41–50 of 208 posts
It's a sign of the fact that personal computing has gone way, way off the rails that we make pretend computers to run on our real computers just to have fun ways to compute again. I really really appreciate work like this, but why aren't our actual operating systems "cozy" enough to support creative work anymore?
Lua might be too slow to run interpreted on real 8-bits as in the Pico series, but it can be used as the base for a cross-compiler instead, and that presents a different spin on the specific coding challenge: Why not create an ultimate development environment, something that generates the precise code needed for that type of project? That's the direction that the highly optimized PICO-8 games took, and it is likewise seen in new demos for C64, Spectrum, A800 etc. - the "big hardware" is leveraged towards the old stuff in a way that can ignore the assumed paradigms of both.
When I use Raspberry Pi OS in a Raspberry Pi 4, 8GB of RAM - I feel I already have an excellent, refreshingly stable , late-90s-era experience. It scratches that strange nostalgia itch for that more innocent experience - of early-times WIMP computing. I can surf the web, edit LibreOffice files, record audio in Audacity on my nice Rode microphone, watch video files in VLC, remotely VNC in, transfer files in and out ov…
My 2003 bought multimedia Athlon XP desktop had 512 MB!
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used 8GB RAM till recently and I've found it more and more untenable. The primary issue is the browser. Even now on 16GB I restart Firefox every couple of days. But other things also eat RAM like crazy Running Emacs/Cider I'd have to kill other apps and reboot my REPL a couple times a day. Emacs would also leak memory and need a restart every couple of days
i wish firefox had more granularity with its tab unloading feature. one method is restarting browser. but by default it’ll unload tabs if you’re low on memory. you can force em in about:unloads (hint- about:about if you ever forget) i wrote a simple firefox extension that unloads em all with a button click, but it’s no different than restarting ff or spamming clicks in :unloads
This of course is how electron should work as well. A canvas only frame that loads whatever rendering system you want, which could be a browser, or it could be Unreal engine.
It’s a bit of a shame that it’s apparently not fully compatible with PICO-8. I’d imagine it to be a perfect environment to create PICO-8 games.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used 8GB RAM till recently and I've found it more and more untenable. The primary issue is the browser. Even now on 16GB I restart Firefox every couple of days. But other things also eat RAM like crazy Running Emacs/Cider I'd have to kill other apps and reboot my REPL a couple times a day. Emacs would also leak memory and need a restart every couple of days
i wish firefox had more granularity with its tab unloading feature. one method is restarting browser. but by default it’ll unload tabs if you’re low on memory. you can force em in about:unloads (hint- about:about if you ever forget) i wrote a simple firefox extension that unloads em all with a button click, but it’s no different than restarting ff or spamming clicks in :unloads
Pico-8 had so much care put into its goals and intentional limitations: and so far Picotron seems to have that same level of love and thought. It's delightful, and I don't want to stop making things with it.
I've used many of the clones of pico-8 and they all feel like they miss the point. They "improve" on the limitations, but are just... not satisfying. Funnily enough, I've tried three times to make my own JavaScript version of what Picotron is ("what if I made a more feature-rich version of Pico-8 to use for prototyping in game jams?") and each time abandoned it because it felt like the Pico-8 clones: adequate, functional, but not inspirational.
I don't know who makes Pico-8 and Picotron, but hats off to you amazing person/people for making such likable software!
It's a sign of the fact that personal computing has gone way, way off the rails that we make pretend computers to run on our real computers just to have fun ways to compute again. I really really appreciate work like this, but why aren't our actual operating systems "cozy" enough to support creative work anymore?
More often I use some old application, like the nowadays BSD-licensed ex-Autodesk Animator. It is fun to figure it out and more fun than modern applications in many ways. I even bought an old used book about it and read cover to cover. Limited compared to modern graphics software, but "cozy" is a great way to describe the experience.
Does anyone also think these "is a" headlines violate commonly accepted headline rules? Arguably it should read: "Picotron, a Fantasy Workstation"