SCRIPT-8: An 8 Bit Fantasy Computer Programmed with Javascript

https://script-8.github.io/

by nsfmc • 7 years ago

219 60 7 years ago

script-8.github.io

nategri• 7 years ago

I love absolutely everything about this except the language choice.

Waterluvian• 7 years ago

What's an alternative that doesn't make massive sacrifices to the feature set?

sloum2• 7 years ago

I think Lua is a wodnerful langauge, highly embedable, great feature set/style, quite fast, really lightweight. Pico-8 had it right in everything but the license.

guiambros• 7 years ago

+1. I wish they used Lua instead of Javascript -- maybe using Lua.vm.js[1], although the VM in a VM thing may be a challenge to integrate with the rest of IDE, sprite editor, etc.

[1] https://daurnimator.github.io/lua.vm.js/lua.vm.js.html

jungler2• 7 years ago

Everything compiles to JS these days, so it is an easy lowest common denominator.

Lua is a semantically cleaner alternative but it has relatively less mindshare and hence less third-party support.

krapp2• 7 years ago

Everything compiles to JS these days, so it is an easy lowest common denominator.

That's not even remotely true. JS is only a common denominator for running code in a browser, but the lowest common denominator is still C/C++ and Java, even with native applications vs. Electron.

mhd• 7 years ago

I think it would be interesting to have some kind of linter/formatter built in the editor that restricts JS to its basic imperative subset.

dmitrygr2• 7 years ago

"8-bit"

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

Javascript has no 8-bit types, nor does it have memory limits that 8-bit machines had. Pixelated graphics are cool and all, but it does not place you in the same league with people who made games fit in 128 bytes of ram and 2K of ROM, sorry!

kittiepryde• 7 years ago

Other than the phrase 8-bit fantasy, I couldn't find the phrase 8-bit anywhere on the linked page.

dmitrygr2• 7 years ago

title of submission is " SCRIPT-8: An 8 Bit Fantasy Computer"

pedrogpimenta• 7 years ago

You shouldn't take everything so serious, dude. Relax. Enjoy. It's fun.

edmundhuber• 7 years ago

For those wondering, the biggest differentiator of this from PICO-8 is that this is open-source and PICO-8 is not.

sloum2• 7 years ago

Not to mention JS vs Lua (an unfortunate direction in my view). That said, open source is good. There are a few other open source versions. TIC-80 is another open source option. LIKO-12 as well.

Impossible• 7 years ago

No it's not. TIC-80 is open source and there are other open source fantasy consoles. The killer feature here is the Bret Victor inspired live coding support.

strainer• 7 years ago

This is exceptional - an online IDE with tutorials, sprite and tune editor, interesting code examples and little games to hack on, even an upload to share feature.

It only looks a bit ~dusty due to the sepia pallet, should be good to have other choices like a neon hue, and even free custom selection. But hats off here, this is a great resource !

jungler2• 7 years ago

My main minus to this is not that it's JS(I'm building a JS fantasy computer too) but that it's a node/react piece, which inspires zero confidence that it will have anything resembling foundational stability in the future.

krapp2• 7 years ago

It's nice but why does it seem to have lower resolution and fewer colors than actual 8 bit computers?

gabrielflorit8• 7 years ago

Hello everybody, author here. I hope you enjoy my tiny project.

Regarding language, I chose Javascript for three reasons:

- the (ab)use of `eval` lets you do all sorts of sorcery, like instant evaluation

- the JS Redux library makes it easy to work with state, and I couldn't have implemented SCRIPT-8's time-traveling debugger without it

- I dream in Javascript

I love Lua's small footprint, and very early on I considered writing SCRIPT-8 in MoonScript, which compiles to Lua and has gorgeous syntax. Maybe some day.

And yes, my fantasy computer is definitely not the only open source project, there's several out there, and probably all of them are more stable than mine. Go check them out.

brianobush• 7 years ago

Thanks to the pointer to Bret Victor's video on Inventing on Principle. Nice to see you brought some of his concepts into SCRIPT-8.

danielvf• 7 years ago

This is amazing! I'll be letting my kids play with it tomorrow!

