It's HNed, I got 509 Bandwidth Limit Exceeded.
Looking forward to play it.
BOX-256: a tiny game about writing assembly code to pass the graphics tests
21–30 of 41 posts
Re: BOX-256: a tiny game about writing assembly code to pass the graphics tests
#22I looked at this a couple of times today before finally digging in and as I completed each level I looked forward more and more to the next level. And then there were no more levels, far sooner than I expected. I hope the author adds more in time.
Edit: Oh and earlier today after having looked at it many times I bought http://www.lexaloffle.com 's combination of Voxatron and Pico-8. I've spent sometime today learning about Pico-8 (to which I'm going to limit my attention for now) and I think anyone interested in the linked game might be interested in these as well.
Re: BOX-256: a tiny game about writing assembly code to pass the graphics tests
#23The `thr` statement is not very useful at the moment. It's impossible to pass parameters to a piece of code using threads :( I have to duplicate my code in order to use the threads
It's really ungainly to work with -- but it does drop the cycle counts to solve the problems by running more threads.
What's really funny is when the program's trivially paralellizable (any of them where the entire thing to draw fits in memory) and the main thing your threads are doing is to start more threads, then finally all the threads do 2 draw instructions each.
Re: BOX-256: a tiny game about writing assembly code to pass the graphics tests
#24Hi, I'm the author.
Looks like the game went a bit viral and my personal website bandwidth limits were exceeded.
You can now play here instead: http://bit.ly/1V1PiHt
Re: BOX-256: a tiny game about writing assembly code to pass the graphics tests
#25My current scores: Square: 0x07 cycles Checkerboard: 0x4C cycles 4 Squares: 0x09 cycles I will post my solutions in 24-48 hours.
Checkerboard: 0x24 cycles.
http://imgur.com/C1UeEdn
(EDIT: 0x16, see below)
My key insight was twofold:
1. If you start every thread at 0x00 and make the first N commands "THR @00", you get 2^(n+1)-1 threads running by the time your first thread exits the chain of THR commands.
2. You can use a single array MOV instruction to set a range of program counters, effectively causing every thread to jump to a set position.
So in the first 5 cycles I start 31 threads, then my main thread drops into a loop where all it does is set every thread's position (including its own) to a start point every 2 cycles. Every single thread is now a 2-cycle loop with no JMP cycle spent to return to the start each time. Then I simply make 16 loops of:
PIX counter color
ADD counter 1 counter
Note that, due to space constraints, I use the unused 4th byte of each PIX instruction as the counter for that loop.
Doing this got me to 0x24 cycles. I shaved a further 4 cycles by using the leftover space to add 4 more loops. These ones run vertically and operate on the last two columns (two threads doing one column together). By the time the row-moving threads have reached the 2nd last column, the column-moving threads have finished the last two columns, and so the program is finished 4 cycles earlier.
I think I could get another 2-cycle saving if I fine-tuned the number of threads started, compressed everything down again and got another two column-moving threads.
The bigger improvement is converting the whole thing to 1-cycle loops instead of 2-cycle, and having half the loops incrementing the counters and the other half doing PIX instructions. This might just be possible in the available space if I've run the numbers correctly, and would result in a total time of 0x14.
EDIT: Did the latter: http://imgur.com/zD1Gw5H
It came out to 0x16, as I failed to account for the extra time to spin up more threads.
Re: BOX-256: a tiny game about writing assembly code to pass the graphics tests
#26My current scores: Square: 0x07 cycles Checkerboard: 0x4C cycles 4 Squares: 0x09 cycles I will post my solutions in 24-48 hours.
