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TIC-80, a fantasy computer to learn programming
- fit2rule 9y agoThere's also antirez' LOAD81: http://github.com/antirez/load81 http://github.com/antirez/load81 And .. as its open source (unlike TIC-80 or PICO-8), its quite possible to add features and extend the console in interesting ways ..
- ungzd 9y agoTIC-80 is open source (however there is also "pro version" which isn't). "Regular", open source version supports editing only in built-in editor, no external text files. Update: seems that "pro" version is built from the same MIT licensed source, only prebuilt binaries on releases page is "non-pro". So it's completely open source.
- Zibri 9y agohmm it seems your brought masturbation to a whole new level :D
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoThe programming system looks really interesting, but that font is super annoying.
- tedyoung 9y agoThe font is awesome for the first minute or two, but yeah, hard to work with after that.
- userbinator 9y agoIndeed, for an 8x8 pixel font one can't really go wrong with something more similar to what was used in the early microcomputers: https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/ https://int10h.org/oldschool-pc-fonts/fontlist/ Edit: it actually looks like a 5x7, in which case the best font would probably be something like the 5x7 a lot of character LCDs use: https://www.pjrc.com/mp3/lcdfont2a.jpg https://www.pjrc.com/mp3/lcdfont2a.jpg
- seanmcdirmid 9y agoI don’t remember them being that annoying in the 80s, or maybe we just read less text back then.
- TylerE 9y agoBlurry CRTs hide a lot of font sins
- jacquesm 9y agoHaving a bitmapped screen was already a huge improvement over character based graphics so I guess that everybody that could get it did so and took the lower resolution letters in stride. I'm trying to remember how much we squeezed out of a Dragon32 'high resolution' mode, 256x192 pixels, I think it was 64 characters by 27 lines or so at 4x7 (that's really not the nicest font). Hard to read but the increased linecount made it worth it and eventually you got used to it. Before that it felt like looking at your code through a keyhole. My first 'decent' screen was an Atari ST at 640x400. That was such a huge step up. And after that ever improving Tseng cards in a 286 based PC, that's when 132 colums became workable. Funniest thing though, for a long time I thought there never would be enough characters on a screen and now my eyes have gone so far backwards that I have to use a 32" screen with huge fonts to get anything done at all. I'll probably end at a 4x7 font again but with pixels the size of lego bricks.
- a_bonobo 9y agoYou apparently can change the font in config.lua: https://itch.io/t/58932/configure-system-font-and-palette-in-tic-0160 https://itch.io/t/58932/configure-system-font-and-palette-in...
- hungariantoast 9y agoMaybe this is a good time to plug PICO-8 which describes itself as a "fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs." https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php I don't even know the difference between the two programs, but someone interested in TIC might also be interested in PICO.
- Lerc 9y agoThe PICO-8 is where the current trend for fantasy consoles began. There's a growing number of them (I'm making one myself). They all have slightly different areas of focus. Some are scripting language based, some emulate CPUs. TIC-80 programs are "64KB of Lua or Moonscript or JavaScript". My own is 8-bit AVR (128k rom, 64k ram). Z80 seems a popular base as well.
- wooly_bully 9y agoCeleste, which was released to rave reviews this past year for the Switch, started life as a PICO-8 game. I played it on the PICO-8 at first and was blown away! Enjoy: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2145 https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2145
- shakna 9y agoDo you know how it was ported to the Switch? TIC-80 uses SDL, which doesn't have a working port (for the Switch) so far as I know.
- theresistor 9y agoThere's an SDL port, but it can't be publicly distributed due to NDAs.
- djur 9y agoThe commercial release of Celeste is a new game, written from scratch, implemented in C# (XNA/FNA/MonoGame). It includes a port of the original. I'm kind of curious if they actually wrote a PICO-8 emulator for that or just ported it to C#.
- mimerme 9y agoI've played around with the TIC-80 and I gotta say that the development environment is something that is enjoyable for small projects but larger projects are a headache.
- vertexFarm 9y agoIf you're doing a larger project on it then I think you need to re-calibrate your expectations. It's more for educational play.
