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[Godspeed]

Has anyone here made on? I was thinking of making a shmup, but I have no idea where to start. Is there a certain language needed or does it not matter?

[ravuya]

I made a couple of Basic games many years ago for my TI-83+, and a few 68K demos (lissajous curve) for my TI-89 Titanium.

I should probably get back to work on something; my TI-89 has sat pretty much ignored since I bought it save for a single final exam and an hour or two of 68K hackery.

[SplinterOfChaos]

I've never made a game with one because I program every byte of it to do algebraic equations to cut down on tedium and memorization. Can't say I've ever had the patience to make with a calculator what I'd rather make with a computer.

[Ryan]

It depends what calculator you are talking about. The two most common I've seen/used are the TI-83+/84 (Just updates) as well as the TI-89.

On the TI-83/84, you are pretty much limited to TI-Basic or Assembly. TI-Basic is really easy to get going, but it will not be fast enough for a shoot-em-up. Assembly is your second route, there are a lot of good tutorials on the internet but it's hard nonetheless.

On the TI-89, it's pretty easy to get started, as long as you know C. There is an IDE you can install called TIGCC: http://tigcc.ticalc.org/, which will output the binaries that you can run on your calculator. Rather than uploading the files to your calc constantly, TIGCC also has a feature that will automatically run the game in a calc emu, as long as you have it installed.

Hope that helps.

[FARTRON]

A) Not all shmups are fast.  I remember a pretty good ski game for the old TI that was fun, so action is definately possible.

B) DRUG WARS = INDIE GAME OF THE MILLENIUM

[shinygerbil]

I made workable versions of Pong and Snake for an old Casio graphic calculator (CASIO fx-9750G), more for the hell of it than anything else, because they weren't exactly playable. I got ~2fps, and I had collision detection nightmares with my paddles ;P I think I might still have the programs backed up somewhere, but the calculator's dead

[Ryan]

A) Not all shmups are fast.  I remember a pretty good ski game for the old TI that was fun, so action is definately possible.

Did it use graphics? If so, it was most likely written in asm, as i stated before its possible but the language is arcane and hard to learn.

Making an action game just using the home screen (just text) is one thing, but trying to use graphics for any action game (even something like asteroids or space invaders) at playable speed and using basic is downright impossible. So i don't see how being fast or slow gameplay has anything to do with it? Unless it was a turn based shoot-em-up  .