This is it, the big announcement that I’ve been hinting at. Maybe I’ll give you a short video to set the mood first:
Do anything for ya? I hope so. Does something for me. Now for some quick details:
What will it be exactly?
From the user perspective it’ll be a text box that you type a program in, press a compile button, and get a console window opening up in your browser running your game. It won’t be big, it won’t be fancy, just basic functionality.
How will it work?
On the back end it’ll take the code you type, run it through some preparatory filters, run that through an Adobe Alchemy compiler that turns C code into an SWF, and returns the SWF file. Then that SWF file will be displayed.
Is this really going to work?
I think so. It should. Peter Nitsch, who knows much more about this stuff than I do, seems to think it has a chance. Impressed with the idea he managed to bang together a functional proof of concept in about a half an hour.
Holy smokes? Do you know what this means?
I know. Cool isn’t it?
When will we see this thing?
Well, uh, yeah. It’s definitely going to happen. I can say that because it’s now my thesis project, but I don’t graduate for another year and a half to 2 years and I’m still a busy dude.
So you’re not doing anything else with ASCIIpOrtal then, huh?
Oh, heck no. See, I’ve got to learn Adobe Alchemy, get acquainted with it and what not. So I need a project to do that. And I figure the best project for that would be [drum roll] ASCIIpOrtal II that will run in a browser with a built in level editor. But since the base code will still be in C that means it can still be compiled Windows, Linux, Mac and whatever else. (NDS Homebrew if I can get myself a NDS and homebrew card.)
There are still a lot of details to work out, some of which won’t be worked out until basically it’s done, but there’s a lot that’s already planned and ready. It’s a bit rough, but the current thesis proposal spells it out pretty good. And if you have any other questions… ask away in the comments below.
RSS Comments.
April 30th, 2010 - 10:32 pm
Nice! I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Web sites that let you code and see the result instantly…though I can’t say I’ve ever seen one that converts the code three different ways first!
April 30th, 2010 - 10:52 pm
Aside from wonder.fl the only ones I’ve seen don’t let you do input, just output, and that’s not cool to me.
I forgot to mention above that Peter Nische’s site has some examples of code, some from this site, that he ran through adobe alchemy. They are:
http://www.peternitsch.net/demo/pdcurses1/index.html
and
http://www.peternitsch.net/demo/pdcurses3/index.html
May 1st, 2010 - 10:46 am
I assume there will be an easy way to share what you’ve made, otherwise, why not just use a text editor and compiler? Still, great idea. I can hardly wait to see this.
It will have an implementation of curses available for programs to #include, right?
May 1st, 2010 - 10:52 am
A sharing system is definitely going to be a part of it. Gonna practice with ASCIIpOrtal level editor.
As for PDCurses, definitely think I can do that. Probably SDL and maybe Allegro too. Tho maybe not at first.
May 1st, 2010 - 1:07 pm
Man, that sounds awesome! But also tricky to pull off. Good luck with it!
Another site worth looking at would be http://codepad.org/about – it’s a pastebin which can also execute the code you post. They may well be able to help you with some of this.
May 1st, 2010 - 4:14 pm
One question: does this thing you’re going to be using have UTF-8 support? If it does, maybe ncursesw would be a good choice. I don’t know if PDCurses has Unicode support.
May 2nd, 2010 - 8:13 am
@AtkinsSJ, Codepad is one of those “output, no input” websites that I was talking about. I tried it out with hello and it spazzed out because I was trying to get input.
@Ratfink, …that’s a good question. Still, PDCurses working through SDL is kinda the way to make it happen on Allegro, so it may end up being PDCurses.
Not that it matters that much. The main goal here is something that works. And my website is on a Windows box, so I may end up having to just stick with that.
May 2nd, 2010 - 7:11 pm
@Joe If you ever need anything else compiled for linux, fire me an email. I’ve got 100GB of space and way too much time on my hands.
May 2nd, 2010 - 8:58 pm
Awesome. Enjoy making this one Joe.
BTW I love the sideburns.
October 18th, 2010 - 6:21 pm
While I think that your aims are admirable, here are my concerns, from someone who has had to instruct others:
1). No matter how simple you think your instructions are, it is never simple enough. While I have never had to instruct someone on something as complicated as being proficient in a programming language, I can tell you from personal experience that even “smart” people can have great trepidation on learning seemingly “simple” tasks. Worst still are “manager”-types who must routinely show a certain level of confidence even when they clearly have no proficiency in what they are doing.
2). Based on what I’ve seen from your website, it appears that you want to instruct people on how to learn to program in C/C++. My question to you would be this: Is it more important to you to teach people to program or to teach people to program in C/C++? C/C++, in my experience, is not an easy programming language to grasp and not a good “first” programming language to grasp either. I understand that C/C++ is an “industry standard” but also realize that the first driving experience most people have is on a riding lawn mower and not a full-sized automobile.
At any rate, thank you for this website and good luck with your future endeavors.
October 18th, 2010 - 9:41 pm
An actual comment, not spam!
Some good thoughts there, and ones that echo thoughts that I’ve had.
First of all, I’m not working on this _now_. This is related to my schooling and my schooling is kinda packing in the busy work. But the plan is still there.
Now as for teaching to program vs teaching to program C/C++… you know, the jury is still out on that one. On the one had I have an extensive library of C/C++ programs to use but most of them will have to be rewritten anyways, so why not rewrite them in a more basic language, like Python. Only problem with that is I’m not nearly as proficient in Python as I am in C/C++. So what’s the answer?
I think in this case the answer is to be like Scarlet and “think about that… tomorrow.”