Pacman running on DCPU-16

http://fingswotidun.com/dcpu16/pac.html

by reitzensteinm • 14 years ago

266 58 14 years ago

fingswotidun.com

swah2• 14 years ago

Having good names for functions and variables makes even assembly readable.

Names: what a great idea.

sanderjd• 14 years ago

I've been finding all of these programs incredibly refreshing and easy to read. Each instruction does exactly one strictly-defined thing before moving to the next instruction - so simple!

It will be interesting to see if my level of refreshment remains intact as the level of complexity inevitably explodes. Even this pacman game, which is the most complex I've seen yet, is much simpler than whatever space ship or armada management programs people will eventually start writing.

swah2• 14 years ago

Its funny because in retrospect anyone can see how this game should be a success due to how folks were using Minecraft to build complex machines. And yet it came from Notch again (ok, he has a massive fanbase which will probably determine his success, but anyway...)

nezzor3• 14 years ago

While certainly very cool, this is unfortunately using an unofficial sprite spec[1].

There's plenty of awesome things being done with the official specifications though, like this minesweeper clone: http://0x10co.de/lqnit and this simple raycaster: http://0x10co.de/o3xss

Vim is also in the process of being ported: https://github.com/DanielRapp/0xVim

[1] http://fingswotidun.com/dcpu16/sprites.txt

deniska• 14 years ago

I found a bug in minesweeper. Start new game, don't move selection, press F, press F again and enter.

llimllib• 14 years ago

and the pacman baddies walk through the walls pretty frequently. Still, it's awesome!

archgoon2• 14 years ago

I think it'd actually be pretty cool if the actual game had multiple DCPU versions in the universe. It would give it even more of 1980's computing feel.

Explore the planet, fight off hordes of zombies to obtain... a DCPU16 - REV C!

nezzor3• 14 years ago

It's not certain if there's going to be different DCPUs with different specs. Notch has said[1] that there's definitely going to be versions with different clock rates floating around in space or on abandoned spaceships.

[1] http://vps.thomascomputerindustries.com/logs/freenode/0x10c-... (search for "[11:38:45]")

DHowett• 14 years ago

While it might be using an unofficial sprite spec, everything you linked at 0x10co.de is using an unofficial input and graphics spec… That's what the community does: fill in the missing pieces!

Scaevolus2• 14 years ago

0x10co.de is based on official input and graphics specifications taking directly from the DCPU emulators Notch has leaked/released.

jgrahamc• 14 years ago

How utterly marvellous! The entire outpouring of exploration around DCPU-16 is a wonderful example of the hacker-spirit "Here's a thing, what can you make it do?"

Jimmie2• 14 years ago

Well it's turing complete so... ;)

archgoon2• 14 years ago

Actually, one of things that the DCPU reminds people of it's not enough to just be Turing complete. You also need hardware to represent the state of your machine (graphics monitor or console), and ways of providing input. Turing Complete machines aren't very interesting if you can't see what they're doing ;)

Also, don't forget, you 'only' have 100,000 clock cycles to play with.

andrewingram• 14 years ago

Reminds me of my community of modders and mappers of the original Jedi Knight game. The engine was out-of-date pretty soon after release, but it's only within the last few years that the editing community has died down. People found ways to create 16 bit textures (the game only came with 8bit colour-mapped ones), how to implement bots in multiplayer, they hacked the binary to remove hard-coded graphical limitations. All of this happened while there were far more powerful engines like Quake 3 and Unreal available to play with.

Sometimes it's good to see just how far you can push an idea.

malkia• 14 years ago

This reminds of Heroes of Might and Magic III WOG - The folks changed the executable so much that future scripts were encoded as text, hidden in the message-boxes showing information about the map to the player (they would pop once in a while, if the game scripts says so).

I know how crazy (in good sense) are the modders - I had to help release the mod tools for World at War and Black Ops (I work at Treyarch).

catilac2• 14 years ago

It's kind of insane that people are writing games in assembly for a CPU in a game. I feel like 0x10c is going to be some sort of milestone in terms of innovation.

Next up is the immersive technology.

RegEx• 14 years ago

As someone who knows absolutely nothing about CPUs, is this CPU design _that_ good, or is it just the fact that Notch made it that's generated all this hype?

clavalle• 14 years ago

The CPU design is bare bones which is part of the fun.

dholowiski• 14 years ago

No it's not a great CPU design at all, it has some big limitations.

monatron• 14 years ago

I think it has very little to do with the design of the CPU itself but rather the unprecedented introduction of a functional CPU being emulated and usable/programmable within a game itself.

Wilduck2• 14 years ago

What's (potentially) revolutionary about this game is the deep rooted support for emergent gameplay. A telltale sign of a great game is that players themselves, in exploring the game, find new and interesting things to amuse themselves. Minecraft is an obvious example, with hundreds (thousands?) of public servers dedicated to varied pursuits.

