Dark Bit Factory & Gravity

GENERAL => Challenges & Competitions => Topic started by: tykel on October 16, 2011

Title: [ASSEMBLY] Chip16 challenge thread
Post by: tykel on October 16, 2011

Hi DBF,

This is my first post so I'll introduce myself quickly -- I'm tykel, programmer and CompSci student, and interested in pushing computers to their limits :)
Now for the challenge:

Perpetual Chip16 demo challenge

What is Chip16?
You may have heard of Chip8, that VM from the 70s/80s which has been ported to pretty much any platform in existence. Chip16 is a community effort to draw up a successor, from scratch.
Now, the system's main premise is to be easy to emulate; indeed, that is my other main interest. So we have about half a dozen public emulators at least. What we don't have, however, is any AMAZING software.
I have coded a starfield; there are some fractals (Mandelbrot set, Serpinski triangle) and some games and examples, but nothing groundbreaking. This is where you come in.

What is Chip16, like, physically?
Specs are on the forum thread linked below.

Quote from: TL;DR

CPU: 1Mhz, 16-bit
RAM: 64KB
GFX: 320x240, 16-colour
Sprite-based drawing system
No FPU

Rules
There are no rules. It must be a demo that runs on chip16, that is all.

Links?
The link below contains all extra information, including the discussion leading up to the system's current state.
Chip16 official thread (http://forums.ngemu.com/showthread.php?t=138170)

For your convenience, however, I have attached a zip with emulators, doc, source code and binaries:
Use cottonCx for emulation, as it is the only one fully up to date with the VM spec (no sound though).
Use tchip16 for assembling your programs, tchip16_debug provides additional info.
Use imgconv for converting BMPs to binary sprite data. img_conv is my command-line utility with less options.

I hope this gives you some material to have fun with  :D

Title: Re: [ASSEMBLY] Chip16 challenge thread
Post by: Hotshot on October 16, 2011

 :hi: to the forum :)

Interesting Asm ;)

Title: Re: [ASSEMBLY] Chip16 challenge thread
Post by: jace_stknights on October 17, 2011

Cool project!

Title: Re: [ASSEMBLY] Chip16 challenge thread
Post by: Shockwave on October 18, 2011

Hi tykel, welcome to dbf.  I'll probably have a play with chip16 this week, it looks interesting :)

Title: Re: [ASSEMBLY] Chip16 challenge thread
Post by: rain_storm on October 19, 2011

Very interesting project. I cant seem to find the assembler or a disassembler, do we have to roll our own?

Title: Re: [ASSEMBLY] Chip16 challenge thread
Post by: tykel on October 20, 2011

No disassembler sorry ;D
The assembler, though, is called tchip16. It's in the archive attached to the OP, or get it on my project homepage (http://code.google.com/p/tchip16).
Have fun!  ;)

Title: Re: [ASSEMBLY] Chip16 challenge thread
Post by: rain_storm on October 20, 2011

Sweet, I'll be giving this a try

Title: Re: [ASSEMBLY] Chip16 challenge thread
Post by: tykel on March 02, 2012

Hey guys,

It's been a while since I last posted. Chip16 has evolved a bit since then!
I am in charge of the project now. There is also a new version of the specification out. It includes:

- new sound, ADSR spec (similar to SID then)
- palette loading, if you don't like the default palette.

This is a perpetual challenge, so entries still welcome!  ;D
(I started on Worms/Scorched Earth clone but got bored..)

Link to the new thread. (http://forums.ngemu.com/showthread.php?t=145620)

Have fun!

Title: Re: [ASSEMBLY] Chip16 challenge thread
Post by: tykel on March 10, 2012

Bump!

I made a little sound demo to showcase the new spec. See thread for more details!