Myself

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My Introduction

Myself

The Cow 15 Feb 2013 04:05

This is a bit late of an introduction. I have been calling myself "The Cow", but my actual name is David Tang. I have been programming in 83/84 basic for 3 years, and assembly for nearly an year. I have been on TI-Basic Developer for about a year, but I don't go on much.

I don't have many hobbies, beside programming, but I do like chess. I am hoping to create an RPG using assembly, including four-level greyscale, and a long storyline. I will include the source, to gain advice on how to program. But before that, I might create a smaller program to get a learning experience.

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Fire Emblem for TI 83/4+ Progress: Demo: 75% Total: 40% Postponed indefinitely

Re: Myself

Silver Phantom 15 Feb 2013 04:08

well, nice to meet you.
there is a new calculator coming out this spring, the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition, with color and better graphics that might fight what your probably gonna need for the RPG

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The Silver Phantom welcomes you

Re: Myself

The Cow 15 Feb 2013 04:28

That makes me sad, since all asm programs on older calculators will be incompatible with the new one. But then again, most likely it will not spread too rapidly. It is more expensive, and who needs color for algebra class? I would say any drawing programs in basic also would be incompatible. TI should consider writing an updated version of the language, and forget about backwards compatibility. Otherwise, they could make a compatibility system, where the screen is set to black and white, and the screen (240x360) would hold that of the TI83/84 (64x96), scaled x3 (192x288). The problem with this is that the lcd update might be faster, and grayscale would no longer work.

… Perhaps I'm just babbling.

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Fire Emblem for TI 83/4+ Progress: Demo: 75% Total: 40% Postponed indefinitely

Re: Myself

Roguebantha 15 Feb 2013 21:43

Yeah, I'm not sure how much TI has worried about backwards compatibility, but I know that TI-BASIC is still there in its original form and that it's running the same processor so it shouldn't be too big a deal. A little bit of porting it's true.

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Re: Myself

Mr Dino 15 Feb 2013 22:46

Although TI BASIC is waaaay slower, I hear.

Re: Myself

Xeda Elnara 16 Feb 2013 13:02

It appears that TI-BASIC is definitely slower, but since it also uses a z80 it shouldn't be too much difficulty to modify existing programs to work.

@The Cow: If you need help, I can definitely try to give a hand! I have some experience with grayscale and graphics, though there are some areas where I am severely lacking. I enjoy making things as fast and optimised as I can :D I have an animated, smooth scrolling tilemap engine that I made for the OmniRPG project. It is written in Axe because that was the language that most of the programmers were going to use, but I also converted most of it to even more optimised assembly. Anyways, here is a screenie (I am terrible at map making, sorry XD)

Here is an animated tilemap that doesn't feature smooth-scrolling, but it does have masked tiles (so sprites can appear to be behind objects):

Also, some of those tiles are grayscale on an actual calculator. That is also pretty slow compared to a newer version that I have (it uses a custom LCD update routine instead of the OS routine).And here is a smooth scrolling engine in Axe.

Both of those leave the calculator in 6MHz mode so it will work just as well on the TI-83+. On the TI-83+SE and TI-84+ models they could be clocked up to 15MHz and run 2.5 times faster, but then it wouldn't work right on the TI-83+ models. As it is, it can handle 60FPS so grayscale would look nice if I had added in grayscale tiles.

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Z80 Assembly>English>TI-BASIC>Python>French>C>0

Re: Myself

The Cow 19 Feb 2013 19:12

I am just beginning with Applications, and I don't fully understand the application header.

Here is some code from a sample application:

;This is the application header definition area required for all apps.
 db 080h,0Fh    ;Field: Program length
 db   00h,00h,00h,00h ;Length=0 (N/A for unsigned apps)
 db 080h,012h    ;Field: Program type
 db   01h,04h  ;Type= Shareware, TI-83Plus
 db 080h,021h    ;Field: App ID
 db   01h       ;Id = 1
 db 080h,031h    ;Field: App Build
 db   01h       ;Build = 1
 db 080h,048h    ;Field: App Name
 db "TLD     " ;Name = "Hello   " must be 8 characters
 db 080h,081h    ;Field: App Pages
 db 01h         ;App Pages = 1
 db 080h,090h    ;No default splash screen
 db 03h,026h ,09h,04h, 04h,06fh,01bh,80h     ;Field: Date stamp- 5/12/1999
 db 02h,0dh,040h                             ;Dummy encrypted TI date stamp signature
 db 0a1h ,06bh ,099h ,0f6h ,059h ,0bch ,067h 
 db 0f5h ,085h ,09ch ,09h ,06ch ,0fh ,0b4h ,03h ,09bh ,0c9h 
 db 03h ,032h ,02ch ,0e0h ,03h ,020h ,0e3h ,02ch ,0f4h ,02dh 
 db 073h ,0b4h ,027h ,0c4h ,0a0h ,072h ,054h ,0b9h ,0eah ,07ch 
 db 03bh ,0aah ,016h ,0f6h ,077h ,083h ,07ah ,0eeh ,01ah ,0d4h 
 db 042h ,04ch ,06bh ,08bh ,013h ,01fh ,0bbh ,093h ,08bh ,0fch 
 db 019h ,01ch ,03ch ,0ech ,04dh ,0e5h ,075h 
 db 80h,7Fh      ;Field: Program Image length
 db   0,0,0,0    ;Length=0, N/A
 db   0,0,0,0    ;Reserved
 db   0,0,0,0    ;Reserved
 db   0,0,0,0    ;Reserved
 db   0,0,0,0    ;Reserved

;End of header data

I am trying to figure out what different parts mean. I'm not sure what "App ID", "Splash Screen" and "Program Image" do, and how to change the date stamp (proper format).

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Fire Emblem for TI 83/4+ Progress: Demo: 75% Total: 40% Postponed indefinitely

Boba Foxx (guest) 19 Feb 2013 21:15

The program image is an 8x8 (I think) image that appears to not be used anywhere except for in mirageOS.

The Cow 20 Feb 2013 01:57

It is an application, and I'm don't think applications can be run through Mirage (Mirage itself is an application).

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Fire Emblem for TI 83/4+ Progress: Demo: 75% Total: 40% Postponed indefinitely

Re: Myself

Xeda Elnara 20 Feb 2013 12:55

Basically the only thing you need to edit in the appheader is the name field. What the OS does is it searches for sections of the header for information. For example, to find the name, it searches for the sequence 8048 and expects the next 8 bytes to be the name of the app.

So all you need to do is copy the header, modify the name field and put in your code after the header. Here are two things to keep in mind:

• Apps do not end with an RET. You need to use one of the _JForceCmd bcalls. Typically, you will use bcall(_JForceCmdNoChar )

_JForceCmdNoChar equ 4027h

• Apps will take up a multiple of 16384 bytes no matter how big the actual data is. Memory is precious on the calcs, so try not to release an app that only uses a small amount of the available code space. I try to make sure my apps use more than 10000 bytes of code at least. Grammer and BatLib, for example, use a little over 16000 bytes of code.

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Z80 Assembly>English>TI-BASIC>Python>French>C>0