I wish 0x10co.de and the other DCPU-16 code sharing/emulator websites had existed when I took my first CS "systems programming" (or whatever the introduction to CPUs and assembly was called back then). The professors struggled to get the students enthusiastic about programming in assembly when they were used to high level languages.
I'm not sure how long ago you took it, but this book is probably a better introduction than the DCPU-16 since you build the system up from gates until you reach a high level language.
I just went to the CS department site of the university I attended. The same systems architecture courses I took (logic gates, to building a pipelined MIPS CPU, to assembly programming on that CPU) are still degree requirements.
That describes the ECE 100 class I took many years ago pretty much perfectly.
But I think that programming a computer that's going to fly your space ship and blast your enemies is a lot more fun than any of the "have this vending machine make change" type exercises we ever did in assembly.
I'm looking forward to 0x10c as much as the next hacker, but I can't help but wonder what effect this DCPU is going to have on the gameplay experience. Is it going to be a programming competition rather than a computer game?
Without knowing much about how the game will be played, I doubt it. Maybe at the very highest end the marginal difference will be made by the quality of proprietary computer programs shared between elite clans but enough public script sharing will go on that will make it trivial for someone to be competitive at the lower levels without knowing a line of code.
By the time that novelty wears off the game should be developed enough to give more challenges. It won't be old programs anymore but operating systems, auto-pilots, defence systems, communication systems, combat systems, viruses, hacking, and so on and so forth.
If anyone has that kind of time, it's very possible, though running it might well lag the hell out of your computer. You should be able to find all of the necessary information here:
I can't look at the program right now because the site is non-responsive, but DCPU-16 has a defined spec right now for video, based on a leaked .jar file from the actual game. Someone named Rick took the leaked .jar, decompiled it, and wrote up a video spec based on it. The current spec can be found at https://github.com/gibbed/0x10c-Notes/blob/master/VirtualMon....
The bitmapped fonts were actually discovered via a leak of the 0x10c code. We'd certainly thought of it before then, but the leak was what sparked the implementation. This version of Minesweeper appears to overwrite the default font with its own custom graphics.
