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MicroW8: A WebAssembly based fantasy console
- ilaksh 5y agoI would really like to explore something like a whole section of the internet that runs on something like an 80 column fantasy console and restricts all web pages to like 50 or 100kb or something.
- boricj 5y agoHow does it compare to other fantasy consoles? This reminds me of the Chip16 virtual machine.
- lifthrasiir 5y agoMost other fantasy consoles are based on their own virtual machines or stripped-down scripting languages (like Lua in PICO-8), but this is based on WebAssembly so there is a variety of languages you can pick. You can of course write an WebAssembly module from scratch or a built-in assembly language called CurlyWas [1]. [1] https://github.com/exoticorn/curlywas/ https://github.com/exoticorn/curlywas/
- qbasic_forever 5y agoIt doesn't look like this has any editing UI (i.e. code, sound, graphics, etc. editors) like PICO-8 or TIC-80. So it's more of a bare runtime for a console and you're on your own to make all the assets.
- jonny_eh 5y agoAnother fantasy console: https://wasm4.org/ https://wasm4.org/
- lifthrasiir 5y agoOh, I forgot that WASM-4 is a thing. It indeed makes a good comparison: - MicroW8 was originally conceived from the size-coding community (I think it was mainly inspired from TIC-80), and partly because of that its compressed cart is much smaller than WASM-4 carts and can be shared with just a single URL. The built-in assembly language (CurlyWas) also certainly helps. - MicroW8 has a relatively rich support for palettes and fonts. That might be a matter of taste though (some want a very constrained environment, others want a slightly more powerful but still retro-looking environment). - As a result WASM-4 doesn't have any sort of text handling while MicroW8 has one, arguably similar to PICO-8 as well due to its control characters. - MicroW8 doesn't yet have audio support, though it is in the high priority to my understanding.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- skybrian 5y agoFor anyone wondering: > On a keyboard use the arrow keys and the keys Z, X, A and S to emulate the A, B, X and Y buttons.
- Narishma 5y agoAre there any fantasy consoles with CPU limits?
- yellowapple 5y agoI'm wondering the same thing. Both MicroW8 and WASM-4 seem to be unlimited, whereas it'd be nice if there was some standard for CPU speed in case I wanted to, say, port it to a retro console.
- kaoD 5y agoIIRC Pico-8 does.
- xkapastel 5y agono, pico-8 does not have any cpu limits, but it has a code size ("cartridge" size limit) of 32k of lua. edit: incorrect, see reply
- lifthrasiir 5y agoPICO-8 does have artificial CPU limits: https://pico-8.fandom.com/wiki/CPU https://pico-8.fandom.com/wiki/CPU
- xkapastel 5y agothanks for the info! never knew about this, i wonder why it's not on the pico-8 landing page.
- aquova 5y agoPico-8 has an artificial CPU limit; once you surpass 100% utilization the system cuts the framerate in half until CPU usage dips back down under the imposed cap.
- Lerc 5y agoThere are a lot that emulate 8-bit CPUs, although which have fixed clock speeds, I'm not sure. I have my own 8Mhz 8-bit AVR that I work on from time to time. It's more designed for the Assembly coder experience. https://k8.fingswotidun.com/static/ide/?gist=78d170a65bc6c9ddaecefa4424915ac3 https://k8.fingswotidun.com/static/ide/?gist=78d170a65bc6c9d... I have wondered about doing a version the the same virtual IO 'hardware' and a WASM core.