Like I said previously, I've converted this page into modern HTML/CSS code
- tables into div/span, stylesheet in an external file, modifying the
appearance a bit (thin gray borders). Using the Slashdot HTML/CSS code and
the SciTE css.properties file as a reference, that was a matter of a
couple of hours only.
If it does not render correctly in your browser, you should switch to a
standards-compliant(-enough) browser such as Firefox, which is free
software, as you should already know, and not too resource-hungry: even
the latest version, 1.5, works well on my 5-year-old 1 GHz computer running
Windows ME. I have noticed the known excessive memory consumption problems
only once, when using an old buggy version of GreaseMonkey, which I've not
used anymore since. Konqueror 3.4.3 works as well as Firefox. Opera 8.51
and later undoubtedly work well too. For such a simple page, Amaya also
happens to work well (it butchers Slashdot and Yahoo! between many others).
MSIE, as often when it comes to rendering CSS, doesn't work properly.
Links 0.99, Lynx and derived programs (Elinks, etc.) render the page
somewhat better than IE does. Microsoft said IE7 won't be
standards-compliant.
Anyway, more and more sites are using CSS, although most large sites still
use tables to render the layout (as the "Web Developer" Firefox extension
shows), so you'll have to switch sooner or later. For a limited period of
time, there's also the TI-News Conglomerate (RSS feed).
Other than that, well, here is the too-long-delayed minor update for
TI-Chess: ZIP file,
TAR.BZ2 file.
posted by
Lionel on 22/01/2006
17:55 (CET)
As some among you might have noticed, I haven't attended boards related to
TI-68k calculators programming for more than one month, except for checking
PM inboxes, and I don't plan on coming back on a regular basis. I wrote the
reason why on a neutral public place on the Internet, along with the fact
that if any single person leaves, the community still runs. As
you'll soon read in S1P9, "this is mainly
not a matter of lack of time".
I notice I stopped writing here about trouble on boards a long time ago,
and I never spent time to acknowledge my errors here. Well, here's it:
after bashing yAronet pretty hard (you can still read that below), I went
back there in October 2004. Between the bashing and me going back
there (after apologies and changing my handle to mark the fresh start), I
learnt many facts (under the form of IRC/forum logs/flames) which show the
root cause of the trouble everywhere. I was fooled for a long time...
Programming on TI-68k calculators has definitely been an enriching
experience, for both coding (although I wrote rather little new AND
released code on my own) and even more human relationship. However, now I
have to move on to other platforms. Something important in the next TICT
program releases will show it clearly.
In short, therefore, if you want to contact me, there's only one reliable
way to do it: my e-mail.
As you can guess, most TICT programs have not been updated much, if at all.
Shame on me.
- ExtGraph 2.00 Beta 5 is a major
improvement over 2.00 Beta 4 (probably more than any previous version
was over the previous one !), featuring many additions and fixes. What
prevents me from releasing it its dire need of documentation update - a
boring and time-consuming task. Here is the SVN repository,
which is, given to the number of fixes and improvements, the only
supported version.
- TICT-Explorer 1.40 Beta 1, TI-Chess 4.17 and ttstart
2.01 are waiting for me to make several more tests before
releasing them: I switched to GCC 4.0.2 (TIGCC 0.96 Beta 6). I did not
test that version during the testing phase because I was too busy. Now
Kevin will undoubtedly complain - with reason - if I find anything
wrong when recompiling TICT software. Let's hope that given how
troublesome some previous GCC versions were, he has tried by himself...
Otherwise, my several coding mistakes when optimizing their code won't
be the only reason TICT software crashes your calculators ;-)
I'm slowly converting this page to good HTML/CSS code. I know it can be
easily rewritten with div/span in order not to use that mess of nested
tables to hold the presentation, which will also get me rid of most
accessibility warnings. Perhaps several simple Perl scripts can make the
job painlessly, given that Tom had definitely a nice idea putting several
special comments throughout the source.
