I'm working on a text-based game creator for the nspire. If you've ever played Voodoo castle, Zork, or Thy Dungeonman (Try it on homestarrunner.com) you know what these are.

It will be written in BASIC, using mainly the RequestSTR command. I plan on making a wizard that will make games for you as well. One problem I've encountered is retrieving data from matrices. How do you do it on the nspire?

I hope I get some feedback on this.

I believe matName[row, col] accesses matrix elements.

From what i hear about the nSpire, there is very little you can do in the ways of I/O I dont have one though so I cant say Is it true that you cannot store to variables or something?  I thought i heard that somewhere?

think the 86 for vars, minus the 8 character limit.

The only I/O commands at all, besides program(a,b) a and b being input are request(string,var) and requeststr(string,var) which bring up text boxes. fortunately for me, that is exactly what a text-based game uses. the request commands weren't added until 2.0, though. I had 1.7 until I upgraded and it wasn't there before.

BTW secants, cosecants and cotangents work on the nspire, unlike most other calcs.

Title screens would probably be the only graphics, unless someone writes something like axe. I would definitely switch almost immediately.

request actually acts exactly like Input. InputStr=RequestStr, just that request comes up in a text box, with OK and cancel at the bottom.

Perhaps ASM hooks could make button-style menus like the System settings screens!

yeah, that's how it works, but personally I like the fact that it sticks out, rather than just appearing next to everything else. It's really annoying not to have menu or getky though.

Well, there's no way you can make the "real" games. as long as you use the Text command instead of disp, its got the same effect as using Pause "text here"

By the way, a nice feature I'm implementing. You can customize the directional and action commands.
it looks like this
Engine()
lbl top
Input stuff
if input=Move then
Move()
if acts>=1 then
if input=Act1
Ac1()
else
*this returns a "you can't do that" style error and returns you to the input
text errormsg *you can customize it to be witty, confused, bored. great for dialogue.
goto top
*and that repeats to the maximum command #
*note that in the move command all strings, number of actions, all that stuff will be changed, as defined by a room number on a coordinate grid. for instance, rooms[1,1] refers to the left, top most room. note that the flow scheme for rooms will not have to be laid out as such. any room can access any other.

Yeah, so this will be able to do about anything except live action. With a little work, a battle engine could be implemented, but for now I'll just finish the engine.