Projects of the Month: January 2022
Published by KermMartian
6 days, 3 hours ago (2023-03-15T03:24:22+00:00)
| Discuss this article
Permalink
January 2022 was a particularly good month for Cemetech projects, in no small part due to our members having time to pick up projects over the winter break from school or work. We saw rapid progress on games, shells, audio libraries, and much more, for calculators and computers. The updated projects:
- A transliterator on the CE: Privacy_Dragon completed and released this project to the Cemetech Archives, allowing users to transliterate text into five writing systems: Elder Futhark (Runes), Nyctograph, Ogham, Phoenician, and Proto-Sinaitic.
- BallzCE: PT_ took off his administrator hat for a moment to build this C game for the TI-84 Plus CE. It takes some gameplay elements from Arkanoid/Block Breaker-type games, from Puzzle Bobble/Bust-a-Move-type games, and others. You fire a stream of balls at a point on the screen, attempting to erase a group of blocks: every time a ball hits a block, the number written on it is decremented, until at 0 it disappears. Check out this unique arcade game in the topic, and encourage PT_ to continue the game!
- Catylizm [TI-84+ CE] [C]: In January 2022, Spenceboy98 returned to this game after time spent on his other projects, polishing the graphics in this cat-themed winning entry to Cemetech Contest 13. The improvements even sped the game up! Check it out in the topic, and bug Spenceboy to push the updates to the published game!
- CEleste: commandblockguy released a couple of updates this month, adding a practice mode for speedrunners, implementing saving on exit, and fixing a variety of bugs. And now CEleste has won the Cemetech Projects of the Year 2021: even more reason to take it for a spin on your TI-84 Plus CE!
- DuckHunt Development [C]: Alvajoy123 started a port of the NES classic Duck Hunt, publishing concept art of how the game could look on a 320x240-pixel screen, rapidly iterated on a prototype from simple placeholder boxes for the ducks to sprites, added a menu, and solved bugs.
- Elimination: An RPG inspired by Earthbound / Pokemon: Hot_Dog planned to release this monochrome TI-83 Plus/TI-84 Plus RPG on January 31, 2022, but decided to also port it to the color-screen TI-84 Plus CE, delayed the final release. Hot_Dog did tune graphics, difficulty balancing, and UX in January 2022, discussed in this post.
- HASHLIB - Cryptography Library for the CE: This month, ACagliano release version 8.0 release candidate 1 of his cryptography library, including additional protections against sidechannel attacks and two new algorithms, HMAC-SHA256 and PBKDF2-HMAC.
- Jetpack Joyride for the TI-84 Plus CE: Continuing its consistent presence on this list, version 0.20 of this game by King Dub Dub was released this month, primarily to fix a bug.
- micrOS: another shell for TI-84 PCE [ON PAUSE]: nanobot567 began experimenting with building a TI-BASIC shell for the TI-84 Plus CE at the beginning of 2022, and made some progress before discovering some of the limitations of TI-BASIC for writing shells. This project remains on hold.
- Pony Express [C]: Candledark's clone of the Pony Express Google Doodle progressed forward this month, but the image host they used has lost their screenshots. Nevertheless, the Github repo remains.
- potatoscript: an esoteric programming language: nanobot567 tried their hand at an esolang, resembling Befunge or Unlambda and with a parser written in Python. They have yet to collect feedback on this project, so perhaps you can be the first to provide some! Like most good open coding projects these days, the source is also on Github.
- Quest of Maybe Something Thing (pure-BASIC color sprites): DJ Omnimaga showed off a demo of a pure TI-BASIC map and walking engine using sprites and tilemaps for the TI-82 Advanced Édition Python. It adheres to the usual high standards of RPG design you'd expect from DJ Omnimaga, and like some of the other paused projects on this list, could use some encouragement and feedback to get to the next step.
- RISK on the CE [C]: matkeller19 showed off a tech demo of a RISK port, including a cool tech demo that uses a fixed map and palette-swapping tricks to color each territory.
- Snorlax's Lunch Time port to TI-84+ CE: TIny_Hacker announced a TI-84 Plus CE port of this past TI-83 Plus/TI-84 Plus PotM game, taking the unusual step of making it a faithful port, large green-and-gray pixels and all. If you're not familiar, the goal of the game is to make a Snorlax eat the food before the arrow moves across the screen, or if it's not food (The Pichu) don't eat it. TIny_Hacker missed releasing this in January 2022 by one day, so you'll see it again next month!