Several months ago, I was writing below about software patents. The
situation has worsened in something which does harm day-to-day computer
users NOW: for example, now Sony uses rootkits to enforce
flawed DRM schemes for their latest audio CDs. Whether you have missed that
shocking story whose followups have been numerous and very widely published
over the Internet in the past two weeks or not, it's high time you were
conscious on the insanity of DRM/TPM/etc. ! Telling the people you know
about that insanity would definitely be a plus.
posted by
Lionel on 13/11/2005
19:16 (CET)
edited by
Lionel on
xx/xx/2005
Looks like I did not fix 4.14 properly, the problem is still partly there
in 4.15. I thought I had launched the program before making 4.15, but I did
not make proper tests... Anyhow, here is TI-Chess
4.16, which reports itself to be 4.16 instead of 4.13. Sorry again for
the inconvenience.
Some information on other TICT programs which will be updated in the next
few weeks, before school starts again, as I know I'll be even busier than
last year:
- TICT-Explorer 1.40 has undergone
successful private beta-testing. A file has been publicly available on
the board for nearly ten months, but I got zero reports. Since
private beta-tests are more efficient than public ones (Tom confirmed
me this), TICT beta-tests will now be private.
- ExtGraph 2.00 Beta 5 has a massive
changelog, including the creation of a SVN repository. Pixel macros
have been fixed several days after Beta 4, but surprisingly many
persons had forgotten about it. There are many fixes and new
functions.
- The TIGCC Tools Suite needs an update.
- TICT Tutorial S1P9 about code optimization
is coming.
I will upload some of those packages to ticalc.org, as it will help
spreading the correct versions. Unfortunately, only ZIP can be used, which
makes files larger than they could be if a better compression format was
used...
posted by
Lionel on 23/08/2005
11:33 (CEST)
Martin Daveluy reported me another bug in TI-Chess. I had a hard time
tracking it down, but looking further in the code enabled me to perform new
optimizations. The fixed file is at the same location
as before.
[EDIT 09/07/2005: TI-Chess 4.15 is out. It fixes a silly showstopper in
4.14.]
The EU parliament rejected software patents. This is good news. Let's just
hope we won't see something worse coming in the few next years.
posted by
Lionel on 07/07/2005
08:33 (CEST)
edited by
Lionel on
09/07/2005
I forgot once more to test the 92+/V200 version of TI-Chess 4.12. And, it
turns out I added a silly bug by copying the 89/89T build batch into the
92+/V200 build batch: the background image of all versions is that of the
89/89T ! I can imagine how ugly the result is. Thanks to Martin Daveluy for
the report.
Download the fixed file here.
I also got a bug report for ExtGraph. Should be easy to fix.
On an unrelated note, I found this link an
interesting (thought-provoking) read.
posted by
Lionel on 03/07/2005
19:42 (CEST)
edited by
Lionel on
03/07/2005
The programs I wrote about in the previous news have been available for
beta-test on the messageboard for some time, and although no major bugs
seem to have been noticed, I didn't get much feedback.
You can fetch them here.
As a computer science student, I'm somewhat concerned by software patents.
They cannot do without having negative impact in the field I'm going to
work in after I'm done with school, although the amount of damage is not
known for sure in advance. The law is to be discussed soon at the EU
parliament.
posted by
Lionel on 25/06/2005
10:26 (CEST)
I've uploaded ttstart to the TICT website. I'll upload it to ticalc as
well. Direct
link.
When Kevin sends me a fixed version of GCC (I found two other bugs since
the previous news, one is major), I can prepare for beta-testing ebook
2.09, a part of TICT-Explorer 1.40, TI-Chess 4.12.
posted by
Lionel on 29/04/2005
13:10 (CEST)
as you noticed due to the lack of updates, I was a bit out of the TI
calculators world for a few months. As I didn't keep a very complete todo
list - and I lost an updated version of it when the calculator was too
short of batteries and resetted self (of course, for once, I had no backups
of that file...), I'll lose things if I don't ask people to remind me what
- I promised to do but didn't do;
- advice they gave me for optimization / integration into a TICT
program / etc.
Therefore, please send me mails (link in the timestamp). Thanks in
advance.
Some news on the TICT projects:
- ttstart is reaching
v2.00. It's currently open for testing in the Custom Beta Tests section
of our board, in the topic about the new TIGCC pstarter. Like the TIGCC
pstarter it is based on, it's now entirely written in assembly. All in
all, ttstart_asm_ppg (the new name of the default ttstart in the
previous version) is only 1500 bytes - while its decompression
routine was highly optimized by Samuel Stearley: ~200 bytes smaller,
more than twice faster than the C/ASM version by Greg Dietsche and
him.
