Project Ideas - Share them!

The idea is that we share ideas for projects with other people, something we might want but for some reason won't do ourselves, or maybe, request help with a project that we have that we do work on.

Wouldn't it be fun for all if it works out?
I have a few ideas, but I tend to aim a bit too high..
I know I would appreciate something (that isn't grandiose) to do for the TI83+/TI84+ z80 asm, and I suspect there are others out there like me that would like that as well.
Resources list

Book - Game Programming Patterns (there are versions you can buy too)
Inspiration - La-Mulana
Inspiration - (Secret of) Mana series
Inspiration - Dragon Warrior/Quest series
Inspiration - The Golden Sun series
Inspiration - Pokémon series
Inspiration - Lufia series
Inspiration - The Legend of Zelda series

Idea list

z80:
* Famicom Wars-like game - Being worked on by chickendude and add.
* Pokemon-like game - Being worked on by chickendude and deeph- (Deep Thought?)
* A Roguelike game
* A more adaptable/robust tile/map editor
* Demo-effects
* OS (specialized for games or demos)
* LOTS of RPGs!
* Some tower defense style game
* A TBS-style game similar to Battlecraft

Non z80:
* Atom package with SPASM syntax-highlighting and build tools - Let's use SublimeText3 with NanoWar's repo, it works well, even if it (ST3) isn't FOSS.
* Own assembler
* Easier language compiler for the TI83+/TI84+ (CE)
* Tool-chain for making games easier for no platform in particular

I wish I could come up with something more... specific but that's all I have for now that is remotely useful and or fun for our community.
Anyway, just add your ideas/projects that you wish to see more of or share or anything!
And more than anything: Have fun!
EDIT: Remade the list to include most of what you all have mentioned so far (and what I've had time to read)

[NanoWar]

Oh yeah benryves did these cool demos on maxcoderz back then, I also remember his coding journal website.

I always wanted to write an assembler or an easier language compiler for the TI83+, but ended up building FunkLibrary instead

[chickendude]

Personally i'm more interested in games. Demo effects are neat, but i don't ever do anything with them other than look at the gifs at ticalc. I think building a nice complete RPG(like Dragon Quest, but preferably something original) would be great. It teaches you a lot and gives you a ton of room for creativity. I also really want to write an interesting storyline apart from "save the princess" or "restore the king's honor". Who really cares about the king and the princess? I'd rather dethrone the king, kidnap the princess, rob the rich, and throw the kingdom into anarchy

Another thing i've always wanted is a more adaptable/robust tile/map editor. CalcGS just can't handle my projects anymore. NanoWar mentioned Tiled but i've never used it. I just installed it and will play with it this weekend, though. Even a simple open source map editor that you could easily edit to adjust to your needs would be fine. Lately i've been inspired by MateoConLechuga over at Cemetech and have been considering just writing my own editor for the calc in assembly, since it'd be much easier for me to do than write it in C or some other higher-level language.

Personally i'm more interested in games.

I think we all are very interested in (making, and sometimes playing) games here. I just wanted to leave space for you guys to contribute to the list(s)

Another thing i've always wanted is a more adaptable/robust tile/map editor. CalcGS just can't handle my projects anymore. NanoWar mentioned Tiled but i've never used it. I just installed it and will play with it this weekend, though. Even a simple open source map editor that you could easily edit to adjust to your needs would be fine. Lately i've been inspired by MateoConLechuga over at Cemetech and have been considering just writing my own editor for the calc in assembly, since it'd be much easier for me to do than write it in C or some other higher-level language.

Writing your own editor in assembly? For which platform? You told us that it's target platform is the calc, but are you going to use it on (source platform) gnu/linux, windows or osx?
Wouldn't it be simpler to make crossplatform if you made it in, say C?

I always wanted to write an assembler or an easier language compiler for the TI83+, but ended up building FunkLibrary instead

Yeah, I would also like to do something like that. (I'm not skilled enough yet though, IMO.)

