Denial

I think Python is a good place for kids to start; that's why I called it a good "starter" language. Give it a try--download it and type in "python" at a command prompt. You can then type in commands interactively just like that. Python isn't just a good "starter" langua...

No one would bother even trying after Apple's handling of the C64 emulator . Apple finally puts the C64 emulator on the App Store, but then pulls it a day later--supposedly over the BASIC interpreter. Imagine exactly how functional a VIC20 emulator would be with the BASIC ROMs removed (you'd pretty ...

On a typical modern computer, you can start a command prompt and type in commands. The command line interface is admitedly oriented more toward file system operations and string manipulation than arithmetic, but it's there. You can do a lot with bash scripts. If you want a good user friendly interpr...

I'd like to see a port of the original black & white TRS-80 version of Crazy Painter. You controlled an "x" and tried to fill in the screen while avoiding various random enemies which would leaves "footprints" of empty pixels in their wake. This game seems to be obscure now.....

Still, that indicates to me, that the cell decision logic of VIC Life could need a good rework. Your program is seemingly twice as fast at that. Confused I use a parallel processing technique to calculate two sums simultaneously. That might account for most of the speed difference. Also, I use two ...

Brute force would be relatively easy: remove as many players as possible, don't bother where the ball ends up. Since the score is determined by where the ball ends up, this strategy doesn't seem useful. Instead, the rating for a particular leaf node should be (AI_SCORE - PLAYER_SCORE)*32 + BALL_Y. ...

I did a crude test hack. Rather than modify the program location, I just filled in HALF the screen and did 200 cycles. With VICE in PAL mode, 200 cycles of the block pattern takes 182 seconds. This test isn't fair, though, because the least efficient part of my code is the code which renders flipped...

The "empty" bench will give a slightly skewed value for cycles/cell as you supposedly put in an optimisation that skips entirely empty 8x16 cell areas, but you can give it nonetheless. Oh, the "empty" bench would be completely useless for my Fastlife algorithm. It does almost no...

It's still a work in progress...actually, I'm almost scrapping the current algorithm again. Currently, the algorithm skips blank spaces. I thought I'd hack in something to skip static spaces later on...but that makes the logic for skipping blank spaces redundant! My original idea was that I KNEW how...

I'd like to see Phutball +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-@-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-@-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+-+-+-+-+-@-+-+-+-+-+-+-+ +-+-+...

I've completely rewritten the logic code, and it's MUCH faster now. 8) http://members.cox.net/mechdan/vic/fastlife1.prg size 976 bytes The innermost loop processes neighborhood sums for two pixels at a time. Since the sum is at most 9, two sums fit in a byte. The reworked code has a very TINY tempor...

You see a "bad" image...I see the perfect output for subpixel graphics rendering. It looks like a botched S-Video mod where the composite output is connected to Luma (chroma is either also the composite output or just the chroma output). This is perfect for using the subpixel graphics meth...

You might try implementing the 40x24 screen, matching double-glyphs instead of double-chars, on the unexpanded VIC. It still won't be able to display arbitrary ASCII texts. So what? To me, the question is whether it's good enough--not whether it is perfect. Perfect is boring to me. What's good enou...

If you care about speed, then don't do any searching at all. Just use pure free characters when speed matters. [...] Even in the case of a successful match, the font may allow only checking 4 bytes. If, say, lines 2-5 match, you may be able to assume the others also match. This depends on the detai...

I don't know how Sentoria does things, but I don't see why scrolling is such a problem. Instead of a dumb linear search of matching character pairs, it uses a natural binary tree. This speeds up display by at least 4 times. If you care about speed, then don't do any searching at all. Just use pure ...