- ExtGraph is seeing
improvements (documentation - ! -, TestCollideX) and additions (new
TestCollideX, plane scaling, new fast background save&restore,
etc.) slowly made. One of the next steps is the fast fonts support.
- TICT-Explorer will be (at
last) compatible with the TI-89 Titanium when Kevin or I get to
updating it.
- other programs would
benefit from the GCC 4.0 optimizations. The compiler can now be trusted
(Kevin insufficiently tested tigcc-gcc-4.0-pre8, which basically more
or less messed up all three programs - TI-Chess, TICT-Explorer and
ebook - I tested it with), so I could make new releases of all of them,
if it didn't take way more time than I have. Maybe in August, during my
next holidays...
- Does SiPj remind
something to you ? Stay tuned !
I fixed the page formatting a bit (for some time, there was no CR/LF in
this page, I don't know why), and I made the HTML code slightly more
standards-compliant. At least, the Tidy embedded in my Firefox doesn't warn
me about an incorrect syntax anymore. But it's still a table-based design
responsible for most of the ~180 Tidy accessibility warnings.
posted by
Lionel on 18/04/2005
13:30 (CEST)
I fixed the bugs I talked about below: TI-Timewaste used to crash on 92+
and V200, TI-Puzzlize crashed on all models. Both programs have increased
optimization, thanks to -freg-relative-an.
Links:
On a side note, TI-Timewaste contains the binaries of ExtGraph 2.00
pre-Beta 5, which fixes bugs on pixel macros (none would compile...) and
adds several functions. You should upgrade.
I'm splitting the documentation of ExtGraph into many files, which will
help both maintaining and reading.
I fixed the timestamp of the previous news...
posted by
Lionel on 29/12/2004
19:10 (CET)
As I'm on holiday, I spent several days to finish and clean up a few
things. The release date is not even done on purpose.
As usual in this beta series: new functions, bugfixes, optimizations, etc.
(the changelog is large this time). This beta contains the todo list, but
the documentation was not updated much.
Links:
In the next weeks, I will try to make a new release of ttstart, which will
be based on Kevin's work for the TIGCC pstarter (he rewrote everything into
ASM). I'll also have a look at why several TICT games don't work properly
on V200, as I was reported.
And we wish merry Christmas to everyone !
posted by
Lionel on 25/12/2004
17:30 (CET)
First, the good news: a TI-89T-compatible version of
TI-Chess is here. Note that
this distribution of TI-Chess is just a quick fix (we got many requests for
it). It will be superseded by one that will contain universal launchers. I
know the distribution linked to before *works*, while recompiling
everything with TIGCC 0.95 Beta 19 or later:
- might break something
- may pessimize the code, due to the (apriori useless in TI-Chess,
ebook, etc.) in_use startup code that may be required by a number of
tigcc.a functions I may use in TI-Chess
- requires me to update ttstart first, and to go through the hassle of
making my own launchers, since the latest TIGCC 0.95 betas won't
generate on-calc-incompatible launchers anymore, and I care about the
programmers'/users' choice of generating/using all three launchers
Second, the many bad news:
- I was reported that two TICT games (TI-Timewaste 0.82, TI-Puzzlize
1.21) cause crashes. I'll try recompiling them too with the latest
TIGCC betas, since this misbehaviour might be due to the severe bugs in
the constant merging code of Beta 15, but it might be due to small
changes in the code as well.
- When I wrote the posts below, I thought I could rather easily modify
TICT-Explorer so that it became TI89T-compatible. This just required me
to be *sure* that I'd not use outdated ttstart versions... which
unfortunately needed weeks, because Kevin Kofler wouldn't give me a way
to get the latest ttstart versions. And, this was very easy (actually
two links to the appropriate files, since they were not modified for a
long time, and a small addition), so it would have saved all of us
time, and TICT-Explorer would not screw up users anymore...
As long as TICT-Explorer / ttstart are not
updated and screw up Titanium users, I advise them to use Greg
Dietsche's SuperStart for the launching abilities (as a FlashApp
hooking the home screen, one of its features makes launching much more
convenient) and KerNO for the crash protection.
