phat... i'll have to try this out... btw... i have to know.. do you people enjoy 2 player link games? like Standoff and Tankers for the 89? when i play them with friends, i think they are such great fun... but that may just be because i made them... what do all of you think? (i need to know to know if i should make these games better or to just forget about them)
thanks yo's

I think that 2-player link games are the future of calculating games. The possibility to play against a real person instead of sad AI, gives gaming an huge extra dimention. Everyone who have ever played Quake or Unreal Tournament online or via a lan know what I mean. That's why I'm developping multiplayer games for the TI-83 (+) I've done a lot of recearch in the previous year to find out how to make a stable and fast connection between two calcs. Check out Mario Deathmatch it is comming out whitin a week! It transmits over 320 bytes a sec which is much more than necessary to provide a real time action game.

lol... i get my StarCraft (developing) game to go 1400 bytes (700 each way) per frame, and there are like 10 frames per second...(rough estimate)...(not to mention that the actual link part takes up almost none of how slow the game goes) the link communications are VERY fast. my suggestion to everyone, buy an 84 inch link cable from the TI online store... i got 1 cus my old 30 inch 1 broke, so i can do stuff with someone a couple rows away during class...

hey I'm talking about the ti-83 and its link port has a maximum of 9600 bits per second so the maximum bytes per second can't be over 1200 bytes a sec! Don't know about the 89 or other calcs. Anyhow the game itself requires also some cpu power so you'll never get that high on a Ti-83. I use smart data transfer. The game sends 24 bytes per frame but only 8 bytes have to be send per frame. This technique pumps up the speed so the frame refresh rate is over 30 fps.

the 83(+) is dead when you speak multiplay games...

That's why I developpe multiplayer games so maby other programmers get interested. I'll help them with the link part or take a look at my Link-tutorial. It will be updated soon.. Please read the comments above.

You know, I might do that, if I still had a link port physically attached to my 89...

That's an incredibly poor way to do the communications for an RTS game like Starcraft. The real game doesn't even use nearly that much bandwidth. Even with the lag on a 56k modem, it should still be fully playable without lag. You don't need to send all the movements every frame. You just send what changes, when it changes. When you change the latency option, what you are doing it changing the response times of the units. If you can only make up to four changes per second, then you can have a fully playable game with a 250ms latency. I suggest doing something similar for the calc. Sending more than about 200 bytes per second will be too much.

Barrett, those two games are awesome and me and my friends love them. Single player games are cool, but there is a real lack of multiplayer games for calculators, and your programs are some of the few high quality ones. Keep up the good work!

Stephen "SMKnight" Klancher

I really enjoy multiplayer games more than any other game, also! I'm currently developing Stratego! for the TI-83+ (BASIC, but runs quite well so far).

The problem for me is that only one other person in my school has an 89, and his link port's having problems. But the screenshots look cool, but slow (though I bet the game itself goes faster).

ya.. way faster... my link port has problems too... it doesn't work 90% of the time, so you have to twist until you get it to work.. then i'll be in the middle of a game and someone will just TOUCH the cable, and it won't work...

Well Done.

Now if there just was a solve function...heh.

Brandon,
Great job! This is really amazing. Planning on releasing the source so we can all leran from it or not??? Has anyone tried it yet? I am wondering if csch is the representation for cosh. If so this is really bas ass. Also Brandon would infinite sums be too difficult at this point. Also power series would be nice. I'm sure you have already thought of this but I thought it might be encouraging to know that some of us really appreciate this kind of program...my postcard is on the way!

AYE! The mailman just picked up my postcard to start its cross-continental trip!

<<I am wondering if csch is the representation for cosh.>>

csch is the hyperbolic cosecant.

<<Also Brandon would infinite sums be too difficult at this point. Also power series would be nice.>>

Simple Taylor series should work, using the basic definition. Infinite summation is much harder.

Jason Kovacs is working on a BASIC program to do Taylor series which makes use of this app. Unfortunately there will be a version 1.3. We need a function that converts real numbers to string. Stupid TI didn't think of that. This app does the hard stuff then other programs in BASIC and ASM can make use of these new functions in more advanced utilities. I encourage other people to make higher level BASIC math programs too now that we have a differentiation routine and simplifier.

<<We need a function that converts real numbers to string.>>

Well, at least it should be much easier to program than integration or symbolic solving ;-)

There is one in the TI-83+ BASIC Games section (well, it's a program, not a function, but close enough). Click the link.

I have an 89, but my Algebra 2 teacher won't let me use it on his final. I'll have to borrow an 83+ and put this on it :P

Your algebra teacher needs to be castrated.

Forcibly.

Actually, I kinda understand that. *Everything* you learn in Algebra II can be done on the 89. What you should've done was not tell your teacher about your 89 in the first place.