[chickendude]

I meant writing an oncalc map editor in z80 assembly, not for the computer, heh. I can (barely) get by in C but honestly i really don't like programming for the computer as much as i do for the calc and other small devices (eg. GBA). For example, my current tilemap editor has to make use of SDL and other libraries to do what i want to do, whereas for the calc i could easily write everything that i need myself. And even better i wouldn't even need unaligned sprites Whenever i look at C it's like looking at a huge wall of French text, i can get through it it just takes a lot of concentration. Looking at assembly is like reading in English. I dunno why but i always get bored of C when i try to study it. Learning z80, ARM, m68k, and other assembly languages seems much more intuitive and interesting to me (even if ARM and other assembly languages almost seemed designed with C in mind).

Anyway, my two main ideas are:
1. LOTS of RPGs!
2. Some tower defense style game
3. (ok, three ideas, i just remembered this) A TBS-style game similar to a game i played probably 15 years ago when i first started getting into programming, written in QBasic, called Battlecraft. (It took me forever to find a link to that game again!)

Ah, I had that as an alternative in my message, but removed it since I thought I was being a bit (too) silly (little did I know). xD
This is great, lists are already being made!
Makes tears run down my cheek. (joy)

EDIT:
I was thinking about games that could be fun to make so I started looking up different genres and stuff and finally found a classic I loved as a child: Bomberman.
So maybe a Bomberman-like game would be cool. (Gonna add that to the list later when we have more than just one thing to add.)
I remember the one (bomberman-like) I played a lot in school on the breaks when I was a child, it was called "Playing with Fire" and some version number, don't know which version it was though.

Also, Fireemblem makes good inspiration.

[NanoWar]

Oh, the atom package is interesting. I'm working on SublimeText3 integration bundled with FunkLibrary atm...

Yeah, that was the reason why I wanted to make a package for atom anyway, because you are working on that for SublimeText (which I didn't think supported gnu/linux)..
Hmm, I might just switch to that then, even if it isn't FOSS..

[NanoWar]

It's very good, available for Ubuntu, but has an annoying "please license" dialog every X saves or so. There is also http://limetext.org/

I wonder what would be a good beginner/not-familiar-with z80 programming project?
Usually that is my downfall when it comes to programming in a "new" language (z80 asm isn't that new for me, but I've never really made anything to show for), I come up with these humongous projects that would take hundreds to thousands of man-hours to complete, actually, scratch the "new" part, I do this with all my projects .
So I'd like something friendly to tackle on the z80 that is still fun and maybe useful (for us)..
Say, a tool or anything..
Maybe all of these projects already are quite sane and I'm the insane one..

Also, I was wondering what textfiles I should download with useful information for z80 processor, ti-specification and so forth.. I mean there are a lot of them in http://www.ticalc.org/pub/text/z80/ but I don't know which ones are the most relevant. Thanks

[chickendude]

I think 28 Days is still a really good resource, i'm not sure if you need a refresher on z80 assembly or not but it covers a lot of stuff that's good to know. To be honest i hardly ever use bcalls, but you might be interested in the 83 Plus System Routines Guide as well as all the info at WikiTI.

Honestly, i think that BattleCraft game or a game similar to it would make a great first game. You can work with tilemaps, character types, etc. but you don't have to worry about speed, smooth scrolling (everything is aligned by tile), and.. i dunno. It just seems like a good first game. I just loaded it up in dosbox and oh the memories! I felt like it was 1999 again

As for reading up on z80 specifications, there's always the z80 User's Manual, though admittedly i've never looked through it. I never really read up about the z80, i just picked bits and pieces as i went. I'd say if there's something you want to know, just ask and someone will be around to answer it.

[NanoWar]

What info do you need exactly? A good starter program is definitely a game. I made a puzzle game: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fi ... 37816.html

I think 28 Days is still a really good resource, i'm not sure if you need a refresher on z80 assembly or not but it covers a lot of stuff that's good to know. To be honest i hardly ever use bcalls, but you might be interested in the 83 Plus System Routines Guide as well as all the info at WikiTI.

Honestly, i think that BattleCraft game or a game similar to it would make a great first game. You can work with tilemaps, character types, etc. but you don't have to worry about speed, smooth scrolling (everything is aligned by tile), and.. i dunno. It just seems like a good first game. I just loaded it up in dosbox and oh the memories! I felt like it was 1999 again

As for reading up on z80 specifications, there's always the z80 User's Manual, though admittedly i've never looked through it. I never really read up about the z80, i just picked bits and pieces as i went. I'd say if there's something you want to know, just ask and someone will be around to answer it.