- ExtGraph needs a bugfix/improvements release, but there's much work
left on it before I can do it - not even thinking of modifying the
entire tilemap engine to make it compatible with the TIGCC
doublebuffering support. Obviously, (nearly) everyone would be happy if
the TIGCCLIB grayscale support inclued both types of grayscale
routines, which is very easy and which a number of users have been
asking for years, but Kevin doesn't want to do so, and there seems to
be no way he changes his mind on anything... Not that I couldn't fork
the TIGCCLIB grayscale support, but I strongly object to: this would
create one more conflict.
- Last but not least, school started again for me, i.e. TI-68k
calculators programming is mostly over for me, all the more I
have to learn ARM assembly (BTW, thanks again to Al Borowski, one
of the main developers of HP-GCC, for giving me links to very useful
ressources dealing with that topic)...
posted by
Lionel on 03/10/2004
12:14 (CEST)
edited by
Lionel on
03/10/2004
I updated once more all TICT games I had updated lately: most of them
wouldn't run on V200 due to a silly mistake (which I hadn't seen in my
tests which were aimed at the TI-89T, not the V200), and TI-Puzzlize
contained unsafe code (found in TI-LIDS and TI-Chess as well) that was
broken by compilation option -mregparm, causing crashes under some
circumstances.
Everything is recompiled with brand-new TIGCC 0.95 Beta 15 containing an
updated version of ttstart (compatible with HSR). ttstart will be updated
as a standalone tool too.
Links:
TI-Chess 4.10 is available on our messageboard (Custom Beta Tests section).
It needs some testing to make sure that nothing was broken by -mregparm,
for example. I tested it a bit though.
FAT-Engine 1.22 and TICT-Explorer 1.40 Beta 1 are coming soon.
posted by
Lionel on 06/08/2004
17:00 (CEST)
Here are updated (compatible with the TI-89 Titanium, compiled with TIGCC
0.95 Beta 12) versions of some TICT software. They are now uploaded to
ticalc:
I will release TICT-Explorer 1.40 "Beta 0" (possibly unstable) on our
messageboard to help me finding and fixing more quickly bugs introduced in
this version by my optimizations.
TI-Chess 4.01 (released on our messageboard) is not currently compatible
with the TI-89 Titanium. We'll try to modify the TIGCC ttstart so that HSR
can be used on the TI-89 Titanium too.
Julien updated the tilemap engine. In addition to the MASK drawing mode I
talked about previously, it adds a simple support that can be used for
games like SimCity 68k. Come on developers, we'd like to make such a
project. We'd also like to make a TI-68k-based port of Lotus Turbo
Challenge - the nice TI-Z80 port has been available for a long time. A
thread was started here, we haven't had
any replies for a while.
If the slander was removed from the website I was talking about last time,
after discussing with the host, there was another unpleasant event
in-between. Indeed, a yAronet user, well known for misbehaving on TI-Gen
from which he was banned for trolling ("The TI-Gen staff banned persons for
flooding, flaming and/or circumventing administratory measures, etc. I
mean, the usual persons." down this page in April was a reference to him),
came under another profile and wanted to help for the TI-Gen board
sourcecode.
Afterwards, even if he says he had started working on code and he didn't
want to destroy anything, he might very well have used or left holes for
others to use them, modified the databases... What's more, he said himself
on TI-Gen that he wanted to see what was going on the admin/moderator
private board.
The admin/moderator private board had already been partly posted on yAronet
by a TI-Gen staff member, who was banned yesterday after seeing his powers
temporarily removed for repeated misbehaviour. I'm all for it, and I had
strongly disapproved of his powers being given back to him. Indeed, another
staff member had misbehaved with yAronet users, he had been warned and his
actions are checked (new misbehaviour => powers removed). He accepted
and never did any other mistake. The banned person's behaviour was worse,
even after the strong warning he received...
To be coherent, I can't obviously for a long time keep blaming most yAronet
users for misbehaving, while I keep supporting a board whose staff contains
such a person !
