Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

TIC-80, a fantasy computer to learn programming

tic.computer

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 75 posts

Re: TIC-80, a fantasy computer to learn programming

#11

Post by Ivoah »

opencl wrote: post #6
hungariantoast wrote: post #3

Maybe 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 I don't even know the difference between the two programs, but someone interested in TIC might also be interested in PICO.

They are conceptually very similar and both obviously inspired by the old CHIP-8. TIC-80 is a bit more 'powerful' in that it's a bit higher resolution with double the sprite count. The most substantial differences: >PICO-8 has its own BASIC-like language >TIC-80 is programmed in Lua or JS > >PICO-8 is commercial software, costs $15 >TIC-80 is open source

As ungzd already said, PICO-8 doesn't use its own language, but instead uses a slightly modified version of Lua

https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php?page=manual

Re: TIC-80, a fantasy computer to learn programming

#12

Post by vertexFarm »

This really reminds me of a lot of Niklas Jansson's concepts over at 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.

Re: TIC-80, a fantasy computer to learn programming

#13

Post by vertexFarm »

mimerme wrote: post #9

I'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.

If you're doing a larger project on it then I think you need to re-calibrate your expectations. It's more for educational play.

Re: TIC-80, a fantasy computer to learn programming

#14

Post by wooly_bully »

Lerc wrote: post #4
hungariantoast wrote: post #3

Maybe 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 I don't even know the difference between the two programs, but someone interested in TIC might also be interested in PICO.

The 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.

Celeste, 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

Re: TIC-80, a fantasy computer to learn programming

#15

Post by TimTheTinker »

Lerc wrote: post #4
hungariantoast wrote: post #3

Maybe 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 I don't even know the difference between the two programs, but someone interested in TIC might also be interested in PICO.

The 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.

Boy, wouldn’t it be fun if there was a Z80-based retro console with an 8-bit color screen and easy access from modern machines (USB, etc)?

Re: TIC-80, a fantasy computer to learn programming

#16

Post by crashride »

opencl wrote: post #6
hungariantoast wrote: post #3

Maybe 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 I don't even know the difference between the two programs, but someone interested in TIC might also be interested in PICO.

They are conceptually very similar and both obviously inspired by the old CHIP-8. TIC-80 is a bit more 'powerful' in that it's a bit higher resolution with double the sprite count. The most substantial differences: >PICO-8 has its own BASIC-like language >TIC-80 is programmed in Lua or JS > >PICO-8 is commercial software, costs $15 >TIC-80 is open source

PICO-8 uses plain old Lua also; the editor downcases everything on save which is why it seems case-insensitive.

Re: TIC-80, a fantasy computer to learn programming

#17

Post by userbinator »

tedyoung wrote: post #5
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #2

The programming system looks really interesting, but that font is super annoying.

The font is awesome for the first minute or two, but yeah, hard to work with after that.

Indeed, 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/

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

Re: TIC-80, a fantasy computer to learn programming

#18

Post by Avshalom »

hungariantoast wrote: post #3

Maybe 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 I don't even know the difference between the two programs, but someone interested in TIC might also be interested in PICO.

pico-8 is a fantasy that probably couldn't have existed with out a whole subsystem below it. Mojang's DCPU-16 is probably closer to a fantasy computer.

Re: TIC-80, a fantasy computer to learn programming

#19

Post by seanmcdirmid »

userbinator wrote: post #17
tedyoung wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The font is awesome for the first minute or two, but yeah, hard to work with after that.

Indeed, 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/ 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

I don’t remember them being that annoying in the 80s, or maybe we just read less text back then.

Re: TIC-80, a fantasy computer to learn programming

#20

Post by pull_my_finger »

opencl wrote: post #6
hungariantoast wrote: post #3

Maybe 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 I don't even know the difference between the two programs, but someone interested in TIC might also be interested in PICO.

They are conceptually very similar and both obviously inspired by the old CHIP-8. TIC-80 is a bit more 'powerful' in that it's a bit higher resolution with double the sprite count. The most substantial differences: >PICO-8 has its own BASIC-like language >TIC-80 is programmed in Lua or JS > >PICO-8 is commercial software, costs $15 >TIC-80 is open source

Pico-8 is restrained by design.

> The harsh limitations of PICO-8 are carefully chosen to be fun to work with, encourage small but expressive designs and hopefully to give PICO-8 cartridges their own particular look and feel.

It can be a little frustrating at first, but if you focus on the other important elements of a good game it can be really satisfying.

In addition, there are some people doing some very cool stuff really pushing that limit as far as possible.

- https://twitter.com/paloblancogames/status/97765346516502528...

- https://hackernoon.com/pico-8-lighting-part-1-thin-dark-line...

Just to cherry pick a few. Personally, I like the restraints.

To add to the others, Pico-8 definitely uses a modified version of Lua 5.1/5.2.

Post reply on HN