Part 2. Becoming a TI-BASIC master

Part 1 of this book teaches you skills that can easily be applied to any language, part 2 focuses on commands available specifically in TI-BASIC. Although event loops are useful for any programmer writing interactive programs, in TI-BASIC they’ll let you create fun, real-time games. You’ll learn about drawing and graphing from within programs and how to use real and complex numbers, randomization, lists, and matrices to build more advanced utilities and games.

In chapter 6, you’ll learn about the event loop, a way to simultaneously check if the user has pressed keys and to update graphics and program state. Together with the skills you developed in part 1, you’ll be able to build and test a full, interactive Mouse and Cheese game. Chapters 7 and 8 teach you about the many graphical tools available to TI-BASIC programs, including manipulating points and pixels; drawing lines, shapes, and text on the screen; and working with graphed equations. Examples include moving text and a mouse cursor around the screen, creating a painting program, and rendering polygons.

Chapter 9, the final chapter of part 2, provides a broad overview of strings, matrices, and lists as well as real, complex, and random numbers. These data types can be used in many different ways in your own program; the chapter presents a simple RPG (role-playing game) that you can expand with your own ideas and challenges you to write some of your own complete games.