I concur with your approach Ben, I had given this a bit of thought in
the past and it does seem that a system might be possible that wasn't so
much a classic computer language but more akin to a Hardware Design
Language where the result is inferred from a set of input design
parameters. Is this similar to what you were thinking?
- David
>--- Frank Palazzolo <palazzol@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>
>>The other extreme might be more interesting, from a
>>computer science point
>>of view. In theory, you could define your own
>>special-purpose, high-level
>>language, specific to Stella. Then you could
>>directly express high-level
>>concepts like scanlines, cpu-cycles, TIA resources,
>>etc. Ideally, the
>>compiler could figure out the best way to implement
>>it on the 2600 - given
>>enough information about what you are trying to do.
>>
>>
>
>Hmm...I agree, that's almost an even more interesting
>idea to explore, a sort of 'functional language' for
>kernel generation. I mean, I suppose creating a
>kernel is ultimately a scheduling problem when you
>think about it, right? - certain things need to occur
>at certain times, and the trick is to juggle things
>until it all 'fits'. If a specialized scheduling
>program had enough information about all the
>programming techniques and timing constraints, as well
>as detailed information about all the objects you
>wanted on screen at once, i.e. object height,
>horizontal resolution, vertical resolution, colors,
>min-max X-Y movement bounds, etc., it could
>theoretically try to find a solution that worked for
>the given parameters. Theoretically being the key
>word there... :)
>
>Ben
>
>
>
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