- Super DX-Ball [TI-84+ CE] [C]: Spenceboy98 picked up another old project, this one an Arkanoid clone, switching to tilemaps for the speed boost they provide and trying to debug collision detection. It remains paused.
- Text Encryption: achak prototyped a text encrypter in TI-BASIC, using a replacement dictionary and indices produced by the calculators' PRNG as a pseudo-one-time pad. Zeroko deserves props here for a thorough explanation of the strengths and weaknesses of this approach.
- Untitled TI Audio Subsystem (For TI-83+SE & TI-84+(SE)): Crazy_Fox2 built and released a set of useful audio routines for the TI-83 Plus SE/TI-84 Plus/SE calculators (that is, the 15MHz monochrome calculators). Like QuadPlayer, mobileTunes, and similar, it provides 4-channel audio, and unlike those examples, allows two of the channels to contain noise (e.g., to emulate percussion). It also supports pitch sweeping/bending and variable duty cycles, and uses the crystal timers to ensure that the pitches are faithful. Best of all, it is designed to be used in others' programs: check out the topic for demo videos and the download!
- VYSION 2 CE: the ultimate CE shell: epsilon5 added too many improvements and fixes to list here, so check out the update post for the full complement. This TI-84 Plus CE shell continues to look even more polished.
- Xenon Development [C]: Alvajoy123's shell also made significant forward progress, especially with a command line interface (CLI). Take a look at the latest screenshots, followed by a beta release.
- Zombie Chase CE [C]: This was the month for Spenceboy98 to work on older projects: he made tweaks such as improving the graphics and expanding the game's font, and experimented with rotating sprites to make it more realistic.
- [C] CEdit editor for the TI 84 plus CE: Michael0x18 decided to rewrite this project from scratch, and unlike many project rewrites, quickly was able to show off progress. He even demonstrated a computer-side counterpart to this text editor.
Onwards to February 2022!
Permalink
Cemetech Projects of the Year 2021 Results
Published by KermMartian
1 month, 1 week ago (2023-02-11T17:24:50+00:00)
| Discuss this article
Permalink
The well-utilized poll for Projects of the Year 2021 has ended, and it is time to announce the results! We might be over a year late, but we're on the right track, and we're thrilled to finally be featuring a host of great 2021 projects, including the one you all picked as your favorite. In was a much closer contest than last year, so congratulations are due to all of the creators.
In 7th Place, we have 3 projects:
- BBCode Library by Tari. This Rust library is part of a continued and more general effort to improve Cemetech's entire backend, making parsing BBCode markup easier and faster.
- HexaEdit CE by Captain Calc. This powerful hex editor for the CE calculators is useful for both developers and calculator power users.
- Folders by Frederik. It adds folders to shells that do not include them by default, or even the programs menu with no shell.
In 6th Place, we have 5 projects:
- CEyboard by TheLastMillennial. CEyboard was the result of an effort to document every key in the TI-SmartView software, culminating in a program allowing you to use your calculator as a keyboard for your computer.
- HASHLIB by ACagliano. It provides many hashing and other cryptographic functions for developers to use in their own programs.
- (sprite) Designer by Frederik. As the name suggests, it's an on-calc color sprite editor with many useful drawing features.
- AgneCE by ordelore. This port of the Agnes NES emulator for other devices brings it to the CE, an impressive achievement given the hardware limitations of the calculator.
- CEdit by Michael0x18. This fully fledged text editor for the CE includes features you would expect from a computer text editor, like text selection, copying, pasting, and searching.
In 5th Place, we have Programmer's Calculator CE by DrDnar. It includes many programmer-oriented math features, including hexadecimal and binary conversion and bitwise operations.
In 4th Place, we have 3 projects:
- Tiny Jumper by RoccoLox Programs. This is a platformer game for the CE with a focus on speedrunning, that also features very smooth gameplay, customization, and much more.
- Calc2KeyCE by Dmalenke. It's a neat utility allowing for many types of calculator <--> PC functionality, including screen mirroring and input.
