TIC-80, a fantasy computer to learn programming

Post by rococode » Wed, May 02, 2018, 5:51 AM UTC

wooly_bully wrote: post #14

Lerc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Post by boomlinde » Wed, May 02, 2018, 6:15 AM UTC

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

Post by Nullabillity » Wed, May 02, 2018, 6:27 AM UTC

boomlinde wrote: post #33

opencl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The PICO-8 language is just Lua with some minor syntactic sugar. It's also worth noting that TIC-80 has a $5 "PRO" version; the free (as in no cost) and open source version is basically shareware.

Post by rtpg » Wed, May 02, 2018, 6:32 AM UTC

lloeki wrote: post #36

Lerc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To me it seems that trend started somewhere along with Notch's dcpu16 and assorted virtual hardware from 0x10c.

Post by lloeki » Wed, May 02, 2018, 7:09 AM UTC

rtpg wrote: post #37

lloeki wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it seems that trend started somewhere along with Notch's dcpu16 and assorted virtual hardware from 0x10c.

Pico 8 and Voxatron (its predecessor/3d succesor) both predate the 0x10c experiment I believe.