[HN Gopher] MicroW8: A WebAssembly based fantasy console
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MicroW8: A WebAssembly based fantasy console
Author : lifthrasiir
Score : 63 points
Date : 2022-03-02 17:12 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (exoticorn.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (exoticorn.github.io)
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Another fantasy console: https://wasm4.org/
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| Oh, I forgot that WASM-4 is a thing. It indeed makes a good
| comparison:
|
| - MicroW8 was originally conceived from the size-coding
| community (I think it was mainly inspired from TIC-80), and
| partly because of that its compressed cart is much smaller than
| WASM-4 carts and can be shared with just a single URL. The
| built-in assembly language (CurlyWas) also certainly helps.
|
| - MicroW8 has a relatively rich support for palettes and fonts.
| That might be a matter of taste though (some want a very
| constrained environment, others want a slightly more powerful
| but still retro-looking environment).
|
| - As a result WASM-4 doesn't have any sort of text handling
| while MicroW8 has one, arguably similar to PICO-8 as well due
| to its control characters.
|
| - MicroW8 doesn't yet have audio support, though it is in the
| high priority to my understanding.
| skybrian wrote:
| For anyone wondering:
|
| > On a keyboard use the arrow keys and the keys Z, X, A and S to
| emulate the A, B, X and Y buttons.
| Narishma wrote:
| Are there any fantasy consoles with CPU limits?
| yellowapple wrote:
| I'm wondering the same thing. Both MicroW8 and WASM-4 seem to
| be unlimited, whereas it'd be nice if there was some standard
| for CPU speed in case I wanted to, say, port it to a retro
| console.
| kaoD wrote:
| IIRC Pico-8 does.
| xkapastel wrote:
| no, pico-8 does not have any cpu limits, but it has a code
| size ("cartridge" size limit) of 32k of lua.
|
| edit: incorrect, see reply
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| PICO-8 _does_ have artificial CPU limits:
| https://pico-8.fandom.com/wiki/CPU
| xkapastel wrote:
| thanks for the info! never knew about this, i wonder why
| it's not on the pico-8 landing page.
| Lerc wrote:
| There are a lot that emulate 8-bit CPUs, although which have
| fixed clock speeds, I'm not sure.
|
| I have my own 8Mhz 8-bit AVR that I work on from time to time.
| It's more designed for the Assembly coder experience.
|
| https://k8.fingswotidun.com/static/ide/?gist=78d170a65bc6c9d...
|
| I have wondered about doing a version the the same virtual IO
| 'hardware' and a WASM core.
| aquova wrote:
| Pico-8 has an artificial CPU limit; once you surpass 100%
| utilization the system cuts the framerate in half until CPU
| usage dips back down under the imposed cap.
| boricj wrote:
| How does it compare to other fantasy consoles? This reminds me of
| the Chip16 virtual machine.
| lifthrasiir wrote:
| Most other fantasy consoles are based on their own virtual
| machines or stripped-down scripting languages (like Lua in
| PICO-8), but this is based on WebAssembly so there is a variety
| of languages you can pick. You can of course write an
| WebAssembly module from scratch or a built-in assembly language
| called CurlyWas [1].
|
| [1] https://github.com/exoticorn/curlywas/
| qbasic_forever wrote:
| It doesn't look like this has any editing UI (i.e. code, sound,
| graphics, etc. editors) like PICO-8 or TIC-80. So it's more of
| a bare runtime for a console and you're on your own to make all
| the assets.
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(page generated 2022-03-02 23:01 UTC)