I love these fantasy computers. This one looks very similar to Pico-8, which I've made a couple of games for. I wonder how TIC-80 compares to it. One obvious thing is that it's open source, which is very cool. From a quick search, Pico-8 seems to have a larger community though.
Perhaps my favorite fantasy console is one of the first, if not the first to exist: CHIP-8. It was originally an easy way to program video games for the Cosmac VIP hobbyist computer, but it found new life in recent years because writing a CHIP-8 interpreter is a good "babby's first emulator" exercise. It's not really capable of much by today's standards, but it goes to show that the fantasy console phenomenon has a long and deep history.
Yes, you can write code in a separate file and then import it to cartridge with tic-80 console commands[1]
You don't have to do this manually every time, just make a shell script with multiple commands; e.g. this will import code, save and run the cartridge:
./tic80 --skip --fs="$PWD" --cmd="load cart.tic & import code main.lua & save & run
The other way is indeed to buy or build yourself a PRO version, it can work with cartridges in plaintext format.
I love these fantasy computers. This one looks very similar to Pico-8, which I've made a couple of games for. I wonder how TIC-80 compares to it. One obvious thing is that it's open source, which is very cool. From a quick search, Pico-8 seems to have a larger community though.
One of main differences with Pico-8 is that Tic-80 supports many more programming languages.
You can write games in Lua, Moonscript, Javascript, Ruby, Wren, Fennel, Squirrel, Janet and even Python.
Or use anything that compiles to WASM. I've recently created my own bindings and a template for building Tic-80 games in Nim[1]
[1] https://codeberg.org/janakali/tic80-wasm-nim
Oh that certainly is interesting. And I've been looking at nim recently, so I'll give your project a look too! Thanks for sharing!
Perhaps my favorite fantasy console is one of the first, if not the first to exist: CHIP-8. It was originally an easy way to program video games for the Cosmac VIP hobbyist computer, but it found new life in recent years because writing a CHIP-8 interpreter is a good "babby's first emulator" exercise. It's not really capable of much by today's standards, but it goes to show that the fantasy console phenomenon has a long and deep history.
Some past comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33678782
The terminal font reminds me of the Apple II game Drol.
https://www.mobygames.com/game/9314/drol/screenshots/apple2/...
How to create games for this fictional computer? Is there some documentation describing this?
https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/wiki
Is there any way to edit programs in my own editor?
I can't work with these blocky fonts.
Yes, you can write code in a separate file and then import it to cartridge with tic-80 console commands[1]
You don't have to do this manually every time, just make a shell script with multiple commands; e.g. this will import code, save and run the cartridge:
The other way is indeed to buy or build yourself a PRO version, it can work with cartridges in plaintext format.[1] https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/wiki/import
There is, but it's one of the few features reserved for the pro version ($10)
https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/wiki/external-editor
You can also build the Pro version yourself for free according to the docs: https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/wiki/PRO-Version
Anyone tried vibecoding your ideas into existence with this framework and Claude?
I wonder if the font takes away from it
I want to tinker with this someday.