VMs with purposefully designed limitations aren't exactly new. There's a long history of them becoming relatively popular for a period of time. The ones I tend to be most interested are the ones...
VMs with purposefully designed limitations aren't exactly new. There's a long history of them becoming relatively popular for a period of time. The ones I tend to be most interested are the ones that aren't necessarily designed specifically to be so. A good example of such would be 'homebrew' software for video game consoles and calculators, which started out as actual machines.
My personal favorite example is one that started as a video game creation tool and has since evolved into it's own limited-capability VM - Megazeux. When it first came out it was designed as a full-featured game engine for PCs, but over time it stopped requiring PC hardware and became a portable application and now even runs on web browsers. I've always been compelled by it's community of creators and their output
There are tons of other examples out there, of course, but the most popular of them all right now is probably PICO-8, which was made famous for being the platform that was used to build the prototype for Celeste and for being a pack-in feature for the PocketCHIP computer.
I do like the idea of a very low-level code interpreter which can be implemented on very low-end hardware... a GBA is pretty darn low. Being able to have a java-like system on a GBA or better...
I do like the idea of a very low-level code interpreter which can be implemented on very low-end hardware... a GBA is pretty darn low.
Being able to have a java-like system on a GBA or better opens a lot of options for computing resilience.
It just so happens that there are many examples of that happening as well; Steve Wosniak invented SWEET16 as a way to extend the capabilities of the 6502 on the Apple II, and there's an...
It just so happens that there are many examples of that happening as well; Steve Wosniak invented SWEET16 as a way to extend the capabilities of the 6502 on the Apple II, and there's an interesting story behind it.
Even before that there was CHIP-8, which can be run on sub-MHz computers without a display or keyboard!
All of their releases are available through Itch, and one of their oldest applications, Orca, even got ported to Uxn, which may be something I'll play with, and is consistent with their goal as...
VMs with purposefully designed limitations aren't exactly new. There's a long history of them becoming relatively popular for a period of time. The ones I tend to be most interested are the ones that aren't necessarily designed specifically to be so. A good example of such would be 'homebrew' software for video game consoles and calculators, which started out as actual machines.
My personal favorite example is one that started as a video game creation tool and has since evolved into it's own limited-capability VM - Megazeux. When it first came out it was designed as a full-featured game engine for PCs, but over time it stopped requiring PC hardware and became a portable application and now even runs on web browsers. I've always been compelled by it's community of creators and their output
There are tons of other examples out there, of course, but the most popular of them all right now is probably PICO-8, which was made famous for being the platform that was used to build the prototype for Celeste and for being a pack-in feature for the PocketCHIP computer.
I do like the idea of a very low-level code interpreter which can be implemented on very low-end hardware... a GBA is pretty darn low.
Being able to have a java-like system on a GBA or better opens a lot of options for computing resilience.
It just so happens that there are many examples of that happening as well; Steve Wosniak invented SWEET16 as a way to extend the capabilities of the 6502 on the Apple II, and there's an interesting story behind it.
Even before that there was CHIP-8, which can be run on sub-MHz computers without a display or keyboard!
Very interesting article, though I did find myself sidetracked by their very cool video about life at sea.
Their book about it was pretty interesting too
All of their releases are available through Itch, and one of their oldest applications, Orca, even got ported to Uxn, which may be something I'll play with, and is consistent with their goal as mentioned in This interview.
These folks just keep doing more and more cool stuff.