Author Topic: Tetric A: Color Tetris for the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition  (Read 8520 times)

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Offline KermMartian

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Tetric A: Color Tetris for the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition
« on: August 13, 2013, 12:22:20 pm »
Less than a year ago, Cemetech (via member 0rac343) discovered the existence of the color-screen TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition. In the intervening months, we learned more about the calculator, got an early version of our own for a hands-on review, and have been working hard to create tons of games and educational programs for the TI-84+CSE. Today, I am happy to add one more program to that list: Tetric A, a color-screen Tetris game for the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition.

Tetric A is based on my Tetrizm game for the Casio Prizm. It is a full-featured Tetris game, complete with spiffy graphics, five different game modes, classic Tetris mechanics, and a high score system. You can play in standard Marathon mode, where you survive through increasingly-fast levels. You can play High Speed mode, which ups the ante by starting you on level 15. Touchdown mode gives you a board full of garbage pieces, which you must carefully clear. In Cascade mode, erasing lines can cause other lines to be created and erased, potentially leading to huge bonuses. Sadistic mode gives you all the pieces you could possibly want - except line pieces. Written in z80 assembly, Tetric A is fast, colorful, and fun.

You can download Tetric A from the link below. You might need to archive some of your larger programs, as it requires 8KB of RAM to run. No shell (like Doors CS) is required, but keep your eye out for a version of Doors CS that may be coming soon for the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition. And as always, keep your eyes on Cemetech for the latest and greatest TI-84+CSE software.

Download
Tetric A: Color Tetris



Source:
Tetric A: Color Tetris for the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition via Cemetech

Offline Levak

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Re: Tetric A: Color Tetris for the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition
« Reply #1 on: August 13, 2013, 01:56:33 pm »
Wow, I thought (only from reading stuff tho) that program capabilities on the 84+CSE have a lot of drawbacks, particularly on the full-screen draws.
As for the gifs, we can see the screen flickers but that's faster than I would say the 84+CSE could run.
Due to that constant rumor (I guess) I never opened mine from its blister.

Did you use any tricks/optimizations that enable programs to make full-screen graphics without experimenting the slowness of a color-screen ? (I'm no longer a z80 programer for years)
If I correctly read your post, it uses only BASIC ? ("no shell")
« Last Edit: August 13, 2013, 01:57:22 pm by Levak »
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Offline Adriweb

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Re: Tetric A: Color Tetris for the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition
« Reply #2 on: August 13, 2013, 02:00:20 pm »
Wow, I thought (only from reading stuff tho) that program capabilities on the 84+CSE have a lot of drawbacks, particularly on the full-screen draws.
As for the gifs, we can see the screen flickers but that's faster than I would say the 84+CSE could run.
Due to that constant rumor (I guess) I never opened mine from its blister.

Did you use any tricks/optimizations that enable programs to make full-screen graphics without experimenting the slowness of a color-screen ? (I'm no longer a z80 programer for years)
If I correctly read your post, it uses only BASIC ? ("no shell")

Ahem :
Quote
Written in z80 assembly, Tetric A is fast, colorful, and fun.

No shell meaning no need of anything else than "Asm()"
But he also made/started another one in Basic, which was not as capable at all, IIRC.



Anyway, congrats Kerm :)
« Last Edit: August 13, 2013, 02:01:15 pm by adriweb »
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Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Tetric A: Color Tetris for the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition
« Reply #3 on: August 13, 2013, 03:51:04 pm »
Wow, I thought (only from reading stuff tho) that program capabilities on the 84+CSE have a lot of drawbacks, particularly on the full-screen draws.
As for the gifs, we can see the screen flickers but that's faster than I would say the 84+CSE could run.
Due to that constant rumor (I guess) I never opened mine from its blister.

Did you use any tricks/optimizations that enable programs to make full-screen graphics without experimenting the slowness of a color-screen ? (I'm no longer a z80 programer for years)
If I correctly read your post, it uses only BASIC ? ("no shell")
It does have serious drawing flaws, but here's the trick to circumvent them: Avoid drawing 320x240 of stuff in one shot on the screen. In Kerm's case, during gameplay, only the pieces move around, so this is why it's so fast. There are also other tricks such as AssemblyBandit's Buttonz game, where the blocks are one filled color and to move them around you just erase one line then add a line on the other side. Another trick is using the built-in horizontal scrolling support or 160x240 mode, which saves lot of processing time compared to refreshing the entire screen every frame for a scrolling game.

Even in pure BASIC it's possible to get a decent frame rate by moving a 80x80 square around if you know how.

Anyway glad to see this out Kerm. I was gonna do some news eventually about it but you beat me to it lol. Good job and it looks really nice and fun to play :)
« Last Edit: August 13, 2013, 03:52:02 pm by DJ Omnimaga »

Offline AssemblyBandit

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Re: Tetric A: Color Tetris for the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition
« Reply #4 on: August 14, 2013, 05:05:54 pm »
It's an awesome game!
Levak: The flicker is kind of exaggerated in the gif, open it up and check it out on the calc itself!

Offline DJ Omnimaga

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Re: Tetric A: Color Tetris for the TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition
« Reply #5 on: August 14, 2013, 05:18:49 pm »
Indeed. When I made animated screenshots of my graphical Zelda project a few months ago, half of the frames we couldn't even see Link x.x
« Last Edit: August 14, 2013, 05:19:41 pm by DJ Omnimaga »