so popular.

As for the TI-83 port... that would be kind of hard, considering its file size is well over the TI-83's 20-something-K limit. In fact, you'd need 2 1/2 83's to play the game, and we won't be seeing games you can play while split across 2+ calculators anytime soon. :-)

Hey JaggedFlame, don't blame me! You cannot compare
Patrick Davidson's "I will release one Phoenix Version per Day" style with releases from the TI-Chess Team.
We carefully alpha and beta tests our software. This time around 12 beta testers where involved over a period of 2 weeks. And the alpha tests took Marcos and me about 5 weeks, okay?
In my opinion releasing hundreds of versions is really poor style. Its like Microsoft: put out software in alpha state and let the people buy for the fixes. Even if the software is free, you will buy by the download costs (of course not if you have a flate rate ;-)

I'm not blaming anybody. It was just a joking reference to the "brings out 318024172384 releases of the same program every week" statement from Nick.

You're probably right about it being better to carefully test the software; most people I know used to download new versions of Phoenix, but now that a new version comes out every two or three weeks, they're tired of downloading it and download, instead, more useful programs (such as TI-Chess... :-D).

Actually, it is fairly easy to compare the release rates of Phoenix with TI-Chess ... if you have a calculator, anyway. Counting from the first public release to the present, we can easily see that:

Phoenix had 36 releases in 875 days, a rate of one release every 24.3 days.
TI-Chess had 7 releases in 176 days, a rate of one release every 25.1 days.

And this includes three publicly available "experimental" versions of Phoenix...

Of course, Phoenix might seem to be released more often because this was the case recently, with 3 versions released within one week. That might not have been necessary if I had sent it to a large group of beta-testers, but that's not necessarily true; even if all of the beta-testers say there's no problem, other people still might say it doesn't work (as is evident even on this message board). Who's better qualified to test a product than the people who want to use it, anyway? And, is it better to slow down your release by more than a month so that a few people can test it over and over, or release it sooner, in which case bugs can be found within a few days, and the program will be tested in a much wider variety of conditions?

Another reason why Phoenix is updated more often than some other programs (I won't name any, of course) is that some other programmers don't ever bother to fix bugs; whereas I would fix a bug reported within a couple of days (if I can reproduce it), some other programmers would just wait until the next major release a few months later to do anything about it.

By the way, if you think releasing software in "alpha state" (whatever that means) is bad because it's Microsoft-like, don't forget that Linux is more frequently updated than just about any other program.

Yeah, I agree completely!
As for Linux, I have never seen such an awesome OS!

-JrJinfinity

Patrick Davidson has released Phoenix 34,873,880 times.

--BlueCalx

Yeah, but three didn't count because they were really "Premiere Guessing Game 7.0 (Enhanced Edition)" in the disguise of a cool assembly space-shooter game. :-P

I am willing to help out. As for greyscale I have already got it to work on the 83+. And the AI would be hard, but I think that I can do something to achieve this. Heck I made a BlackJack game where the Ace is both a 1 AND a 11 (In BASIC). And if I, can't the people @ Void probally can so beg them to help you out.Yes it would have to be small and maybe not that good of graphics, but I would do it from scratch

Wow, I should've downloaded this game a long time ago. It works perfectly on my HW2 AMS 2.05 TI-89 (although it does flicker a teeny bit - it turns unnoticable though when you lower the contrast a little). Nevertheless, this is the first game that is able to utilize grayscale on my TI-89 without any OS'es or libraries.

It's cool how Thomas coded this entire thing and compiled it into very little files - running this game without having to install OS'es, find libraries, etc. is kinda advanced to me, compared with many other games. Also, you won't have to re-transfer all the OS/library files to your calc and reinstall them after your calc resets to play this again :)

timiner from TICT also works nostub on HW2AMS2.05
believe me
It got me through the last two weeks of precalc.

--e of pi and the unimatrix's 45.59985035114 cents

Since the order doesn't matter, wouldn't it be combinanations rather than permutations for HW/AMS version?

True, but "permutations" makes you sound more like a math professor than "combinations."

Yea... it's a great game and all, except for a little problem. I can run it once and it'll play perfectly. But then if I quit and try to run it again, it'll say BUSY in the lower right corner, a black bar about 8 pixels in height appears at the top of the screen, and the calculator freezes. I don't think that's supposed to happen. I'm trying to run it on a HW 2.00 TI-89 calculator with AMS v2.05. Can anyone suggest something that I can do to fix this?

