Graphing calculators

[NovaSquirrel]

After an assignment in middle school (in the late 2000s?) had me using graphing calculators in class, I found them really cool and I bought a TI-84+ Silver Edition for myself. It was really cool to have a simple handheld computer I could use in school without getting in trouble (my school was strict about not using phones, but obviously a calculator means you're just doing schoolwork, right?) and I played games on it, did assembly programming, stored notes on there, and sometimes I even did pixel art on there. I kept a "To Do" list on there and it really helped me to stay on top of my schoolwork, because I had one single specific place I could reference and easily update.

Now I'm an adult, and have a smartphone, so I have a much more powerful computer in my pocket that can do even more things, but there's something cool about these simpler computers (especially considering the ones that came out in the 90s), and what they're able to do despite being simple. In a way it's kind of like looking back at 80s computers, and when you look at the tech specs the comparison becomes even stronger; a z80 machine with about 32K of RAM and BASIC and a built-in keyboard could describe a TI-84+, or it could also describe a ZX Spectrum.

Now that I can just go ahead and buy things as an adult, I got myself a TI-84+ CE with Python because having a machine with an eZ80 was intriguing, as was having this style of device with (an old version of) Python on it. I also got a TI-89 Titanium because I saw they're finally discontinued and I wanted to make sure I did get to have one.

Anyone else think graphing calculators are cool, or have any of them? Is anyone using them for anything cool, or have any particular games they enjoyed playing on them?

[Sugar Meowth]

The 84-series got Python support???

I was in a similar boat to you, with a few years' difference so it was less "smartphones not allowed" and more "the iphone came out my senior year". Some friends had 84+'s which came with that Puzzle Pack with Block Dude and other genuinely really fun little games that I envied. Rather than buy a brand new one, I got a hand me down 83+ from an older brother that had no games at all on it, and if he had a cable to transfer data from a PC, it was long gone.

Not that it stopped me though. I would still go to ticalc.org and look at TI-BASIC programs that were small enough and hand transcribe them. This was often a case of trial and error. I specifically remember a Blackjack game that would save your cash between sessions where the card drawing routine was slightly off and rather than draw the rank in the center it would appear off to the side.

I was envious of assembly programs that I had no practical way to run. I think it might have technically been possible to manually enter them byte by byte but single mistake could easily ruin the whole thing and be a nightmare to debug.

"Alex's Acid Rain" was another fun game, little islands (uppercase O's) would spawn around with stars to collect for points as you moved between them. Stepping on an empty tile cost a life and the islands would slowly sink in the water becoming lowercase before disappearing entirely. Had a version of Snake that I got too good at where if you got long enough it would just kind of break your head would disconnect from your body if it grew too long.

One of those "Helicopter" games was probably my biggest study hall time sink. You mashed a key to fight against gravity while traveling across a fixed screen with mines that spawned in at the start of each level. Each additional level added more mines and later levels could take a bit to actually load. I went and added some alternate modes, an "endless" where instead of getting a game over you'd be sent back to the previous level, and a "custom" where you could load a saved image and play that as a level.

I also really enjoyed writing my own games. These started off as like "Simon" where the program would pick a number from 1-4, ask you to repeat it, and then multiply that number by ten and add 1-4 again to create a larger "sequence". I got better over the years (I think 10th grade was when I started?) and had something like the pizza contest game from Yo! Noid of all things loosely ported (it was just two players with a random set of numbers trying to outscore higher cards). There was also Mario Party's "Chance Time" with local multiplayer where you'd play 10 rounds and try to end up with the most points without accidentally giving yours to the other player or the bank.

The most complex thing I made was a "roguelike" just called DUNGEON that just peppered a 2D array with walls to block you, and types of encounters that would then roll specific things when stepped on. You'd be presented with weapons, armor, gold, or scrolls and choose whether to use them or leave them behind, with a weighted drop system to make good stuff rare. I had no idea how to actually ensure any level was beatable so as a failsafe the stairs were always placed in the corners and the border was always clear of encounters, but you needed better items to survive stronger monsters so you had to wade into the main area regardless. The goal was just to amass as much gold as you could before inevitably dying.

It was always strange to me though that while I had friends as well as even random other kids who were interested in these games, not one of them had any interest in learning TI-BASIC. I had ZZT before it so it wasn't my first foray into making games, but I imagine a ton of kids in the 90s got their start with it.

At some point I did thankfully buy a cable off ebay so I could dump all my teenage creations and bits of art I drew with it (mostly just referencing newspaper comic panels) so I still have all of it backed up, which is good as the dang thing did eventually kick the bucket. I continued using it as my go to calculator in college and even afterwards as just having the nice backlog of things and variable support was nice in the the early 2010s era of webdev where I'd often find myself adding up pixels for divs along with margins and padding to make things align properly.

It lives on to some extent though on my phone where I still use Wabbitemu to run an 83+ instead of using Android's default calculator program. I'm always half tempted to try and make something for it again.

Also remembering an old twitter thread about weird programming things and terrifying some people with how lenient TI-BASIC's parser is as it happily closes quotes and parenthesis for you making `Output(4, 1, "Hello world` a perfectly valid command that would save you a few bytes on a limited memory device.

Good thread you tricked me into writing a lot of words about a calculator.

[NovaSquirrel]

The 84-series got Python support???

Yeah! My understanding is that there's an ARM coprocessor in there specifically for Python, and it communicates with the eZ80 through a serial interface?? sys.version tells me it's 3.4.0, and I think TI took a version made for embedded systems that's based on an older version.

There was in fact functionality built in to let you enter in an assembly language program in raw hex, with AsmPrgm but yeah typing in thousands of digits and hoping they're all correct sounds awful.

It's interesting to hear about the experience of mostly focusing on TI-BASIC games; I barely touched them, but I did try making my own sometimes, before Mimas got released; I had prior experience doing development on other platforms so I was in a spot where I was ready to hop on z80 too hehe. I'm glad you did get your old stuff backed up; it's important to have that to look back to!

[Micolithe]

I haven't really dug into this in a meaningful way but I do think getting a custom algebra app to put on my TI-83 ensured I passed Calculus I and II and got my degree so I must pay my respects