- Fruit Ninja CE by Michael2_3B. It's what you'd expect: a faithful port of the game Fruit Ninja, adapted to allow you to slice fruit by swiping the calculator's keypad.
In 3rd Place, we have TI-81 CE by tr1p1ea. Run a TI-81 on your TI-84 Plus CE, even faster than the original, including a neat skin and the classic greenish-colored LCD.
In 2nd Place by 16.7% of the votes, we have Alien Breed 5 Episode III: Impact by JamesV. Including 3 episodes, many levels, multiplayer (!), smooth animations and gameplay, bossfights, cutscenes, a non-linear campaign in Episode III, high scores, achievements, and much more, it's likely one of the largest calculator games ever released--and it's available for both monochrome and color calculators.
And our 1st Place winner, with 25% of the votes, is CEleste by commandblockguy. It's a port of the classic PICO-8 platformer Celeste, a neat game with many levels to play through that required a significant amount of work to get ported due to hardware differences and issues with the graphics of the game. It looks beautiful, and our members think it's a great deal of fun to play.
Thank you to all of our members that participated in the poll, and be sure to keep the great projects coming in 2022 2023 and beyond!
Permalink
Projects of the Year: 2021
Published by epsilon5
1 month, 3 weeks ago (2023-01-28T19:18:13+00:00)
| Discuss this article
Welcome back to another Project of the Year! 2021 saw the continuation of an excellent run of development and community on Cemetech, resulting in the fifteen Project of the Month winners over the year (thanks to a few ties). Here they are for you now:
In January, there was a tie between Tari’s BBCode Library and Captain Calc's HexaEdit CE. BBCode Library is a library developed in Rust as part of a continued and more general effort to improve Cemetech's entire backend. It should make parsing BBCode markup significantly easier and more powerful, as well as being more performant.
The logo for BBCode Library, emphasizing its improvement over regex-heavy BBCode implementations.
HexaEdit CE is a powerful hex editor for the CE calculators. In January's 2.0.0 update, Captain Calc completely reworked the GUI of the program as well as improving the file search and adding a new API that allows the program to be better integrated with other programs. This tool has quickly become a vital one for both developers and calculator power users, as it allows files to be edited on-the-fly for testing andcheating in games more.
Using HexaEdit CE.
February also saw a tie in the PotM results between TheLastMillenial's cleverly named CEyboard and ACagliano's HASHLIB. CEyboard was the result of an effort to document every key in the TI-SmartView software, culminating in a program allowing you to use your calculator as a keyboard for your computer.
Controlling a PC using the calculator as a keypad via CEyboard. Click for original YouTube video.
HASHLIB is a program allowing for cryptography within CE C/assembly programs. It includes many hashing and other cryptographic functions that could prove useful for any program that requires a level of security on the CE--for instance, ACagliano's own Blast and VAPOR programs. Additionally, the library is compatible with LibLoad.
An example SHA-256 hash generated by HASHLIB.
Our first absolute winner! Frederik's on-calc sprite editor (sprite) Designer narrowly won the PotM in March. It includes many useful features, such as a color picker, the ability to open sprites at once, zoom, different drawing tools, and much more. It's a tool that could prove to be very useful for ICE developers or those who don't have easy access to a similar editor on a computer.
Drawing operations and use of tools in (sprite) Designer.
In April, RoccoLox Programs' Tiny Jumper ran away with the poll, taking an incredible 11 of 15 total votes. This is a platformer game for the CE with a focus on speedrunning, that also features very smooth gameplay, customization, and much more. It also stoked the Cemetech competitive spirit in the form of widespread community competition to get the fastest times on each level that is still ongoing.
Playing through one of the levels in Tiny Jumper.
Dmalenke's Calc2KeyCE handily won May's PotM, taking nearly half of the 20 votes submitted. It's a neat utility allowing for many types of calculator <--> PC functionality, including screen mirroring and input.
Calc2KeyCE in operation. Click for original YouTube video.
Frederik took a second win in June with Folders, a program that adds the constantly requested folders feature to shells that do not include them by default--or even the programs menu! It's quite a clever workaround that can improve organization for users with many programs on their calculators, in which the user runs a program that packs/unpacks groups of other programs.