Checkerboard: 0x24 cycles. http://imgur.com/C1UeEdn (EDIT: 0x16, see below) My key insight was twofold: 1. If you start every thread at 0x00 and make the first N commands "THR @00", you get 2^(n+1)-1 threads running by the time your first thread exits the chain of THR commands. 2. You can use a single array MOV instruction to set a range of program counters, effectively causing every thread to jump to a set position.…
I started optimizing by making separate increment/render threads with a buffer and copy, and then doubled it to 4 threads. It's currently at 0xDD cycles but I don't think I'm going to take it farther:
http://i.imgur.com/sD5IAXP.png
The thread sync is pretty inefficient. It will need to incorporate some "tricky" techniques like what you've described to go faster.
Re: BOX-256: a tiny game about writing assembly code to pass the graphics tests
#27Hi, I'm the author. Looks like the game went a bit viral and my personal website bandwidth limits were exceeded. You can now play here instead: http://bit.ly/1V1PiHt
Could you build OS X version too, please?
Re: BOX-256: a tiny game about writing assembly code to pass the graphics tests
#28Hi, I'm the author. Looks like the game went a bit viral and my personal website bandwidth limits were exceeded. You can now play here instead: http://bit.ly/1V1PiHt
Could you build OS X version too, please?
I will try to build an OSX version tomorrow(ish), when I get my hands on an OSX machine.
Re: BOX-256: a tiny game about writing assembly code to pass the graphics tests
#29My current scores: Square: 0x07 cycles Checkerboard: 0x4C cycles 4 Squares: 0x09 cycles I will post my solutions in 24-48 hours.
Checkerboard: 0x24 cycles. http://imgur.com/C1UeEdn (EDIT: 0x16, see below) My key insight was twofold: 1. If you start every thread at 0x00 and make the first N commands "THR @00", you get 2^(n+1)-1 threads running by the time your first thread exits the chain of THR commands. 2. You can use a single array MOV instruction to set a range of program counters, effectively causing every thread to jump to a set position.…
Awwww this is great stuff. I would love to hear your thoughts on how the language could be changed/improved to make puzzles and optimizing even more fun.
Re: BOX-256: a tiny game about writing assembly code to pass the graphics tests
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Checkerboard: 0x24 cycles. http://imgur.com/C1UeEdn (EDIT: 0x16, see below) My key insight was twofold: 1. If you start every thread at 0x00 and make the first N commands "THR @00", you get 2^(n+1)-1 threads running by the time your first thread exits the chain of THR commands. 2. You can use a single array MOV instruction to set a range of program counters, effectively causing every thread to jump to a set position.…
Awwww this is great stuff. I would love to hear your thoughts on how the language could be changed/improved to make puzzles and optimizing even more fun.
The biggest thing for me is being able to save/load solutions. I ended up keeping multiple browser tabs open as I tried to tweak solutions / attempt different puzzles.
As for the language itself, a MOD operation to go with the DIV operation is useful. bitwise AND / OR / NOT / XOR could be interesting.
Something that would make threads a lot more versatile would be some way to have them behave differently from one another even when executing the same code.
Perhaps a new instruction like JTI X Y: Jump if Thread Id (defined as 0xFF - location of program counter) is equal to Y
Or much more versatile but harder to account for in opcodes: a new prefix #XX which behaves like @(XX + thread id). So you could, for example, write 0x42 to a per-thread slot in an array starting at 0xA0 by doing "MOV 042 #A0"
For making the puzzles interesting: The problem is most shapes and images can simply be described in memory and subsequently brute-force PIXed in sequence. After the simplest puzzles, the trick is having images that do not fit easily in memory and require procedural description. Checkerboard is a good example here. What about something like fizzbuzz but described in colors (like this: http://imgur.com/RMEaKAg)? Or tricky questions where a seemingly random image actually has a simple pattern (like this: http://imgur.com/TbTPZnh (spoilers here: http://imgur.com/73De5QF ))? Unfortunately you're very limited as there's no actual input; the program's exact output is always entirely known.
Several people here have mentioned TIS-100: It's not the exact same thing as what you're doing, but it could be an interesting thing to compare with if you haven't played it yet.
EDIT: Just for fun, my best time for that second puzzle I posted is 0x103.