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VC-1
Virtual Computer 1
This page describes the VC-1 project.
History
I like NetHack and roguelike games, so one of the first things I do to ease myself into a new computer language is to write a sort of roguelike game. The game I write is called NetWhack. I first wrote NetWhack in C++ in 1997. By 1999-2000 I had rewritten the project in Java. After essentially completing the game to my own satisfaction it was placed on the back burner.
In 2018, 2019 and 2020 I was teaching Python and Javascript to Neo, Roger, and a few other kids. Eventually we came to the need for a sort of JavaScript terminal/basic game-loop that we could use as a foundation for our projects.
There was, however, one serious problem. It was the old problem of blocking IO that I had with game libraries like LWJGL: because it is event driven, you cannot perform blocking input. Or rather I should say, because LWJGL (and JavaScript) are extremely poorly designed, you can't normally do blocking input. However, nature always finds a way; In Java, I just made a new “thread” and handled a custom keyboard buffer there. This was a very technically difficult thing to do, but it worked, and I had what amounted to blocking input under LWJGL.
Blocking Input in Javascript
The story of VC-1 is the story of the JavaScript version of our PyGame base code morphing over time, and me banging my head against a wall for years trying to figure out how to do blocking input in JavaScript. I went through many revisions of many games and programs in Python and Javascript. However, one day, I had an epiphany and figured out how to do it. It was during the development of a small demo program I wrote called “Javascript Terminal technical Demo”.
What remains is the story of JTTD, which eventually became ensconced as VC-1.
What I learned
1. It's really a CPU. A monolithic atomic queue is a CPU. When I realized this I stopped working on NetWhack in Javascript. I realized I needed a much better “Javascript Terminal” and possibly something with a much stronger terminal simulator. I started getting sucked into creating variables in the state machine and so forth and the whole thing became just a little messy. I took my time but it never really worked.
However, the concept DID work and the mistake, I realized, was trying to do it 50-50. I took a long, hard look at web assembly.
The thing with Web Assembly is you don't have access to the DOM. Well, you have to write wrapper functions.
After a long time meditating about all of this I started VC-2. It was a rabbithole of unforseen consequences. Visit VC-2 next.