Packing/unpacking of a folder in the programs menu via Folders.
Programmer's Calculator CE, created by DrDnar, narrowly won the July PotM. Despite the clear irony of this program, it's a great way to expand the capabilities of your calculator when it comes to...being a calculator. It includes many features that could be helpful for programmers in particular, including hexadecimal, binary, and bitwise operations. Finally, everything is wrapped up in a very sophisticated and user-friendly interface.
The settings menu for Programmer's Calculator CE on top of various prior operations.
In another hotly contested month, ordelore's AgneCE won the August PotM. It's an NES emulator written in C for the CE calculators, a port of the Agnes emulator for other devices. While it's not particularly fast, it's certainly a commendable technical achievement and quite impressive considering the hardware.
The title screen for Super Mario Bros. running in the AgneCE emulator.
September saw tr1p1ea's TI-81 CE win by a landslide. A patch/port of the TI-81 OS making it able to be run in z80 mode on the much newer CE calculators, this project includes the (almost) full TI-81 experience, even including a neat skin and the classic greenish-colored LCD. It's also much faster than the original.
Creating and running a program within TI-81 CE.
Michael0x18's text editor CEdit took the PotM win in October. This program is a fully-fledged text editor for the CE, including text selection, copying, pasting, searching, and a variety of other useful and intuitive functions. All of this is wrapped in a very nice, customizable UI.
CEdit's save dialog.
Due to some polling issues in the November PotM, we can't be sure exactly who won, so we have another tie! Combined, these two programs earned all of the votes in the poll, so it is clear that they are both deserving of a spot in the PotY. CEleste, commandblockguy's port of the classic PICO-8 platformer Celeste, is our first winner. It's a neat game with many levels to play through that required a significant amount of work to get ported due to hardware differences and issues with the graphics of the game.
The main menu and some gameplay of CEleste.
November also saw the completion of a years-long effort by JamesV in his massive top-down space shooter Alien Breed 5 Episode III: Impact. Including 3 episodes, many levels, multiplayer (!), smooth animations and gameplay, bossfights, cutscenes, a non-linear campaign in Episode III, high scores, achievements, and much more, it's likely one of the largest calculator games ever released--and it's available for both monochrome and color calculators.
Bossfight gameplay and the start of the countdown sequence in Alien Breed 5 Episode III: Impact.
A longtime project by Michael2_3B, Fruit Ninja CE was finally released in December. This is a remake of the mobile game for the CE calculators, featuring clever gameplay (just swipe on your calculator's keypad), polished GUI, different fruit types, and all of the slicing fun of the original.
Gameplay and menus from Fruit Ninja CE.
And that's all for 2021! Take a look at all of the projects' threads, give the authors their much-deserved kudos, and vote for your favorite project of the year in the poll above.
Permalink
Welcome back to another Project of the Year! 2021 saw the continuation of an excellent run of development and community on Cemetech, resulting in the fifteen Project of the Month winners over the year (thanks to a few ties). Here they are for you now:
In January, there was a tie between Tari’s BBCode Library and Captain Calc's HexaEdit CE. BBCode Library is a library developed in Rust as part of a continued and more general effort to improve Cemetech's entire backend. It should make parsing BBCode markup significantly easier and more powerful, as well as being more performant.
The logo for BBCode Library, emphasizing its improvement over regex-heavy BBCode implementations.
HexaEdit CE is a powerful hex editor for the CE calculators. In January's 2.0.0 update, Captain Calc completely reworked the GUI of the program as well as improving the file search and adding a new API that allows the program to be better integrated with other programs. This tool has quickly become a vital one for both developers and calculator power users, as it allows files to be edited on-the-fly for testing and
Using HexaEdit CE.
February also saw a tie in the PotM results between TheLastMillenial's cleverly named CEyboard and ACagliano's HASHLIB. CEyboard was the result of an effort to document every key in the TI-SmartView software, culminating in a program allowing you to use your calculator as a keyboard for your computer.
Controlling a PC using the calculator as a keypad via CEyboard. Click for original YouTube video.
HASHLIB is a program allowing for cryptography within CE C/assembly programs. It includes many hashing and other cryptographic functions that could prove useful for any program that requires a level of security on the CE--for instance, ACagliano's own Blast and VAPOR programs. Additionally, the library is compatible with LibLoad.