And JS is a great choice.

rendaw• 7 years ago

Do cassettes have a size limit? AFAIK all (most?) the other fantasy consoles do but I didn't see anything on your page.

A lot of the cool features others mentioned seem like they would be overkill on a small codebase.

gabrielflorit8• 7 years ago

They don't now, but that is coming. The "SHOW CASSETTE SIZE" button under the live-preview screen shows you the current size / compressed size. But it doesn't prevent you from making a huge cassette - not yet.

curioussavage• 7 years ago

Glad to find another moonscript fan!

exitcode00• 7 years ago

Very creative project! Did you experience any issues doing pseudo-low-level programming with Javascript's lack of typing system or definite integer/float data-types?

gabrielflorit8• 7 years ago

Thank you, and no issues, because I didn't implement any low-level programming. I use React/Redux and Canvas 2D, with some custom shape drawing to avoid antialiasing (e.g. Bresenham's algorithm).

nullzzz2• 7 years ago

This looks fun! Would be great to have something that catches runtime errors and highlights them in the source code. Then, of course, code completion etc to make it easy to find stuff.

I started working on a bit similar project some years ago (I unfortunately abandonded it...) but I got one thing right: the ability to highlight the erroneous line. See http://write-a-game.herokuapp.com/ and try to call a non-existent function.

nullzzz2• 7 years ago

Here's the stack trace parser used. It tries to extract the line number and error message from an Error object. Sorry for the coffeescript!

https://github.com/raimohanska/write-a-game/blob/8d2111e2372...

gabrielflorit8• 7 years ago

Good idea. This would be useful for sure.

vanderZwan4• 7 years ago

very early on I considered writing SCRIPT-8 in MoonScript, which compiles to Lua and has gorgeous syntax. Maybe some day.

I know it's no longer considered hip these days, but why not support CoffeeScript?

It's easy to compile to JS on the client-side, so support should be much simpler than Lua or MoonScript. You could steal the trick TIC-80 uses to support MoonScript and say that starting a cassette with the string "use CoffeeScript" marks it as a CS file. Then it's "just" a matter of an if(String.startsWith("use CoffeeScript\n"))-check followed by an intermediate string-to-string compilation step, right?

https://coffeescript.org/

owens99• 7 years ago

I wish more people used CoffeeScript and supported it. The syntax makes me so happy

gchamonlive2• 7 years ago

Coffee Script is hell.

Apart from https://github.com/usefulthink/coffeescript-from-hell/blob/m..., it takes the worst approach to spaces as syntax, because it doesn't enforce consistency, so with many devs you can end up with a file with two, four spaces, tabs all compiling but easily breaking. It has features their own syntax checker recommend not using, like defining objects without curly braces (which I think shouldn't even be a feature, but it was once so backwards compatibility)

Coffee Script tries to be beautiful without straying too far from Javascript and it ends up being an easily broken mess. I would then recommend either typescript or purescript.

tyingq• 7 years ago

"I love Lua's small footprint, and very early on I considered writing SCRIPT-8 in MoonScript, which compiles to Lua"

Something similar, in Lua: https://liko-12.github.io/

aquova• 7 years ago

I'm an avid Pico-8/fantasy computer fan, and this is a really nice project. There have been quite a number of fantasy consoles coming out within the past few years, so it's nice to see one that offers features that the others don't, rather than simply "Pico-8, but with a twist". The live coding window and sliders in particular are simple things that increase QoL.

Others have noted that the use of JS is somewhat of a turn off, but even as a big Lua fan myself, it doesn't really bother me, I already have one (probably more than one) Lua fantasy console that covers my wishes. However, the author's comment here did mention adding MoonScript support, which would be something I would be very interested in.

azhenley• 7 years ago

The time-traveling and live editing features make this incredible.

