Several years ago I wrote about a code project I made for my Texas Instruments TI-89 Graphing Calculator. It was a Worms World Party fan clone. Well, despite the fact that I made that project a decade ago when I was a super n00b programmer, a fan found my website and contacted me about finishing it!

Now, last I worked on it, I ran out of memory on the calculator, so I literally could not write more code or design more of the game because it was too big to fit on the device. But as I mentioned – I was pretty green back then, so my code and understanding of Computer Science was suboptimal. I was still in High School after all and my knowledge of C was from SAMS Teach Yourself C++ in 21 days. Not to knock SAMS though, that book was great – but also, just my humble beginnings.

So I get an email from a TI-community member who found my previous post and source code. He refactored some of my code and was able to compile (with an updated compiler) to saved me several kilobytes of memory. Of course, he proposed the idea that I finish it with the saved space! I had no intention of picking up that ancient project, but I mused on the idea. I reviewed the code and it was HORRIBLE. I was so amateur back then. I also realized that the code, despite being hilariously bad, was also not doing TOO much. I decided I could probably use my 18 years of experience to rewrite it and finish the game.

With not much on my plate (which is kinda of a lie cuz there’s always too much shit on my plate) I decided to take a random tangent to see how far I could get remaking it. From scratch, I dived in, and my email pal taught me A LOT about C as well as compiling for low level devices and saving memory. My years of experience served me well. I’m still not done, and have since been distracted by other more pressing projects of mine, but I made a total kick ass remake.

The graphics are MUCH faster, the camera has smooth interpolation between “focus” objects, the map system is more complex and fully gray scale instead of solid black. In the video below, you can see my current progress. It’s still not release ready, but the code is in good shape, and I am eager to jump back into this project once I wrap up some my more pressing ideas.

Peep the vid and stay tuned:

July 19, 2018 at 7:10 am | Code Projects