Over the past month I have been developing and creating an application for the TI-8x family of calculators. The big idea started when I wanted to make Bitcoin for calculators, however the ideas for it kept getting more and more simple, less complex, and more useable. The ending result is TIcoin. I am almost done and should have a release in the next 2 weeks, so stay tuned.
What is TIcoin?
TIcoin is an application for your calculator. It has a minimalistic approach to rewarding you for using your calculator. For every time you open TIcoin, the app will find out how much memory is left in ram and reward you for having less then before. It uses a special format as well, primarily to distinguish it from regular fiat money. ^T000.000, they are called Tic's if less the ^T001.000, and TIc's, if greater.

How can this be used in the TI- Community?
Developers can add this to their games by having user spend TIcoins for items, levels, etc. You could even go further and create a propriety app the prompts for TIcoin payment to unlock. Mind you this is not real money, but a fun way to hide elements from the games you make so they are prompted to support the calculator community.

Well, it isn't actually asking to pay fort a game anymore than a game requiring you to reach a certain level before unlocking a mini game.

Quote from: pimathbrainiac on February 16, 2014, 03:25:57 pm

I think that this is a terrible idea. I really don't mean to be rude, but asking people to pay for calculator programs/apps is wrong. Period. Nothing else I can say.

I think that is a bit harsh. Fiat money is in you wallet, Tic's is on your calc, and is nothing more then a way to have users try harder to get to the next level. Xeda is right, for example you have a lot of monopoly games on ticalc.org, one could be a multiplayer game that uses tic's as value, or buy a Pokémon with tic's, of a boss level with TIc's. Optionally have a poker game with kerm's online bridge and bet with Tic's. They wouldn't really have value, because lets face it anyone who programs on ti-8x knows that its open source or at least not worth payment. Basically the possibilities are endless.

Keep in mind that one of those endless possibilities is users simply hacking in as many as they want. When the system that generates them is as weak as a calculator, it's impossible to validate the rightfulness of their existence.

I did think about that and I'm considering about putting in a hidden appvar to stop that from happening ... if there is a will there is a way.

Not really. I assure you, if you hide data anywhere on a calculator, I can find it. And an important factor that makes cryptocurrencies work is that no one rogue entity has more computing power than the validation network. When the validation network is just one calculator, anyone has more computing power than that.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't continue with your idea. You'd just have to accept that it will always be susceptible to cracking if a user with a fair amount of knowledge so desires to crack it.

So it doesn't matter, like stated before, its not real, but to the simple average player in math class it is.

But what if somebody makes a program to hack it, then distributes it online? Then all the user would have to do is run it. Maybe you could encrypt the data and put it in multiple locations in memory so that it won't work if someone tampers with it.

Good luck with this project! It doesn't seem very useful, but it sounds like it could be fun to program.

This could be handy for some games like RPGs, racing and shooting games where you can save and buy upgrades or power-ups, since it would be a bit like in Diablo III where you used to be able to buy weapons with real money, except that in this case it would be fake money.

Thats the right idea!

Perhaps you simply want Asm(EFE542)→R ?

just about finished most of it but on small error. When I press to exit the screen's first column fills in with lines sorta like underscores. Any one know why?