When I get the time I’d love to replicate this in Go (since I’m trying to learn Go at the moment). Nice work!

triptych• 7 years ago

I'm super jazzed about this. Wonder if there's anything gained by compiling to web assembly? Thanks for making this.

pokstad2• 7 years ago

I’m sorry, did you say jazzed?

recursive• 7 years ago

You can just go reread it. There's no need to apologize.

vanderZwan4• 7 years ago

The typical performance requirements of these fantasy consoles are well below the need for WASM. Having said this, since this one is JS-based there shouldn't be anything stopping your from compiling your own WASM module in the code

threatofrain• 7 years ago

Is there a sample game to view?

gabrielflorit8• 7 years ago

There are game-like demos:

- https://script-8.github.io/?id=07b50badd10dc9be002ecb9f9031f...

- https://script-8.github.io/?id=cd8d6811adb3afb472aaf7505729c...

- https://script-8.github.io/?id=7f370bc716aff805f593a3f800087...

lucio• 7 years ago

Congrats, excellent work, I'll be exploring...

n1vz3r• 7 years ago

Nice project! It would be great to have on-screen gamepad on mobile!

gabrielflorit8• 7 years ago

There's an issue for this: https://github.com/script-8/script-8.github.io/issues/41

ddrdrck_• 7 years ago

This looks incredible ! Real time editing, time travel ... and integrated sprite, map, and music editors are a real plus. Only thing is the default color palette that is great but I wonder if we can change it ?

For people complaining about JS vs Lua : go have a look at Amulet. This is not a fantasy console but also has an online editor and is perfectly suited for retro games. Just have a look at "Defender of the Weeping Quasar" in the example section : http://www.amulet.xyz/editor.html

gabrielflorit8• 7 years ago

Thank you for the kind words. I have no immediate plans for changing the palette, but you should open an issue here https://github.com/script-8/script-8.github.io.

akx• 7 years ago

I find kind of disingenuous that the page does not mention PICO-8 at all, which is the obvious inspiration for this project, starting from the name. Many people who are in the scene, as it were, do know PICO-8 and know to draw the parallels, but it'd still be nice to link back to https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php somewhere...

gabrielflorit8• 7 years ago

That's a fair point. SCRIPT-8 is inspired by many projects, and PICO-8 is definitely one of them. I'll make sure to add a note.

magoghm• 7 years ago

Interesting how different people arrive at similar ideas. Many years ago I created a retro-like "virtual computer" in Java, called simpleJ, to let teenagers learn how to program by creating simple arcade games. It also had an IDE like environment, with a step by step debugger that could draw a diagram of run time data-structures (arrays, linked lists, trees, etc.), a tile editor, a sprite editor, and a even a book teaching you how to program a video game. You can take a look at it at http://simplej.com/ (in Spanish).

Midnightas2• 7 years ago

Unlike most, I don't see a problem with it being Lua or JavaScript. I'm just curious why people pick such high-level languages in the first place. I'm planning to make a fantasy computer myself (basing it off the z80), and would never think to make it scriptable in something other than machine code.

pjmlp2• 7 years ago

Because we had BASIC on 8 bit home micros and those languages are the natural successors.

ken• 7 years ago

But BASIC on those computers was interpreted, and thus far too slow. Even the C compilers weren't that great. Every real game, AFAIK, was written in 6502 assembly.

nineteen999• 7 years ago

I'm planning to make a fantasy computer myself (basing it off the z80)

This is so much fun, I did this last year, although initially it only ran inside Unreal Engine. Later on I did a "native" port to Linux. It can run CP/M 2.x and Wordstar (https://i.imgur.com/rIY1he8.png), it had a telnet+VT100+zmodem client for accessing BBS's (https://i.imgur.com/VszSPkB.png), and I even added a graphics mode later on (https://i.imgur.com/t3kreQM.png).

I'm working on a 68000 based one now as well. It's a really great learning experience.

SCRIPT-8: An 8 Bit Fantasy Computer Programmed with Javascript

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