zMegaman Released / Official Statement
Posted by Ryan on 17 April 2013, 01:44 GMT

Just a few days ago, a pretty big release hit our archives that a lot of people have been waiting for, even if they did not know it. zMegaman, a fantastic Megaman clone, was released by an anonymous group of individuals within the community. Featuring multiple stages, weapons, enemies, and more, this is a huge step in the direction for which fans of both Megaman and platformers in general have been pining.

But wait, there's more! As you know, I am quite the fan of sharing source code, which the zMegaman team has done in spades with hopes of inspiring others to do the same. They are also calling upon the community at large for help with some known issues with the game, as well as encouraging aspiring programmers to hack, mod, and play with. I was personally rather intrigued by the develop process of the game, and asked the team for some more details about the project's development and history. Once you're done dancing, click through to the discussion page to read the team's full response to my inquiry. Thanks, team!

ticalc.org Updates
Posted by Ryan on 1 April 2013, 15:43 GMT

You may have noticed over the past few weeks that there have been issues on the site with transfer speed and server lag. For the past month or so, we have been working diligently on the backend of the site to make several improvements, optimizations, and feature additions.

Thanks to the tireless efforts of the ticalc.org staff, we are happy to announce that ticalc.org is in the last stages of rolling out a large site-wide overhaul. A number of features will be added to improve both the usability and visibility of the site, including a number of Web 2.0 features such as:

• Website "Themes" for personalized user experiences
• Facebook "Like" buttons for sharing your favorite programs
• Optional embedded Twitter feeds of your favorite authors for greater social visibility
• Flash version of the upload portal for increased security
• A range of Java embeds for improved user experience
• AJAX all up in this mo'

Mailing List Secret Evil Lair
Posted by Ryan on 28 March 2013, 15:47 GMT

In the months following the unleashing of "the prog that must not be named" upon the internet at large, resident multineer and wizard Travis Evans carved out a secret lair hideout in otherwise masked parts of the world wide web. If you have not been exploring our Community pages lately, you may have not seen that this new lair is taking the guise of completely reimplemented ticalc.org mailing lists. Many Bothans died to bring us this information.

Leading the resistance against a super army of autosentient Nikkybots, I urge you to join the battle by subscribing to the mailing lists, thereby swarming the secret lair in the name of all that is righteous. Every mailing list subscription is a small victory in the fight against procedurally generated snark and sarcasm. Do your part, citizen! The resistance can be aided in the form of subscriptions to:

• TI-BASIC discussion
• Advanced programming language discussion
• Nspire calc discussion
• General TI calc discussion

Anagramarama for TI-Nspire
Posted by Ryan on 22 March 2013, 01:51 GMT

Word games exist in a strange space located at the space-time folds of three vile vortices, right under a giant pile of Atari 2600 E.T. cartridges, and inside of a hidden tomb containing all orthodonic retainers accidentally misplaced by middleschool-aged children. By that, of course, I mean that word games live at the nexus of fun and education, or as I like to call it, "edufuncation". Or maybe "fun-ucation". Don't worry, I'll come up with something other than "edutainment", I promise. Anyways, word games are great for not only providing a lot of enjoyment but, in line with psychological literature, actually serve to bolster language development and creativity, among other things.

Yesterday, A.J. Orians released Anagramarama to our archives, making it one of the most formidable word game releases to ever hit a TI calc. Ported from SDL, Anagramarama looks great on the Nspire as well as the Nspire CX, although functionality on non-touchpad models is still not settled as far as this news editor knows. The original Anagramarama is already played in locations around the world and is a wonderful choice of open source software to port over to the Nspire. If you're feeling left out due to an absence of NSpire ownership, you can join the (conceptual) effort towards further porting to z80 calcs!

Make sure to check out Anagramarama for the Nspire, and a big hats-off to A.J. Orians for doing a great job!