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The GameBoy emulator's code also looks like the GameBoy. Slow clap this is insane, definitely my favorite entry. https://github.com/ioccc-src/winner/blob/maste

• sourcecodeplz 5mo ago
  Damn, that is cool! Looking at me typing css & php...
• nickcw 5mo ago
  Glad you enjoyed it :-) If you want to see how the sausage was made, here is the source: https://github.com/ncw/ioccc-gameboy https://github.com/ncw/ioccc-gameboy You'll find an unobfuscated version (kind-of) there too. This the the one I actually worked on then I had a program squash all the variable names and squeeze it into the gameboy shape The size limit for the entry was the killer. You are allowed 2503 non white space characters (a simplification - the rules are complicated) in IOCCC entries and 4K total code size. This isn't a lot to fit a Z80 processor and a GameBoy hardware emulator in! I first wrote a full Gameboy emulator in C. It started out at about 6000 non white space characters. I then spent about about 100 hours work trying to get it to fit into the 2503 limit. For a long time I wasn't sure it was going to fit. I decided making the emulator play Tetris (which is a fairly simple game) was the target so I stripped out features like the half carry flag in the Z80 emulator and the windowing system in the Gameboy emulation which Tetris didn't need. I also abused the C code terribly doing things with implicit int I can never un-see. I also got creative with the IOCCC rules which are implemented in a C program which checks your source and I spent some time reverse engineering that looking for loopholes! I discovered that the operators defined in <iso646.h> only count for one token which was very useful. Once I had it small enough I had to supply some games to run with it. I created 4, a test program written in z80 assembler, a pi calculator (written in assembler), a 3d tic tac toe game (written in C with gbdk-2020) and a chess program also written in C. I discovered that quite a few open source games ran on the emulator too so I added a downloader for those where I could. Apparently not many games use BCD arithmetic - who would have thought! It was a fun project.
  • kees99 5mo ago
    Uh... is this supposed to be valid standalone C? GCC says there are a bunch of undefined symbols, first one being "R" right in the beginning: typedef unsigned char u; u w,X,T,D[1<<16],t[]=R,U=255;
    • dezgeg 5mo ago
      That's defined in Makefile
      • nickcw 5mo ago
        That is correct. It is cheating, but the judges let a small amount of it slide, especially if you come up with an amusing enough justification. I could not get it to fit otherwise!
        • ncr100 5mo ago
          "The best kind of correct." -No. 1.0, How Hermes Got his Groove Back, Futurama
        • toast0 5mo ago
          I'm not a judge or a competitor, but I feel like a little bit of cheating on the rules is within the spirit of the game. Especially if it a) it makes it more obfuscated and b) it wouldn't have fit otherwise.
    • taneq 5mo ago
      Considering that one historical entry (winner maybe?) consisted of a source file that simply contained the character ‘c’, plus a makefile, I’d say it’s in the ball park.
  • binji 5mo ago
    Very cool! Clearly I had a long way to go with mine to get it under the IOCCC requirements :) Though my goal was specifically Pokémon... curious how much more you would need to be able to run that.
• deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
• trumpdong 5mo ago
  It's an overdone trope in obfuscated programming contests - to make the code look like a picture.
  • qingcharles 5mo ago
    It's a trope, I would not say it's overdone! :)
  • Waterluvian 5mo ago
    There’s a company that’s become very successful selling basic sponges shaped like smiley faces.
• 1vuio0pswjnm7 5mo ago
  https://github.com/ncw/ccforth https://github.com/ncw/ccforth https://github.com/ncw/ccforth/tree/master/examples/gameboy https://github.com/ncw/ccforth/tree/master/examples/gameboy