A different type of example could be EVE, where the rise and fall of corporations is gameplay not written in by the devs, but gameplay created by the players. Any game that has developed a professional gaming community could also be lumped into the category of having emergent gameplay, since there is an entirely new game mode (spectating) created by a community surrounding the game.

When I look at 0x10c, and know that I'm going to have complete control over a CPU in game, and this CPU will be the basis of my pursuits in the game, I know that there will be interesting things to be done. This is because there's such a strong focus on allowing players to create their own gameplay. No other game (that I know of) takes its players' creativity seriously enough to rest so much of the fun on their shoulders.

Having Notch to hype the game certainly helps, but helping to create this world is alone an exciting prospect.

Lerc2• 14 years ago

The fact that it was Notch gave it visibility, but I think the following is more than just design or cult-of-personality.

Simplicity is extremely important. A lot of emulators appeared the same day that the spec was released. That not only needed people who wanted to implement the CPU, but also a spec that could be implemented in under a day.

There's a bit of Benevolent Dictator effect here as well. It's not that the system is the absolute best, but it's something that people can target for interoperability. Someone can write a compiler and someone else can write the emulator.

vajrabum• 14 years ago

How long will it be before somebody ports a nice VM to DCPU-16 or targets a compiler for it? The architecture is so simple and familiar I'm guessing that's not a terribly hard job. Folks are probably not going to write their programs in DCPU-16 assembler.

Wilduck2• 14 years ago

There are already a number of compilers targeted at it. Browse through reddit.com/r/dcpu16 and you'll see a new one pop up every few days. I'm curious how long it will take before we see compilers that are good at optimization. Pretty much every compiler I've seen crop up makes admissions that it's generating terrible code.

nezzor3• 14 years ago

It does exist: https://github.com/llvm-dcpu16/llvm-dcpu16. The only problem is that there's not going to exist a compiler in-game. People will have to import the compiled assembly code, which isn't nearly as fun as staying in the game during the whole process.

rweba• 14 years ago

Darn, looks like this is not editable like the code at http://0x10co.de

I was looking forward to seeing if I could figure out how to cheat and give myself infinite lives (I'm not very coordinated so that's the only I'll ever win ;-))

fla• 14 years ago

It is editable. Stop the emulator and enjoy.

Lerc2• 14 years ago

You already have infinite lives.

sp332• 14 years ago

Note for people with narrow screens: if you scroll over to the right you can run the code :)

cs7024• 14 years ago

This brings back distant memories for me: ages ago, just for fun, I wrote a quick-and-dirty PacMan clone for the TRS-80 Color Computer, which was powered by a lousy-by-present-standards Motorola 6809 processor.

I have to agree with some of the other comments here, 0x10c looks to be some sort of milestone: a fully programmable, Turing-complete game!

protomyth2• 14 years ago

The 6809 was one of the nicer processors back in the day. I still wish it and its successors had won over 8080 and is follow ons.

cs7024• 14 years ago

Yeah, it was nice. OS-9 was pretty nice too.

Natsu2• 14 years ago

Minecraft is Turing-complete too. You just have to build your own CPU and there's no way you're going to get 100 kHz out of it. Heck, so is Dwarf Fortress. People have built CPUs in both.

Personally, I say the difference is that Notch makes meta-games. That is, he makes game worlds in which people create their own games.

cs7024• 14 years ago

You are absolutely right -- in the sense that even a dead-simple Turing machine built inside one of those other games is Turing complete too.

0x10c feels like a milestone, though... I guess it's because the in-game CPU this time around is usable on a human timescale. If in-game networking is ever added to 0x10c, one could even imagine a usable minecraft clone inside the game. It feels different this time.

tikhonj• 14 years ago

You don't even have to be a computer game to be Turing complete :P. You can actually simulate a TM in Magic[1] (a card game). Looke at

[1] http://draw3cards.com/questions/2851/is-magic-turing-complet...

silasb• 14 years ago

Is this the new demoscene?

catilac2• 14 years ago

I think raspberry pi and 0x10c will both be a part of the new demoscene.

ja27• 14 years ago

As great as Raspberry Pi is, this is much more likely to get my kids and their friends programming.

psquid• 14 years ago

Is it just me, or do the ghosts seem to all be moving fairly randomly, rather than following 4 different, but consistent, behaviours (like in the original Pacman)?

SideburnsOfDoom• 14 years ago

Yes, ghost movement is definitely different and easier - for one thing, they don't chase pacman when they get close like they do in the original game.

mackyinc• 14 years ago

I could only say one thing... Whoa!

jebblue• 14 years ago

I think it's pretty awesome but I'm not going back to assembly. If Notch implements a Java version (for the in game CPU) then I'll definitely buy and play the new game.

Pacman running on DCPU-16

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