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elpocko parent
>very close to the metal

>(pico8)

But PICO-8 with its integrated tools and Lua programming is super high level, pretty far removed from "8bit". It's only 8 bit in aesthetics, entirely artificial and forced. Why not write games for the 2600, the C64 or the NES to experience real constraints of an actual 8 bit platform, the actual "metal."

dr_dshiv
I know, tell me about it, we’ve been debating this, tbh. We landed on pico8 to introduce the ideas of creativity within constraints as there is a very active community and nice tooling. We’ve done NES workshops before, but always with CS students and eproms. 6502 assembly isn’t that complicated, but can be scary.
elpocko OP
I've been thinking about making a fantasy computer/console that uses an emulated 65C02 CPU, maybe a bit simplified -- every instruction only taking 1 cycle, for example. You could use all existing tools for the 6502, like the amazing 64tass, and there's an interesting high level language called prog8 (https://github.com/irmen/prog8) that's relatively easy to use. Not sure if there's any interest for something like that.
Lerc
I was working on something using AVR assembly as a fantasy console.

I never quite completed it, but I managed a emulator/assembler IDE in the browser. Making my own assembler let me play around with some ideas for macros.

It could even load programs from gists.

https://k8.fingswotidun.com/static/ide/?gist=ad96329670965dc...

Reflecting on it now, I think one feature that could help a assembler on devices like this is the ability to inline compile assignment expressions that use values of only one type. It would be easy enough to emit a stream of instructions for

    x=32+(x*(y+2))
or even

    r15=32+(r15*(y+2))
using registers as expression values.

The result would usually be what an assembler writer would write themselves.

I think a macro assembler that did that would ease a lot of the tedium of assembly while maintaining the near absolute control over memory use and IO that you need for low level coding.

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