Also, on a slightly different topic, I've been having a difficult time trying to learn how to program in assembly. I've searched and searched and I came up with a site "www.technoplaza.net/assembly" that seems to provide some help. I looked at the first tutorial which is about a program called "Hello World!". I followed all the instructions exactly but when I try to install the DoorsOS on my calculator it either crashes or tells me something about my version not being recognized and then locks up. Since I can't install the DoorsOS program I can't do any of the tutorials and I'm stuck not being about to figure out the assembly language. Can ANYBODY help?

I am one of the beta testers for TI-Chess and I tested it on AMS 2.05 and my calc is HW2 and I never had that problem, but I has DoorsOS II v0.97 installed though. Doors OS II v0.98 acts strange on the new AMS (2.04, 2.05) so I stuck with v0.97 of Doors.

As for the black bar you have to run tichess with the tistart prog, the ASM luanch breaker. Otherwise you get what you described happening. But the best thing to do would be to install Doors OS II v0.97 (E-mail me if you can't find that version cause I have a copy) then put tichess 3.0 on your calc and archieve it then run the program. And if it still happens then tichess must not run to well on 2.05, but I tested it on 2.05 and didn't have any problems.

Hope that helps you out.

A.J. <kaizer_911@yahoo.com>

You can't install DoorsOS on HW2 calculators with AMS 2.05 yet, because HW2patch (which is required) doesn't work on AMS 2.05 yet. You'll just have to wait until HW2patch is updated (it shouldn't be too long, I hope!).

I really really hope. i now regret downloading this 2.05 thing.

Also, check this out: This is what it says about v. 2.05 on TI's web site:

This FREE upgrade replaces any existing TI-92 Plus operating system. Update 2.05

increases RAM limit for ASM programs from 8 KB to 24 KB
improves language localization
contains enhancements to support future Calculator Software Application (App) development
fixes the v2.04 "Protected Memory Violation" lock-up while viewing locked or archived programs


Note the "increases RAM limit for ASM programs from 8 to 24 KB." Uhhhhhhh, no. If that version is all so dandy, why is my TI-92 Plus freezing all the time?

Just use unios. It is much more stable, and old prgms now work fine. Only problem I've had with 2.05 is that maxmem hasn't been updated yet.

I tried that, but it also wants that hardware fix thing, which doesn't exist for 2.05 yet. The chess game by the way, works for me only once. This is what I did, tell me if I did something wrong.

I copy all files to my calc.

I use the hw2start thing

The first time, this works. As soon as I exit, and open ther starter again, I get the infamous black bar. Also, I tried using the starter, and then using the normal program the second time, which didn't work either.

Also, I *Don't* have a TI-89, but I can reset my TI-92 Plus by taking out a battery.... doesn't that work on the TI-89 as well? Because I saw one posting where the person said they had to take ou their little battery.

Once again, I am happy not to be a sucker and use a TI-89 Hardware Version 1 AMS 1.00.

- Jeff

Ok, I retract my previous post mentioning that TI-Chess is the best of all...I attempted to run TI-Chess a second time on my TI-89 HW2.00 AMS 2.05 calculator and it says "BUSY" just like what Mark said. Some moments later a black bar also appears on top (the same bar that comes with 'address error' or something, but this time with no text. As a result, I had to take out the lithium battery along with the 4 AAA's and leave the calculator aside.

If you beta testers are having no problems - try installing the Statistics/List Flash application from ti.com and then attempt to run TI-Chess a second time. Perhaps me and Mark have taken up a lot of memory as Flash apps, dunno...

i've had no problems with it yet and i've ran it with teos and wo it

Hey!! That's right! Before I tried the chess program I installed the two Flash Applications that were currently available. Maybe that's why some people are having trouble.

On another note, is it bad if you take out one of the AAA batteries in the calculator and put it back in the other way around with the positive and negative sides reversed? I was wondering since I sometimes do this to reset my calculator quickly after a crash.

Don't put your battery in backwards. I don't think it hurts the calculator, but it doesn't reset any better than taking it out, pressing on, and putting it back in. And if you can, always try 2nd-left-right-On before taking a battery out. Faster, and helps the battery contacts (Okay, so it doesn't really matter, but over several decades it could make a difference).

Suggestion for HW2 AMS 2.05 calculators: Archive the TI-chess files and all other ASM games on your calculator. TI-chess should work now every time you start it.

Man, you are my hero! Yeah, that works, and all v2.03 games I've tried work on v. 2.05 when archived. Great! And this without that patch. Maybe TI really has increased the limit to 24k! Thanks, to you and TI.

Just archive it! This really works! Check out two pages behind here. This really works. And it works for any v 2.03 game I'v tried. Without the patch, (which doesn't exist yet for v. 2.05, and seems like it doesn't). Just the flickering..... Hmmmmmmmm.