Live data from Hacker News

Take Over The Galaxy with GitHub (DCPU16 support)

github.com

51–60 of 89 posts

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

#51
post #39
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of just playing around is underestimated. A lot of discoveries have been made by people just playing around.

As someone with not a lot of experience in low level languages and I can't wait to play around with this. I think it will be fun way to learn and maybe even try building hardware implementation using a FPGA.

On my list of things to get around too. I don't expect it to be too hard as it's a fairly simple processor as specced. It'll be interesting to see what architecture techniques could be added to improve things while still remaining within spec.

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

#52
HN is funny. Last week as each new dcpu emulator implementation popped up, they got fewer and fewer votes and more comments like "oh great, yet another dcpu post. let's call this Dcpu News for crying out loud!" Then github adds syntax highlighting and gets 150+ points. I'm very curious why that is...

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

#53

HN is funny. Last week as each new dcpu emulator implementation popped up, they got fewer and fewer votes and more comments like "oh great, yet another dcpu post. let's call this Dcpu News for crying out loud!" Then github adds syntax highlighting and gets 150+ points. I'm very curious why that is...

The emulators got less votes because it was more of the same exact thing ("someone implemented DCPU-16"). This is news because a big name has taken notice of DCPU-16, going so far as to officially support it. It's a different flavor.

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

#54
post #41

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 ;)

Turbo Pascal!

New challenge - clone the Turbo Pascal IDE and get it to run on the processor.

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

#55
post #33

So, who's going to be first with a hardware implementation of the DCPU16? :)

I'm working on a multicycle implementation that I will be able to push to a FPGA. There's no way I'll be able to get the same cycle timing as the specs indicate however. 3 cycles for a divide is very, very generous for such a simple CPU, I'll probably either end up implementing a shift and subtract algorithm (will take more than 3 cycles), or using huge look up tables (probably too big fit in a single blockRAM as well...) to try and achieve it. On the other hand, SHR and SHL are trivial to do in hardware via a barrel shifter, but he assigned 2 cycles for them.

The [next word + register] instruction is also a bit annoying to deal with in the given time tables and a simple register file design, though I haven't thought about the design of that too much.

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

#56
post #53

HN is funny. Last week as each new dcpu emulator implementation popped up, they got fewer and fewer votes and more comments like "oh great, yet another dcpu post. let's call this Dcpu News for crying out loud!" Then github adds syntax highlighting and gets 150+ points. I'm very curious why that is...

The emulators got less votes because it was more of the same exact thing ("someone implemented DCPU-16"). This is news because a big name has taken notice of DCPU-16, going so far as to officially support it. It's a different flavor.

Ah, so dcpu is cool now because somebody cool says its cool. Just seems like bandwagon/fanboyism to me. Call me a dcpu hipster :)

btw, awesome work w/ mappum on the js emulator stuff. you guys update w/ impressive speed.

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

#57
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 : htt…

Low-level lisps à la GOOL/GOAL[0] will probably gain some traction as well, or so I hope. [0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Oriented_Assembly_Lisp

Did they ever get released to the public?

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

#58
post #55
post #33

So, who's going to be first with a hardware implementation of the DCPU16? :)

I'm working on a multicycle implementation that I will be able to push to a FPGA. There's no way I'll be able to get the same cycle timing as the specs indicate however. 3 cycles for a divide is very, very generous for such a simple CPU, I'll probably either end up implementing a shift and subtract algorithm (will take more than 3 cycles), or using huge look up tables (probably too big fit in a single blockRAM as wel…

Notch said it'll run around 100khz in-game, so it should be a piece of cake for an FPGA to do it in even one in-game clock cycle.

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

#59

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... ;)

He who has the best systems will win, no matter the tools or platform. I love it.

I think it is great for teaching kids to program as well, or be excited about it. Notch is going to do what thousands of teachers can't do because he is using the power of gameplay to drive it.

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

#60

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?

small business, not startup

Considering that the gold farming business runs revenue in the billions, the moniker of startup could definitely apply to a service catering to MMO gamers.
Post reply on HN