Tny: a tiny virtual console

[m15o]

Hi everyone!

Lately I've been having fun writing virtual game consoles. I find it fascinating to write their instruction set, define how they should execute machine code, and everything else. My goal was to design a machine that is simple enough to let even beginners write simple games in assembly code directly. So here's tny: tny.m15o.net.

I've added a few games such as:

• Asteroid
• Snake

Hope you enjoy :)

[Melooon]

This reminds me of being back in my assembly course   

I got a pretty high score on snake! The programming side is cool, although maybe more for a computer science person. I could see this being really popular for schools or people teaching computing foundations 

[TheFrugalGamer]

Oh, I love fantasy consoles! This is really impressive, and I really like the amount of documentation you've given for it. I'm not super great with assembly code, so I'm not sure if I could code anything for this, but I'm definitely adding it to my list of cool development tools.

[fizzylimesoda]

this actually looks pretty cool!

[DNxi]

this is cool as heck! i love the amount of documentation and software you’ve provided. i’ll definitely have to look into this further.

it’s very similar to a fantasy console that i made several years ago called “diode”. it had an 8x8 instead of a 16x16 screen so that i could use off-the-shelf 8x8 LED matrices for it, but it was similar in other ways - it also had 256 bytes of RAM and a controller with a d-pad and 2 action buttons. however, it was a harvard architecture machine where the RAM and ROM (also 256 bytes) were in two separate address spaces.

i even created a real handheld console for it that ran on an arduino nano with interchangeable game cartridges that contained I2C EEPROM chips, but sadly that project seems to have been lost to time. annoyingly, i can’t even find any photos of it. maybe someday i’ll also try to make a real, physical console for tny as well!

[m15o]

This reminds me of being back in my assembly course 

I got a pretty high score on snake! The programming side is cool, although maybe more for a computer science person. I could see this being really popular for schools or people teaching computing foundations 

Haha thanks a lot Melon! It motivates me to write even more documentation so that perhaps it helps people who want to get started with assembly. Congrats on the snake one! Yesterday, as I was in the train, I tried to put together what should eventually resemble a tetris-like game.

Oh, I love fantasy consoles! This is really impressive, and I really like the amount of documentation you've given for it. I'm not super great with assembly code, so I'm not sure if I could code anything for this, but I'm definitely adding it to my list of cool development tools.

Thank you!

this actually looks pretty cool!

Appreciate it! :)

this is cool as heck! i love the amount of documentation and software you’ve provided. i’ll definitely have to look into this further.

it’s very similar to a fantasy console that i made several years ago called “diode”. it had an 8x8 instead of a 16x16 screen so that i could use off-the-shelf 8x8 LED matrices for it, but it was similar in other ways - it also had 256 bytes of RAM and a controller with a d-pad and 2 action buttons. however, it was a harvard architecture machine where the RAM and ROM (also 256 bytes) were in two separate address spaces.

i even created a real handheld console for it that ran on an arduino nano with interchangeable game cartridges that contained I2C EEPROM chips, but sadly that project seems to have been lost to time. annoyingly, i can’t even find any photos of it. maybe someday i’ll also try to make a real, physical console for tny as well!

Wow! I love that you also had create a little machine as well. I would also love at some point to build it into a handheld console, potentially with arduino as well! Thanks for mentioning harvard architecture, I didn't know about it but will look into it. :)