Although I do own a TI-85, I've not tried coding on it. If you really wanted to be old school though, I'd suggest ZShell, as it was the original. I have done a selection of TI-86 coding, which is to the TI-85 what the TI-83 is to the TI-82, so I might be able to help somewhat.

As for the keyhandler issue that you're having, feel free to send me a copy and I'll see if I can spot anything obvious that might be causing a problem

Hehe no not done with calc-coding, just been keeping busy with other things over the summer. Now that the Melbourne weather is cooling off again, I'm spending more time indoors again.

Spaze Invaders CSE is not too far from being finished now!

It's only been moving slowly, but Spaze Invaders has seen some more progress. Boss levels are now implemented, and the program has been slightly adjusted to now be a Doors CSE 8.0 program. The game can now be played through all 9 levels, however player collision detection still hasn't been implemented, so it's quite boring. However you can still get an idea of the feel of the game.

I've again updated the demo download to the current build, which you can download here. You will need Doors CSE 8.0 to run this demo.

What's could be better than Alien Breed on a TI calculator? How about Alien Breed on 2 linked TI calculators?

The main new addition in AB5 v2 is that I've gotten around to implementing 2 player co-operative link play! This is something I've wanted to do for many years - back in 2000 I even attempted to make an Alien Breed "deathmatch" game, but failed miserably. The co-op feature of the Team 17 games was always an awesome feature that I enjoyed; Dad and I spent many years blasting away at aliens together when I was a kid!

I owe many thanks to Timendus for his Bell link library which I'm using. It's proved invaluable and syncing between the two calculators is running smoothly. In terms of performance, a link play game runs a couple of frames slower per second, due to the small packets being sent back and forth, but it's still nice and smooth.

With gameplay, it functions almost identically to the original Team 17 games. Both players must work together in the same area, ie. you can't venture more than a screen length away from each other, and you can't shoot each other. The only difference to the Team 17 games is that in the calculator version, the two players don't have collision detection with each other - you can walk through one another. This is simply because the levels in the calculator game are exactly half the length & width of the originals, thus the corridors are often narrower and so getting around each other would often be impossible.

In the event that one player runs out of lives, quits, or unplugs mid-game, the other player has the option to continue in single player mode. Once you revert to single player mode, you can't return to two player mode without starting a new link game. 2 player games can also be played on the original Episode I: Rebirth levels.

I mentioned in the original post that AB5 v2 will include all the levels from v1 (Episode I: Rebirth). It will also include another set of 12 new levels (Episode II: Evolution)!

Whilst the Rebirth levels were based on the Alien Breed Special Edition '92 levels from Team 17, the Evolution levels will likely be a mix of the Team 17 Alien Breed 1, Convergence, Valiance & Synergy levels. I'm intending to make the difficulty curve slightly sharper on these levels, although I have no idea how easy or hard people found the Rebirth levels.. I find them pretty easy, but then I know the levels inside out from playing ABSE'92 through hundreds of times over the last 20 years!

When starting a new game, a new selection screen comes up, and you choose whether you want to play the Rebirth or Evolution episode. Passcodes from v1 are still valid in v2, and entering a passcode from a game you had been playing in v1 will simply work as it did before, whereas any passcodes you receive when playing the Evolution levels will automatically load you back into the appropriate Evolution level. This is because internally the passcodes calculate the Rebirth levels as 0-11 and the Evolution levels as 12-23.

A very simple demo can be downloaded here. Controls are the same as the original TI-83 version: arrows to move left and right, [2nd] to fire and [CLEAR] to quit.

Just a quick update: I took a break from AB5 last night and jumped back over to this to make some progress. Aliens now do their side-to-side dance and make their way down the screen, and you can shoot them out of the sky with your trusty laser. Next up I'll implement the alien lasers, then loading a new level once all aliens are dead.

Seeing as it's hard for me to post any decent screenshots at this stage, I'll upload a demo version in the next few days for those that want to see how it looks on the calculator

About a year ago I released Alien Breed 5. Whilst I was quite happy with it, there were a few ideas & features that I had in mind during the development process that didn't make it into the final product for various reasons. I figured I'd come back and further develop the game again at some point, and based on my track record of Alien Breed games on TI calculators, I guess it was inevitable anyway! Those that have either finished all 12 levels of AB5 (or looked through the source code) will know that I decided to subtitle the v1 release "Episode I: Rebirth".

Episode II: Evolution is a major update to Alien Breed 5. The battle against the neverending alien horde continues, and will be taken to new levels of fun!

There will be a number of improvements and additions to the game. For this reason, it will be available only on the TI-83+/84+ calculators, as a flash application. The game has now outgrown it's previous "RAM program" life due to memory constraints. In terms of how the game will be changed, think of it like an "expansion pack", ie. all the previous levels and gameplay features of AB5 v1 will be there, but there will now be additional content and things to do in-game.

Features:
- 12 brand new levels which form Episode II: Evolution. This brings the level total to 24 across 2 campaigns.
- 2-player co-operative play.
- "Retreat" firing.
- Intex Entertainment "Space Pong".
- Achievements.
- In-game tips for new players.
- Smooth walls/soft corners for easier navigation into tighter corridors.
- Increased tileset, animations & interactive objects.
- Improved interface.
- Boss AI re-written.
- Game balancing adjusted.
- Cut scene type segments and improved epilogue when finishing a campaign.
- A bunch of minor bug fixes.