An example SHA-256 hash generated by HASHLIB.
Our first absolute winner! Frederik's on-calc sprite editor (sprite) Designer narrowly won the PotM in March. It includes many useful features, such as a color picker, the ability to open sprites at once, zoom, different drawing tools, and much more. It's a tool that could prove to be very useful for ICE developers or those who don't have easy access to a similar editor on a computer.
Drawing operations and use of tools in (sprite) Designer.
In April, RoccoLox Programs' Tiny Jumper ran away with the poll, taking an incredible 11 of 15 total votes. This is a platformer game for the CE with a focus on speedrunning, that also features very smooth gameplay, customization, and much more. It also stoked the Cemetech competitive spirit in the form of widespread community competition to get the fastest times on each level that is still ongoing.
Playing through one of the levels in Tiny Jumper.
Dmalenke's Calc2KeyCE handily won May's PotM, taking nearly half of the 20 votes submitted. It's a neat utility allowing for many types of calculator <--> PC functionality, including screen mirroring and input.
Calc2KeyCE in operation. Click for original YouTube video.
Frederik took a second win in June with Folders, a program that adds the constantly requested folders feature to shells that do not include them by default--or even the programs menu! It's quite a clever workaround that can improve organization for users with many programs on their calculators, in which the user runs a program that packs/unpacks groups of other programs.
Packing/unpacking of a folder in the programs menu via Folders.
Programmer's Calculator CE, created by DrDnar, narrowly won the July PotM. Despite the clear irony of this program, it's a great way to expand the capabilities of your calculator when it comes to...being a calculator. It includes many features that could be helpful for programmers in particular, including hexadecimal, binary, and bitwise operations. Finally, everything is wrapped up in a very sophisticated and user-friendly interface.
The settings menu for Programmer's Calculator CE on top of various prior operations.
In another hotly contested month, ordelore's AgneCE won the August PotM. It's an NES emulator written in C for the CE calculators, a port of the Agnes emulator for other devices. While it's not particularly fast, it's certainly a commendable technical achievement and quite impressive considering the hardware.
The title screen for Super Mario Bros. running in the AgneCE emulator.
September saw tr1p1ea's TI-81 CE win by a landslide. A patch/port of the TI-81 OS making it able to be run in z80 mode on the much newer CE calculators, this project includes the (almost) full TI-81 experience, even including a neat skin and the classic greenish-colored LCD. It's also much faster than the original.
Creating and running a program within TI-81 CE.
Michael0x18's text editor CEdit took the PotM win in October. This program is a fully-fledged text editor for the CE, including text selection, copying, pasting, searching, and a variety of other useful and intuitive functions. All of this is wrapped in a very nice, customizable UI.
CEdit's save dialog.
Due to some polling issues in the November PotM, we can't be sure exactly who won, so we have another tie! Combined, these two programs earned all of the votes in the poll, so it is clear that they are both deserving of a spot in the PotY. CEleste, commandblockguy's port of the classic PICO-8 platformer Celeste, is our first winner. It's a neat game with many levels to play through that required a significant amount of work to get ported due to hardware differences and issues with the graphics of the game.
The main menu and some gameplay of CEleste.
November also saw the completion of a years-long effort by JamesV in his massive top-down space shooter Alien Breed 5 Episode III: Impact. Including 3 episodes, many levels, multiplayer (!), smooth animations and gameplay, bossfights, cutscenes, a non-linear campaign in Episode III, high scores, achievements, and much more, it's likely one of the largest calculator games ever released--and it's available for both monochrome and color calculators.
Bossfight gameplay and the start of the countdown sequence in Alien Breed 5 Episode III: Impact.
A longtime project by Michael2_3B, Fruit Ninja CE was finally released in December. This is a remake of the mobile game for the CE calculators, featuring clever gameplay (just swipe on your calculator's keypad), polished GUI, different fruit types, and all of the slicing fun of the original.
Gameplay and menus from Fruit Ninja CE.
And that's all for 2021! Take a look at all of the projects' threads, give the authors their much-deserved kudos, and vote for your favorite project of the year in the poll above.
Permalink
New Administrators: commandblockguy and iPhoenix
Advertisement