Ok so when I released that one other crappy Zelda game that looks like Atari 2600 material, my intention was to see how fast TI-84 Plus C Silver Edition BASIC drawing was in games of my own, but I wouldn't stop there. I had plans, once I finish that game, to go a little bit further, first of all with better graphics and secondly with actual Zelda gameplay rather than just finding keys and avoiding enemies. Currently, this project is mainly in experimental and planning stages, but should it go further, it could possibly be the first Zelda clone to arrive on the TI-84+CSE color screen calc.

The game would be written in TI-BASIC, with the help of LCDTOOL ASM lib so that the game can run in 160x240 resolution. The game style would be similar to the original NES Zelda from 1986, especially dungeon map layout, but with lower quality graphics, for speed reasons. In some cases, the game might still look Atari 2600-like, but far better than in Sord of Atari. Coding might still be sloppy, though, because it has been over 3 years since I last touched TI-BASIC.

Currently, ideas for items were found, but the blue and red tunics are not guaranteed to remain in. Also, I am still unsure if I'll use the heart pieces format or full hearts yet. I also have ideas for the types of dungeon/overworld rooms.

All that is implemented so far is initial map loading (without the doors, floor content, items, etc) and link's movement (he faces 4 directions) with no collision detection, map/sprite interaction, with bombs/equiped items/keys still missing from HUD. I also have an experimental boss 1 program which doesn't do anything else than displaying the boss then moving it around. Bosses will most likely use their own map/movement engine to avoid losing speed in the main engine and it is possible that multiple bosses' behavior will be identical, to save RAM. The title screen is also done, including a spinning triforce. The Zelda logo is generated using stat plots. I also have the map data for the overworld done, but I need to convert it to a different format, so hopefully it should make things easier to test.

The reason why I want to use the NES dungeon layout is to save size/speed. With the way maps are layed out in my engine, when you switch from one room to another, only the doors/pathways and the floor sprites have to be erased, then the next map sprites are loaded. THe only time the entire map (and menu) would have to be reloaded while in-game is when exiting or entering the dungeon, since the color palette or floor texture can be different.

Anyway, will this be another project that will die? Will it go further than an engine? Or will it eventually be the 2nd real calculator Zelda project ever completed since 1985? Hopefully it is the latter. For now, I'm leaving you with screenshots, which runs roughly at the same speed as the calc (walking is about 10% slower on calc, but it flickers much less).

Finally getting back into some programming, eh? I'd like to see what this turns into later.

I agree with pimath, I haven't really thought much about getting a CSE but I am starting to want one. Great job and keep with it!

Wait what !!! DJ is going back into programming?

Good luck with this. Looks pretty nice already.

It's great to see you coding again DJ_O! I look forward to seeing the development of this project

(like bumping each wall to see if one in particular doesn't support collisions)

I 120'd at that one.
But yeah I'm looking forward to progress on this. I wish there were a BootFree-like thing for the CSE so I can check this out before I eventually get my hands on one.

What does "120" mean ?

Well, in 1337, LOL becomes 101 which is 5 in binary. Hence LOL! is 5! which is equal to 120.