- tluyben2 9y agoI like the 'batteries included' aspect of it; I wish more 'for practical use' development systems had that. The fact that you can package the result for different platforms, makes it interesting for trying out game mechanics on the go and distributing them inside small games. The style it was made in works on low res, small screens, so programming on small devices (small (cheap) Android tablets, GPD Pocket(high res but small screen), Pandora, Pyra etc) is ok.
- roywiggins 9y agoThe last "practical" environment that was really batteries included, as far as I can tell, was Macromedia Flash. It lives on as Haxe, the FlashDevelop IDE feels like a blast from the past (it feels so lightweight!) and it supports quite a few platforms (web, mobile, etc). But it's awfully niche now.
- ungzd 9y agoIt was not designed for games at all. Making games in in was too hacky.
- pull_my_finger 9y agoPer the Itch.io page, you can use the $5 premium version which has features like saving as text and allowing you to edit in an external editor, which might help. Pico-8 has this by default, and can definitely confirm it would be awful to try and code a whole game in the built-in editor.
- archgoon 9y agoFor those who get into the "Hello World!" screen, or other screens, and can't figure out how you're supposed to escape (short of hitting refresh), hit the 'ESCAPE' key. :)
- vertexFarm 9y agoThis really reminds me of a lot of Niklas Jansson's concepts over at https://androidarts.com/ https://androidarts.com/ I love the way he thinks and distills a design to give it so much character. He does lots of retro hardware re-designs too, which are singularly cool. I bet he'd have a blast playing with TIC-80.
- shakna 9y agoAnd if you're feeling brave, TIC-80 has a port that uses Brainfuck instead of Lua. [0] [0] https://github.com/lolbot-iichan/TIC-80/wiki https://github.com/lolbot-iichan/TIC-80/wiki
- digi_owl 9y agoMore like masochistic...
- Yuioup 9y agoDoes it run on a Pocket C.H.I.P?
- Tepix 9y agoIf you are interested in real retro-ish DIY hardware, check out Hackeboy https://program.sha2017.org/events/153.html https://program.sha2017.org/events/153.html http://hackefuffel.com/hackeboy0001.html http://hackefuffel.com/hackeboy0001.html
- makapuf 9y agoPlease allow me to plug in my own project also, the bitbox console. It's a non portable, very simple to build (one chip, solderable by hand) arm32 console. It had a dozen games or so, all open-source. http://bitboxconsole.blogspot.com http://bitboxconsole.blogspot.com Edit: typo and link.
- kelvin0 9y agoAnyone else having issues with playing in FireFox? Seems like a really cool project, looks like I might have to install it instead of using it in browser ... a bit disappointed :(
- Narishma 9y agoWorks fine for me on Firefox 59 on Windows.
- kelvin0 9y agoWeird. I have 59.0.3 on Win also.
- ateesdalejr 9y agoWhat version FF are you using? It could be that you are on a beta build and something is slowing it down, or you are running an older version.
- kelvin0 9y ago59.0.3 On Win10 (x64)
- ateesdalejr 9y agoOK, I'm running the same version on x64 Win10 as well. No problems here. It could be you have some sort of ad-blocking extension installed that's degrading performance on that page.
- triptych 9y agoHere's a list of fantasy consoles. https://github.com/paladin-t/fantasy/blob/master/README.md https://github.com/paladin-t/fantasy/blob/master/README.md
- nukeop 9y agoAnother interesting fantasy console is LIKO-12, with a huge advantage of being free software: https://github.com/RamiLego4Game/LIKO-12 https://github.com/RamiLego4Game/LIKO-12
- fenwick67 9y agoTIC-80 has the exact same license (MIT): https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/blob/master/LICENSE https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/blob/master/LICENSE
- nukeop 9y agoOnly the free version, there is another (Pro) version which has additional features and a closed source.
- fenwick67 9y agoThis isn't correct either "For users who can't spend the money, we made it easy to build the pro version from the source code." https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80#pro-version https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80#pro-version https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/blob/master/Makefile https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/blob/master/Makefile
- timvisee 9y agoThis makes me think of TIS-100, an amazing and challenging game to learn assembly basics. http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/ http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/
- sattoshi 9y agoLiterally anything by zachronics deserves a recommendation.