[EDIT: changed the end of the post]
posted by
Lionel on 23/07/2004
14:17 (CEST)
edited by
Lionel on 11/07/2004,
15/07/2004, 15/07/2004, 23/07/2004
Due to the TI-89 Titanium ("Titanic") being widely available and breaking
so many things (much worse than the V200, believe me), I'm currently
updating TICT software. This is also an occasion to release modifications /
improvements to several of them (TI-Miner for example, some optimizations
were sitting on my HD for more than two years, I added other ones, saving
kilobytes on both the uncompressed size and the compressed size).
We lately had trouble again with the same yAronet users as usual, those I
was complaining about down this page in an older news about TI-Gen. The day
before yesterday, they banned Kevin from yAronet for some possibly fake
reason I don't care about anyway. Yesterday, they temporarily took over the
TI-Gen IRC channels and triggered TI-Gen to be temporarily closed again.
Things went really far this time. Kevin and I were strongly slandered on a
site not unrelated to a yAronet so-called moderator [EDIT: removed
07/07/2004 after discussing with this person].
Of course, I won't say that Kevin and I are perfect. But we do not deserve
that kind of illegal (this is clearly slander, on a website anyone can read
!) personal attacks.
If we go on like that, one of the next steps is shed blood. So I'll be the
first to stop here. I won't reply to their provocations (for example, the
trolls they post often contain a note saying that they know we'll remove
the posts; if we did, we'd be really thick...). I'll let them live their
life, while I live mine.
We must keep up working, or work even more, between and with our board and
TI-Gen's, without caring about the trolls from yAronet anymore. There are
skilled programmers over there (squale92, ExtendeD, PpHd, Pollux, Flanker,
jackiechan/Sasume... the usual trolls are not programmers that skilled).
They attend other boards anyway, without usually trolling the same way the
others do, and I've had constructive talks and work with them. For example,
ExtendeD, Flanker, PpHd and I have exchanged information about some AMS
internals and suggestions for our programs; jackiechan/Sasume made a huge
work on ExtGraph.
posted by
Lionel on 03/07/2004
11:50 (CEST)
edited by
Lionel on
11/07/2004
As usual in this beta series: new functions, bugfixes (two severe bugs were
fixed on two sets of rather unusual functions), documentation updates...
Due to the increasingly huge size of the distribution (more functions means
more flexibility and power, but increase size), there are now four
distributions of ExtGraph (the .zip ones will stay default):
The .tar.bz2 archives were done with powerful and open 7-Zip. Its native format (.7z) outperforms
all other formats (including .rar). Like the PPG format:
- the decompression algorithm can be ported to TI-68k calculators;
- the compression algorithm requires too much memory to be ported to
TI-68k calculators (and 7Z is decades above PPG for the memory
consumption).
There's much more to come in ExtGraph (interlaced sprites, more and more
optimized sprite routines, fast fonts support, optimizations, triangle
drawing routines, etc.).
If you distribute ExtGraph within your projects' distributions, please
include both extgraph.a and extgraph.h (and tilemap.a / tilemap.h if you
use the tilemap engine). Don't get fooled by the huge size of those files:
they are very redundant data, high compression ratios can therefore be
achieved on them (read: the least compressible file of those four files,
extgraph.a, is more than six times smaller after compression, even with old
ZIP format).
posted by
Lionel on 11/06/2004
20:21 (CEST)
I made a huge work for the TIGCC documentation. Its integration to TIGCC
being slow, Kevin and I decided that I should release my work
separately.
So, here it is. You can download it here, it
contains a readme.
That file comes with no warranty of any kind. It should not be
redistributed, but always downloaded from the TICT website, and it should
not be split (always stay as a whole).
You can use the contents of this file as you wish, as long as you give me
(Lionel Debroux) credit.
posted by
Lionel on 07/06/2004
19:41 (CEST)
- TICT-Explorer: version 1.30 was uploaded on ticalc.org. Direct links: TI-89,TI-92+
andV200.
As usual, the next version will start beta stage a rather short period
of time after the release of the current version. I have to optimize a
bit more and fix bugs before thinking about releasing a beta.
- ExtGraph: more than the work on the
extgraph.h/extgraph.a part, I'd like to tell about the work on the
tilemap.h/tilemap.a part (changes might not be completely integrated in
Beta 3 due to lack of time). The next version will be a major update:
- Julien already programmed a new drawing mode, MASK, which enables
using more planes with four colors with minimal speed penalty. At
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/jackiechan68k/tmsshot.html,
you can see an animated screenshot of the new demo using three
overlapping planes, two of which use the four colors.
