The Ur-Quan Masters Discussion Forum

I just finished a Space Invaders game for TI-83 Plus/TI-84 Plus using TI-BASIC:

http://onpon.co.nr/4/post/2011/05/space-invaders-for-ti.html (http://onpon.co.nr/4/post/2011/05/space-invaders-for-ti.html)

It was quite difficult; The Z80 processor is slow enough on its own. Pair that up with a slow interpreted language, and you have a huge speed problem. But after a couple weeks, I managed to optimize and simplify Space Invaders enough to work effectively on the TI-84 Plus series.

Let me know what you think if you try it. :)

Tested it on a TI-83+ rom in VirtualTI, can't say it ran smoothly... But still it's an achievement.

And I'd say you're goofing off in math class too :)

Not surprising. I only tested it on a TI-84 Plus (which is faster than the TI-83 Plus), and there it still doesn't run quite smoothly, though it's fast enough to be at least interesting.

EDIT: I've updated the game a bit, bumping up the difficulty and limiting the aliens' bullets (to minimize slowdown). Also fixed a couple small things.

EDIT2: Made another update, probably the last one. It's basically just an extreme optimization of the code while fixing some bugs at the same time.

OK, maybe THIS will be the last update. Here is a list of changes:

• Controls are more intuitive (feel less clumsy)
• Collision detection is more intuitive and precise
• Better-looking visuals
• Axes are actually turned off rather than just drawn over
• Game Over doesn't occur until the aliens actually reach the line at the bottom

I also gave this one a version number, 1.2 (written in the source code).