Checkers, Game of Life Grace TI-84 Plus CE
Published by KermMartian
8 years ago (2016-03-28T18:06:17+00:00)
| Discuss this article
With the advent of the ez80-based TI-84 Plus CE and TI-83 Premium CE, programming your TI-84 Plus-family graphing calculator in C is finally feasible. As new tools like MateoConLechuga's C SDK and libraries (and thanks to those, C support in SourceCoder 3) have appeared, programmers have begun both writing their own C programs and porting existing programs and games to the TI-84 Plus CE. One of each of today's features fall into each of those categories. Shaun "Merthsoft" McFall's Game of Life was written just for the TI-84 Plus CE, building on Shaun's experience with Game of Life for the Casio Prizm. Conway's Game of Life is a cellular automaton, where the program simulates many "generations" of a grid where cells live or die based on the population of adjoining cells. Merth's program not only lets you simulate 19 possible rule sets, it also has 7 different topologies for the board (a feature with which Thomas "elfprince13" Dickerson assisted). We're happy to see Game of Life on this new platform, especially in such a polished form.
MateoConLechuga's Checkers falls into the other category. As discussed in its topic, Mateo "grabbed a nice looking checkers engine and coded the interface and GUI around it, including user movement and such. Now you can play checkers against a pretty difficult AI. Or even make the calculator play against itself, which is enjoyable to watch". Although having an existing Checkers engine made this project easier, it still took substantial effort, and builds on the graphics, font, and user interface libraries that Mateo has released to the community. We look forward to more C games and programs getting ported to the TI-84 Plus CE using these tools, and congratulations to Mateo for such a polished example.
If you have a TI-84 Plus CE, you should get coding with C yourself! We have the tools and assistance here if you need them; don't hesitate to ask if you get stuck.
Downloads
Checkers for the TI-84 Plus CE and TI-83 Premium CE (discussion topic)
Game of Life for the TI-84 Plus CE and TI-83 Premium CE (discussion topic)
Permalink
With the advent of the ez80-based TI-84 Plus CE and TI-83 Premium CE, programming your TI-84 Plus-family graphing calculator in C is finally feasible. As new tools like MateoConLechuga's C SDK and libraries (and thanks to those, C support in SourceCoder 3) have appeared, programmers have begun both writing their own C programs and porting existing programs and games to the TI-84 Plus CE. One of each of today's features fall into each of those categories. Shaun "Merthsoft" McFall's Game of Life was written just for the TI-84 Plus CE, building on Shaun's experience with Game of Life for the Casio Prizm. Conway's Game of Life is a cellular automaton, where the program simulates many "generations" of a grid where cells live or die based on the population of adjoining cells. Merth's program not only lets you simulate 19 possible rule sets, it also has 7 different topologies for the board (a feature with which Thomas "elfprince13" Dickerson assisted). We're happy to see Game of Life on this new platform, especially in such a polished form.
MateoConLechuga's Checkers falls into the other category. As discussed in its topic, Mateo "grabbed a nice looking checkers engine and coded the interface and GUI around it, including user movement and such. Now you can play checkers against a pretty difficult AI. Or even make the calculator play against itself, which is enjoyable to watch". Although having an existing Checkers engine made this project easier, it still took substantial effort, and builds on the graphics, font, and user interface libraries that Mateo has released to the community. We look forward to more C games and programs getting ported to the TI-84 Plus CE using these tools, and congratulations to Mateo for such a polished example.
If you have a TI-84 Plus CE, you should get coding with C yourself! We have the tools and assistance here if you need them; don't hesitate to ask if you get stuck.
Downloads
Checkers for the TI-84 Plus CE and TI-83 Premium CE (discussion topic)
Game of Life for the TI-84 Plus CE and TI-83 Premium CE (discussion topic)
Permalink
Advertisement