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Take Over The Galaxy with GitHub (DCPU16 support)

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Re: Take Over The Galaxy with GitHub (DCPU16 support)

#21

Post by dons »

flatline wrote: post #5
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could run JavaScript, but this is a 16-bit processor we're talking about here, with minimal RAM. It's more likely we'll be using C and BASIC ;)

Yeah this seems like the exact scenario where hand-rolled assembly and perhaps some hand-optimized C will really shine. You don't see a lot of embedded processors running javascript, for example. If your ship can process data and respond 5% faster than an opponent's, all other things being equal, you will come out ahead. If the current level of interest persists, by the time the game launches, I imagine that the vast…

I think we're going to see some clever optimizing DSLs (a la FFTW) -- restricted languages for the kinds of embedded programs you write on such an architecture will be easier to optimize than general purpose languages. Particularly if they have a clear cost model.

The Haskell embedding is very likely to head in that direction.

(See e.g. in this style : http://www.fftw.org/faq/section4.html#whyfast or this style : http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~chak/papers/polymer.pdf -- code generation + DSL + constraint solver for instruction level timings).

At least, that's what I'd do.

Re: Take Over The Galaxy with GitHub (DCPU16 support)

#22

Post by zxoq »

flatline wrote: post #5
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could run JavaScript, but this is a 16-bit processor we're talking about here, with minimal RAM. It's more likely we'll be using C and BASIC ;)

Yeah this seems like the exact scenario where hand-rolled assembly and perhaps some hand-optimized C will really shine. You don't see a lot of embedded processors running javascript, for example. If your ship can process data and respond 5% faster than an opponent's, all other things being equal, you will come out ahead. If the current level of interest persists, by the time the game launches, I imagine that the vast…

Yep, only thing I dislike is that the processor does not simulate the importance of cache. If the in-game processors allowed the selection of different cache-line sizes (both instruction cache and data cache) for different costs (paid via the in-game currency), it would add another level of depth to the game market. It would also mean getting into the nitty-gritty of optimization would be even more worth it.

Re: Take Over The Galaxy with GitHub (DCPU16 support)

#23

Post by KC8ZKF »

unreal37 wrote: post #15
soupboy wrote: post #6

Looking at all the amazing work done regarding the DCPU and the article yesterday on Instagram's technology stack made me realize just how far we've advanced. With the tools that we have available now, it is possible to do things in a few days that it took people years if not decades to achieve.

"it is now possible to do things in a few days that took people ... decades to achieve". Let's not get too excited here. Name one thing that can be done in days that used to take decades.

Calculate pi to 700 decimal places.

Re: Take Over The Galaxy with GitHub (DCPU16 support)

#24

Post by joncalhoun »

secoif wrote: post #8
gravitronic wrote: post #2

Ok after seeing the assemblers/VM's last week I wasn't expecting to see much new this week.. then I saw this: https://github.com/krasin/llvm-dcpu16/ C compiler support for dcpu16! In a way this almost saddens me as by the time the game comes out it looks like the community will have javascript ported to the CPU and no one will actually have to program in assembler as per the original idea... ;)

Don't start worrying about the "purity" and "this was never intended". You don't specify a processor instruction set in the real world without expecting people to write higher level languages for it, so why expect people to write at such a low level in a GAME of all places? I am fairly certain everything is going exactly as planned. Notch has got this.

I second this. Think about all the hype and excitement he is building simply be releasing a processor instruction set. Pure marketing genius =D.

Re: Take Over The Galaxy with GitHub (DCPU16 support)

#26

Post by phren0logy »

newobj wrote: post #25

I wonder if Notch is regretting releasing these details so soon. Now he's already going to be a slave to backwards compatibility and the game is about 0.1% complete.

Seeing that everyone is doing this just for fun, I doubt it. He could change everything tomorrow and I bet people would be excited to do it all over again.

Re: Take Over The Galaxy with GitHub (DCPU16 support)

#27

Post by SoftwarePatent »

yolesaber wrote: post #16

I had a dream the other night wherein there was a start-up that took custom code requests for 0x10c players on commission. Requests ranged from optimizing the ship's defense to autopilot and hyperspace jump controls. Viable?

Absolutely. Maybe you can get acquired before the game is actually released! ;)

Re: Take Over The Galaxy with GitHub (DCPU16 support)

#28

Post by DanBC »

yolesaber wrote: post #16

I had a dream the other night wherein there was a start-up that took custom code requests for 0x10c players on commission. Requests ranged from optimizing the ship's defense to autopilot and hyperspace jump controls. Viable?

For some definitions of viable. Perhaps taking the requests, and converting those into mechanical turk tasks would work. That'd allow the price to be low enough to be doable.

There's a market for minecraft servers, so anything's possible.

Re: Take Over The Galaxy with GitHub (DCPU16 support)

#29

Post by newobj »

phren0logy wrote: post #26
newobj wrote: post #25

I wonder if Notch is regretting releasing these details so soon. Now he's already going to be a slave to backwards compatibility and the game is about 0.1% complete.

Seeing that everyone is doing this just for fun, I doubt it. He could change everything tomorrow and I bet people would be excited to do it all over again.

I don't think everyone's doing it for fun, I'm sure there are savvy dudes out there that know that there's a lot of money to be had by being a first mover in the Notch ecosystem.

But even those that are doing it for fun -- you might be underestimating the amount of nerd rage that people are capable of when stuff they don't want to have happen happens. Just sayin'.

Re: Take Over The Galaxy with GitHub (DCPU16 support)

#30

Post by mbrubeck »

lolcraft wrote: post #20
unreal37 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it is now possible to do things in a few days that took people ... decades to achieve". Let's not get too excited here. Name one thing that can be done in days that used to take decades.

The first Fortran compiler's creation took 18 person-years. Now there are C compilers which were written from scratch in person-weeks , like TCC.

But the first C compilers were written four decades ago by a couple of people in a matter of months. And they were not just writing the compilers but also designing the language at the same time.

"When Steve Johnson visited the University of Waterloo on sabbatical in 1972, he brought B with him. It became popular on the Honeywell machines there, and later spawned Eh and Zed (the Canadian answers to `what follows B?'). When Johnson returned to Bell Labs in 1973, he was disconcerted to find that the language whose seeds he brought to Canada had evolved back home; even his own yacc program had been rewritten in C, by Alan Snyder."

-- Dennis Ritchie, who wrote the first C compiler. http://plan9.bell-labs.com/who/dmr/chist.html

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