Of course, this is more a brute-force demo than something which can
really be used on our calculators (since 1 tile plane + 1 sprite
plane are always enough, and redrawing everything every frame can
be detrimental to speed), but it clearly shows that ExtGraph and
the tilemap engine suit well for large games.
- We've brainstormed together on functions for Simcity-like games.
We came up to a solution, we're currently discussing it on the TIGCC/TICT
board, Custom Beta Tests section.
posted by
Lionel on 08/05/2004
19:36 (CEST)
TI-Gen is a new French-speaking site
and board, with a large file archive containing the best programs.
It is completely independent from yAronet, its staff and mind are different
from those of yAronet. On TI-Gen, the staff is huge, and moderation is not
quite the same as that of yAronet. It is much more like that of the
TIGCC/TICT official board, which seems to be seen as not so bad by many
international users.
The TI-Gen staff banned persons for flooding, flaming and/or circumventing
administratory measures, etc. I mean, the usual persons.
Saying a number of persons among those who attend and hold yAronet are
overjoyed by the birth of TI-Gen, would be plain lying. However, they could
have ignored TI-Gen; they could have done without putting a spoke in the
wheels...
One can currently post things without an account on the TI-Gen board.
However, several 'anonymous' trolls were posted. As a consequence, this
feature may be removed soon. These trolls are not so anonymous anyway,
since the kind of posts, the subject of the threads in which trolls were
posted (ExtGraph at least twice), are a signature...
In February, TI-Gen used to be slow and have security holes (exploited by
some ******* hacker, causing a one-week downtime to fix the holes), this is
fixed now. Several bugs with some navigators are being fixed.
TI-Gen has an IRC channel. The discussions are in French over there, but if
persons like Kevin (Kofler) are online, you can speak English as well.
TI-Gen gets an increasing number of hits everyday (~200 for now). It often
has more than 8 persons connected at the same time.
A new version is under development. International users will be able to use
it more easily: the current version is derived from a general purpose
site/board, which is simply not designed for different interface
languages.
posted by
Lionel on 14/04/2004
19:21 (CEST)
I'm going to upload ExtGraph 2.00 Beta 2 within twenty minutes.
It contains a new, more powerful version of the tilemap engine; aligned
sprite (tile) functions; transition effects; updated documentation (update
not finished, but it's much better than in Beta 1 - much bigger, too)...
The upcoming TI-89 Titanium ("Titanic") should be supported (although I
didn't test because I have one), I can't see anything that would not
work.
I tested ExtGraph on PedroM. All routines work (since all ROM_CALLs used in
the routines were reimplemented), and most demos work (PedroM doesn't have
CharNumber, so it won't run demo12 and demo17).
Download it here.
posted by
Lionel on 28/03/2004
19:55 (CET)
fastitoa.h is a planned update to TIGCCLIB. It consists of much faster
("worst" speed improvement is ~3x, best above 13x) but less flexible and of
course bigger replacements to sprintf.
The TIGCC Team and I agreed that I should release it on its own, before the
integration to TIGCCLIB which will take time.
The zip (available here)
contains:
- complete sourcecode.
- C header file.
- Directly usable function archive (just include it in your TIGCC
project) and the TIGCC Project used to build it.
- complete documentation of those functions (TIGCC .hsf/.hsh [Help
System File/Header] and HTML format) and ROM_CALLs CharNumber and
FirstNonBlank (.hsf format - cannot be merged directly with the TIGCC
documentation in the sources distribution).
Please report bugs / give comments on the appropriate topic at TIGCC
Programming.
The next beta of ExtGraph 2.00 will contain the updated tilemap engine,
bugfixes, new functions.
posted by
Lionel on 21/03/2004
10:27 (CET)
posted by
Lionel on 10/02/2004
19:53 (CET)
The tilemap engine by Julien is now in ExtGraph.
ExtGraph 2.00 Beta 1 is available [removed that outdated version on
25/12/2004 due to space constraints].
posted by
Lionel on 19/12/2003
19:43 (CET)
I uploaded ExtGraph 2.00 "Beta 0". I gave it this wierd name because the
functions work (no known bugs, although there may be), but the
documentation was not really updated, it's a huge work.
