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by Midnightas 2693 days ago
Unlike most, I don't see a problem with it being Lua or JavaScript. I'm just curious why people pick such high-level languages in the first place. I'm planning to make a fantasy computer myself (basing it off the z80), and would never think to make it scriptable in something other than machine code.
2 comments
pjmlp 2693 days ago
Because we had BASIC on 8 bit home micros and those languages are the natural successors.
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ken 2693 days ago
But BASIC on those computers was interpreted, and thus far too slow. Even the C compilers weren't that great. Every real game, AFAIK, was written in 6502 assembly.
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pjmlp 2693 days ago
True, yet it made lots of kids happy to try out programming their own games and now they work across the industry, including myself.

Not everything is about the ultimate performance.

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Midnightas 2690 days ago
The point is that it's not "javascript interpreted in machine code", which in my opinion would make these computers far more fun, otherwise they're just fancy game frameworks.
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nineteen999 2693 days ago
> I'm planning to make a fantasy computer myself (basing it off the z80)

This is so much fun, I did this last year, although initially it only ran inside Unreal Engine. Later on I did a "native" port to Linux. It can run CP/M 2.x and Wordstar (https://i.imgur.com/rIY1he8.png), it had a telnet+VT100+zmodem client for accessing BBS's (https://i.imgur.com/VszSPkB.png), and I even added a graphics mode later on (https://i.imgur.com/t3kreQM.png).

I'm working on a 68000 based one now as well. It's a really great learning experience.

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