So... I've made a discovery, though some of you might already know about this, so please don't call me stupid.

Okay, here it is: You can display big text on the graph screen with the Text( command. To do this, you need three arguments: the first one is -1 and the next two are the pixel coordinates of where you want it displayed.

Text(-1,24,32,"HELLO

There. "HELLO" will be displayed right in the middle of the graph screen in big text.

I have never seen this in any tutorial. I've seen it in a couple games, but they were ones that used an ASM library. Did any of you guys know about this?

Yes.

Yes most people know about it. It isn't in old tutorials but is in most of the new ones. Good job discovering it for yourself though.

yeah, it is great to discover these things on your own. No offense to these topics, but if you were to look at the BASIC Elite guide (a pdf file), it says a lot of these things you have posted on. Like I said, no offense.

What led you to discover this? I wouldn't expect someone to randomly type in -1 for a pixel argument.

@elf: that is the second (or third) time someone said that around me today.
@harq: how do you think it was discovered in the firstplace.

Harq?
I would expect that accidentally typing a -1 and then another valid pixel number believing that what you had already entered was valid, would not prompt you to type in another argument just to test. Maybe a calc geek thought it would be fun to plug in negative numbers before coordinates and discovered this, maybe not. IT is, however, quite useful nonetheless.

except with text() you can enter multiple comma separated arguments after the coordinates which are all concatenated together

Aha, perhaps someone even tried seeing what happened itf you omitted coordinates and just gave a list of numbers?

Or even a faulty For( loop would do the trick.

Yeah, that could do it as well. Anyway, the good thing is that someone found it. The bad thing is that it makes your BASIC programs error on regular TI-83s.

I've been in the community since late 1999, and the earliest tutorial I remember reading that had the Text(-1,... trick was the Tips & Tricks tutorial by Sean Sartell.

I type in random arguments for functions whenever I get bored of playing games on the calc. What is unexpected is for someone to type in a random argument and actually get an unexpected result.