The sysrutines pdf seems good, will look through that. And I've already gone through the 28 days a couple of times
(not entirely, only to refresh some parts), I guess it might be a good idea to do that again.
I have the z80 User's Manual somewhere on my computer, I was looking through it yesterday
(or was it the day before that?) but it isn't very helpful with the large picture, but it was good to find out certain details, however most of that is covered in the 28 Days tutorial that you linked to anyway.

Gonna study the BattleCraft game you linked also, get some ideas.


EDIT:
I couldn't get BattleCraft to work with DOSBOX, or rather, it worked for a while, until the battle loaded, then the whole thing hung and reset into the main menu, and was in some kind of loop that was almost impossible to get out of, so I had to go into the TTY1 and "killall dosbox".
Oh well, weird.
Will try again a bit later, with some new configurations or something.

What info do you need exactly? A good starter program is definitely a game. I made a puzzle game: http://www.ticalc.org/archives/files/fi ... 37816.html

Anything relevant to making games on the TI83+ I guess.
I have a TI84+ but I think being compatible with the 83+ is important (IIRC it's mostly some speed difference).

Another inspiring game would be this series of games: Famicom Wars, there are a few gameboy ones, and one for the NES.
EDIT:
Whoops, that made this a triple post.. sorry..

Also, I think the Advance Wars is probably the better one in the series..

[NanoWar]

OMG, I can't hold off on this:

random.png (17.71 KiB) Viewed 61327 times

I can't believe what my hands just produced, the shops on the right are absolutely crazy!!

[chickendude]

I'll upload a video or something to youtube to give you an idea what it was like. If i recall correctly there have been a couple Advanced Wars projects, i can't recall if any of them ever got to a playable state though. Advanced wars is similar to BattleCraft, but a bit more complicated with the different types/terrain advantages, building units, etc.

NanoWar, you need to put some code behind that

EDIT: Here's a video of the gameplay, it's really simple but i spent hours playing it when i was younger. It'd also be a really simple first game.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suUXCY0OfE4

[NanoWar]

Yeah I played Advance Wars a lot and I think it would be great for TI83+. The mechanics are a bit challenging to implement (path finding, weighted dijkstra, fuel consumption, fog of war), but the game is soo good =) .

[chickendude]

I think you could start with something simple like BattleCraft and if you wanted to build that up to a more complex Advance Wars-style game.

Agreed, Advance Wars would be a bit too much.
chickendude, the music for the video is really disturbing but the game itself seems good

[chickendude]

Haha those were songs that i wrote But yeah, the game itself wouldn't be too complicated for the 83+ and it wouldn't be too difficult to turn it into a full-fledged Advanced Wars-type game if you wanted to go that route afterwards.

On a side note, i've never been able to write a decent pathfinding routine...

Ah, pathfinding.. My nemesis.
I remember trying to write a pathfinding library for a scheme gamelib, didn't succeed very well.. And like many of my projects, I completely removed every trace I could find of it.
I do have some bookmarks about pathfinding left though I think.
Could make a topic with pathfinding in this part of the forum.

For inspiration:
(Secret of) Mana series
Dragon Warrior/Quest series
The Golden Sun series
Pokémon series
Lufia series
The Legend of Zelda series

These were the ones I could think of as inspiration for new cool games.
My absolute favorites are the Golden Sun, TLoZ and the Mana series.
Ah, such good games they were composed of..

Actually, now that I think about it, not only the gameboy games can be inspirational sooooo...
La-Mulana. Now this is an awesome indie game! It sadly requires Windows to be played though.

I bought a Nintendo DS lite for a later project (Gameboy Advance - ARM asm), but I've been playing some games (read: Pokémon) for reference, and I still really prefer the older style of games, but I guess this is fun too.

I love embedded/limited systems, but I guess there's a limit (... bad pun) to how limited they can be for it to be fun for me.
The TI-83+ series, the Gameboy Color (I guess z80 processors generally) and the Gameboy Advance are perfect examples of this, they have good balance on the limits versus the rewards you get (effort/reward).