Note that Exec statements are about twice the size of the equivalent program, and with rare exceptions, a BASIC program might as well call the assembled ASM program rather than use an exec string. Unless it's truly r33t and edits the string that it Execs. . .

I agree completely. I am also not a lover of Exec strings, but dozens of people asked me whether it is possible to make a such utility, and I made it...

Great News! Nick's back, Phoenix is updated, and BASIC programmers are given a whole new world of freedom! What's next? "TI decides to give away free TI-89 calculators to all members of ticalc.org?"

P.S. Why is delicious crossed out? Is Patrick not delicious anymore?

This is *so* needed it hurts to even ponder it. This was in #detacheds on efnet, of which I am an op:

<PatrickD> BlueCalx: Did your article mean to state that *I* was released by Zeljko Juric?
<SMN> LOL
<SMN> HAHAHHAHAHAHA
<BlueCalx> PatrickD: yes, yes you were
<SMN> LOL
<micros> hahahah
<SMN> HHAHAHAHHAHAHA
<SMN> ROTFL

::censored comment regarding zeljko's womb::

<micros> thats classic
<BlueCalx> okay, SMN, we know it's funny now
<SMN> ok, nick, that just killed it
<SMN> the womb comment KILLED IT
<SMN> YOU FUNNINESS KILLER!
<BlueCalx> ZELJKO JURIC IS THE FATHER OF PATRICK DAVIDSON'S CHILDREN
<SMN> LOL
<BlueCalx> DID YOU THINK IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE FOR ZELJKO TO HAVE CHILDREN?
<BlueCalx> YOU WERE WRONG!!!
<YodaToad> YES I DID
<YodaToad> BUT IS IT NESSICARY FOR EXCESSIVE CAPS?
<BlueCalx> YES, YES IT IS

--BlueCalx

DEATH TO GEORGE W BUSH!

DEATH TO AL GORE! YOU LOUSY DEMOCRAT YOU!!!!!!

Right on! I hate Democrats.

- one[2]

Death to ALL politicians! Long live ANARCHY!

Anarchists Unite!
I mean, uh...
oh, never mind.

And what does this have to do with TI calculators?

VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN!

ˇVIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN!

Death to you

Death to me! YAY!

but how did all the equipment Patrick uses to program get inside Zeljko?

It seems that I released Phoenix 7.0 a little too soon. There is one serious bug in it. This has now been fixed in version 7.01, which you can get from the web page link above, and should be in the ticalc.org archives soon.

This bug only causes trouble when you use the 'Heavy Destroyer' ship, so you can be safe just by not buying that ship.

what was the bug, and thanks for the update?

First, THANK YOU for making it nostub.
I don't know what bug you're talking about, but I've noticed several bugs (and a couple possible "features"):

Sometimes on exiting, the homescreen appears to have "diaganol rain". Although I suppose this could have something to do with the fact that I renamed it kbdprgm1 for easier access....
This may be a "feature", but I noticed in the first level of the spinning guys that go berserk once there are only a few of them left, the boss level has the enemies from the previous level.
Another possible "feature" On the level set a few levels later, with the completely filled in enemies that sometimes just shrink when you shoot them, I have found that the last one is often very hard to kill, probably because it is so small that the bullets miss it.

What you were saying about the spinning guys is a feature. It's from a few versions back too.

Tim Dorr
tim@timdor.com
http://www.timdorr.com

Sorry, maybe I should have been more clear (or maybe I am wrong?). I know that in previous versions they got smaller instead of dying, but I have noticed that often, the last guy or two will shrink, and then, for several minutes, all my bullets will just go straight through him. I have "paused" it by pressing and holding APPS sometimes, and I can see that my bullet actually is overlapping with it, but it's not dying, even if I'm using the deluxe plasm cannon and I've already appeared to hit him two or three times before with it.

I am having the same problems. Also, sometimes when I beat the end boss the game doesn't restart at the beginning, the screen remains empty except for my ship, which still works. I have a HW1 AMS 2.05 calc.

I have tried renaming Phoenix to 'kbdprgm1' and starting with diamond+1, but still didn't see any sort of home screen corruption. It certainly is a serious problem, so please tell me some more details of how to produce this effect ...

After further experimentation, I have managed to identify and fix these bugs as well. They are fixed inversion 7.02, which is on my web page (above) now and should be in the ticalc.org archives. The causes of these problems were actually quite strange:

The "diagonal rain" is the result of the super-boss attempting to shoot at you before it is even the screen. Objects are marked off-screen by giving them coordinates of (-300,-300) so they won't possibly collide with on-screen objects. Normally, enemies would never fire while waiting to enter. But, the superboss is actually composed of two different enemies (one for each half), both of which follow an invisible enemy. Unfortunately, I didn't make them check whether they were following an on-screen object, so they would still operate as normal when in the negative coordinates, including firing. The bullets would then move through negative coordinates into the Y-coordinate reaches 0, at which point they will be drawn (the image display routine will avoid drawing an object if Y is negative) even though the X is still slightly less than 0 given the angle it is typically fired at. The X coordinate is not expected to be negative; the shifting ultimately causes this to draw well past the end of the screen, corrupting the saved memory area. This bug has actually existed since version 0.70 of Phoenix, released more than two years ago, in various forms; different memory areas were corrupted (in some cases, possibly crashing the calculator) and sometimes it caused bullets to appear from the top of the screen for no reason.

The other is also slightly unusual; when the solid spinners are destroyed, they are randomly either really destroyed, or transformed into small spinners. When they're made small, the width data is changed by subtracting two. However, when the small spinners are destroyed, the same thing happens, so that might just be made "smaller" again (the image is kept, but made 2 pixels even smaller for the overlap detection). After several unlucky cycles, the size can become less than zero, so the object is never hit. This problem is more likely to occur at higher difficulty levels, where the probability of surviving enough times in a row is much higher.

Anyway, now that *all* of the bugs are gone (I hope), on to the TI-85 and TI-86 ...

Okay, I've just posted v7.01 to the archives.