TI-BASIC Games/Tools

I was one of the millions of students who had to use a Texas Instruments graphing calculator in school. I had the TI-84 Plus Silver Edition, in particular. I spent my senior year of high school making tons of games and tools on my calculator. You can program on these calculators with an assembly-like language called TI-BASIC. I was able to automate many of the problems for my classes, but also made some really cool games. I found the loophole where a teacher wouldn't allow phones during a test but would allow a calculator. So when I finished with the exam, I would just play or make games on my calculator. I made about 50 TI-BASIC programs over the years, some better than others.

Below you can see some of my best programs. Click on the name to view the source code then click download to get the file to load onto your calculator.

If you'd like to learn TI-BASIC, I'd recommend this reference guide and this tutorial.

Controls: Move Cursor: Left/Right arrow

Select card to discard: Plus sign

Deselect card to discard: Minus sign

Confirm turn: Enter DRAWPOKR : 1v1 5 Card Draw game against the computer. Choose which cards you want to discard each round and try to get a better hand than the computer. The computer's AI will try to do the same. All poker hands are supported and are automatically analyzed to determine the winner. Controls: Select Left Option: Top left button under the screen

Select Right Option: Top right button under the screen BLACKJAC : 1v1 Black Jack game against the computer. Featuring, a visual display of the cards for both players, ability to hit or stay and even decisions to value an ace as 1 or 11. The game will keep track of your win/loss count on the side so you can see if you are ahead or behind.

INVEST : Real-time investing. Buy minerals and sell them for a profit. Every hour of real time the prices update when you come back to the game. Auto-saves your game so even shutting off the calculator will preserve your game. INVESRES : Reset all of the save data for the INVEST game. You'll also need to run this once before first starting INVEST or you'll get an error. Controls: Select tile: Press the corresponding number 1-9 on the keypad

Continue to next turn: Enter MEMORY : Flip over tiles to reveal the number hidden underneath. If you flip the same number on both sides of the board, it's a match! See how fast you can match all 9 tiles. Each turn you select the left side first then the right side. XYGUESSR : Test your coordinate knowledge. A cross will be placed on an X,Y coordinate plane that ranges from -10, 10 in both the X and Y dimensions. Quickly figure out what that cross' coordinates are and enter them to earn points. If you get a high enough score, you'll be promoted to the next level. It starts out easy but gets very hard by level 3. Controls: Hit: Press one of the 5 buttons directly below the screen to hit the icon directly above it. REFLEX : Quickly press the corresponding button below each icon that appears. See how many you can get correct before time runs out! SLOTS : Choose your bet and spin the wheel. Hit the jackpot by lining up 3 of the same symbol or get the small payout by lining up 2 of the same symbol. Controls: Move left: Left arrow

Move right: Right arrow

Speed up: Up arrow AVOID : Control your car as you drive up the screen. Avoid the traffic as you speed past the other cars. See how far you can make it without hitting another car. Controls: Shoot: Up arrow BLASTER : Shoot targets as your space ship randomly teleports around the bottom of the screen. If you hit a target you'll gain a point and the game will get faster. If you shoot and miss a target, you'll loose a life. Don't let your trigger finger get the best of you and time your shots correctly. HILO : Bet against the house if the next number from 1-100 will be higher or lower than the current number. Win your bet if you are correct or lose your money if you are wrong. CLOCK : The calculator has a built in clock which can be set by pressing the "MODE" key and scrolling to the bottom. This program shows a live full-screen display of that time with hours:minutes:seconds in AM/PM format. BASE2QUZ : Math game to test your base2 powers. Pick a power to start on and answer random questions. Each question you get right will increase the range of the numbers you can encounter. If you get one wrong, the difficulty will go back down. The more you get right, the more challenging the game will get! BINARY : Manual conversion of Binary to Decimal numbers or vice-versa. This is not the most efficient way of doing the conversion but it's a demo of how to do it in the same way you would do it by hand. Even though it's not the best way to do it, it still works well for numbers up to a trillion. CLEARDAT : A simple utility to clear all of the lists and variables on the calculator. Can be very useful when developing on the calculator to have this tool. This will also clear all of the lists and variables used by all of my programs listed here. GETKEY : Shows the key code of the pressed key on the screen. Very useful when developing calculator applications so you don't need to look up the documentation for the key codes.

Download Program To install on your calculator: Download the TI Connect CE Software. (Mirrors: Windows, Mac) Connect your calculator to the computer with the provided cable. (USB to Mini-B cable) Open TI Connect CE and turn on your calculator. Click on Calculator Explorer. Click on your calculator which should appear on the left column. Drag the NAME.8xp file to the list on the right. A "Send to Calculators" prompt should pop up, click SEND. You can now safely disconnect the calculator from the computer. If you are unable to transfer using a computer, you can manually enter the code on your calculator by pressing the "PRGM" button and then navigating to "NEW". To run the program on your calculator press "PRGM" and then select the program name and press "ENTER". You can forcefully exit a program at any time by pressing "ON" and then "ENTER". To delete a program on your calculator press "MEM" then navigate to "Mem Mgmt/Del", then "Prgm", then highlight the program you want to delete and press the "DEL" key. All of these programs have been tested on a TI-84 Plus Silver Edition. They are likely to work on other TI calculators but I cannot guarantee it.