Space Can

By jlnr (dev) Date 2014-01-12 12:42

Hmm, I have only played with x86 assembly in the Delphi times :) Wouldn't this game have a wider reach if you had to program the ship in a typical beginner's programming language (Scheme, Ruby, Lua etc)?

By deps Date 2014-01-12 12:54

The coding is optional to the game. Just a cool thing people who are interested in can tinker with. A bit like Red Stuff in minecraft.
I want to include ready programs for players to load the computers with, so people should be able to play the game no matter what.

A compiler or interpreter is not something I plan to write, but it would be cool if one existed. My skills in compiler writing are not very advanced. :P

By jahmaican Date 2014-01-12 13:22

So basically, 0x10c in 2D? Neat!

By deps Date 2014-01-12 13:54

My project is inspired by the game that hyped me to no ends and then was tossed on the heap of unfinished projects, yes. :)

By deps Date 2014-01-16 21:18

Deployable computers that runs an emulated 6502 cpu. :)

http://youtu.be/z5LV9exG7aA

By jlnr (dev) Date 2014-01-16 23:14

*?* Does the screen animation have anything to do with the script, or is it only doing invisible stuff (steering the ship)?

By deps Date 2014-01-16 23:38

The two numbers and the pixels beneath them is actually showing the current status of the CPU. The numbers are fetched from two memory locations and serves as a very primitive output. In the video they are used to show that the computer is counting.
The pixels beneath them shows, in binary, where the program counter currently is.

The computer can only run the standard 6502 opcodes and use them to manipulate it's own RAM at the moment. But it will be used to steer the ship and other stuff that the player will be able to place.

I was thinking of having the player draw cables to connect the devices, but recently, partly out of laziness, I am thinking that everything should be controlled using some primitive form of wifi. Which also could lead to interesting "hacking" attempts inside old and abandoned ships where the player would use some device to scan for signals and try to manipulate them to open up doors, etc.

And there will be plenty of ready made programs to steer the ship with, for players that doesn't want to fiddle around with assembler. :)

By darkhog Date 2014-01-17 09:15

How about implementing dcpu16?

By deps Date 2014-01-17 19:35

It's a maybe. I'm leaning towards the PDP-11 or z80 next. I want there to be several different computers to find, install and tinker with. But I will concentrate on the 6502 first.

By erisdiscord Date 2014-01-18 02:57

Do Z80 next! I ported libz80 to JavaScript a while back for a project that ultimately got a bit overwhelming and I lost interest, but I learned a lot about the venerable-if-wacky Z80 (and the hardware of various 8-bit computers and game consoles) in the process.

I followed the DCPU-16 scene for a while, but ultimately that architecture is a bit too regular to be particularly interesting. C:

By deps Date 2014-01-18 18:18

PDP-11 does, like the 6502, use memory mapped io while the z80, iirc, does not. So it's likely to be the next cpu. dcpu16 is a 16 bit cpu and might come afterwards.

However, there's a lot of "game" stuff to be added before a new CPU is implemented. :)