Several new functions are not documented, but their names are meaningful
and you should be able to see what they do given their prototype, the
comments in extgraph.h or the sources, the examples they are used in if
that applies.
I hope to be able to update the documentation for Beta 2 or 3, depending on
when Beta 1 is released. It would be great if I could update the
documentation for Beta 1, but I fear that it would delay the release of
Beta 1 too much.
I'd like to thank once more Julien Richard-Foy (jackiechan) for his
enormous work. Without him, ExtGraph 2.xx wouldn't probably have been
possible.
The biggest lack of ExtGraph 2.00 Beta 0 is the tilemap engine; it should
be available (with documentation and examples) in Beta 1. See the screenshot.
You'll notice that the size of extgraph.h and extgraph.a have increased a
lot. This reflects new functions were added, and the flexibility was
increased: both __stkparm__ and __regparm__ modes are available for most
functions already available in ExtGraph 1.02.
However, most new functions are only available in__regparm__ mode, writing
slower and bigger __stkparm__ versions is pointless and is therefore not
planned.
ExtGraph 2.00 Beta 0 is available [removed that outdated version on
25/12/2004 due to space constraints].
By the way, there have been more than 200000 visits on this site. Nice
!
posted by
Lionel on 18/12/2003
19:32 (CET)
No, TICT is not dead, even if it's been nearly one year since the last news
was posted here...
We've been working on our many projects with the little spare time we have
(I have more time than Tom has):
- I've been working much for TIGCC/TIGCCLIB as well, and I still have
many things to do for TIGCC...
I remind several persons that I'm not a member of the TIGCC Team,
therefore TICT and the TIGCC Team, although they often work together,
are not the same team.
- I've started optimizing TICT-Explorer, currently only tictexpl,
not the launcher tictex. The program is currently nearly 5 KB smaller
than it used to be, while not all possible optimizations have been
made.
The major part of the size gain is due to the new TIGCC 0.95 linker,
the use of F-Line ROM_CALLs and the size optimizations in -Os mode in
the most recent TIGCC versions (muls/mulu instead of shifts and
additions). As you can see, mainly size optimizations, to the detriment
of speed. We don't really need speed for a file explorer, do we ?
- As for ExtGraph, it is
still quite far from the 2.00 release: there are still missing /
untested functions; the header files and the documentation are not
up-to-date; most of all, there are currently no
__attribute__((__regparm__)) grayscale functions (that's my
fault).
The two main contributors are Julien Richard-Foy (jackiechan) and
Christophe Molon-Noblot (Ximoon). They did a great work rewriting the
existing routines / writing new ones, especially clipped sprite
routines and __attribute__((__regparm__)) routines, in pure
assembly of course.
I would like to thank them once more.
- As for the TIGCC Tools
Suite: I widely optimized tthdex
(which is not currently usable) and I have an enormous todo list for it
(weeks of work full-time)... There are two or three
severe bugs (Protected Memory Violation) in tthdex 2.8 and
older. ttstart was updated for TIGCC 0.95,
Kevin (Kofler) and Sebastian (Reichelt) did the major part of the
work. The up-to-date version of ttstart is in TIGCC
0.95. The unpacking routines were updated as
well, thanks to mainly Samuel (Stearley) and Greg (Dietsche) (they are
noticeably faster than before). I'll have to mix all different versions
(Greg's and mine are different...) to release them separately and in
ExtGraph.
- As for S1P6, it was widely optimized and changed (it
also needs TIGCC 0.95): compressed picture, doublebuffering (both can
be enabled/disabled through #defines), global register variable, inline
assembly, _nostub comments... I didn't update it to ticalc, but I'll do
it soon (or Tom will do it).
- As for other TICT projects: they will take advantage
of a recompilation under TIGCC 0.95 and several optimizations I once
made, but never released (this is the case of TI-Miner, TI-TiltMaze and
TI-TimeWaste). It would be great if TI-Chess could be less than 30 KB
compressed...
posted by
Lionel on 30/10/2003
20:32 (CET)
edited by
Lionel on 31/10/2003
17:50 (CET): corrected two minor things to be more exact, corrected the
previous timestamp.