Next up: Assembler for DCPU16 written in DCPU16 Assembly

Seriously the combined programming effort with regards to this "game" is probably already more than notch has put into it.

And that is the best part. It's the same as with Minecraft. You are given a vast world and the freedom to manipulate blocks in it. The basics are pretty simple, but look at the things people create there. Some dude even managed to create a graphing scientific calculator. I'm pretty sure by the time the game is out if beta there will be OS-es, programming languages, tools and other interesting stuff floating around.

I'm still waiting for someone to write an LLVM backend for it.

If had problems compiling or running it, please post the code you were testing against, a stack trace in case of a crash would also be helpful!

It'd be helpful if you put a copyright notice and license on this. Code isn't useful without those.

GPL'ed it. Hopefully no one will have a problem re-using this code :)

Considering Notch licensed his using BSD; it would have been a nice gesture to keep the same unrestrictive license.

But that's your choice.

Isn't all the source code published in public github repos GPL by default?

No. You must explicitly state what the license is. Otherwise, in most countries no one but the author and authorized parties have the right to redistribute it or use it.

Not even close. By default there is no license at all.

I don't really understand how this game isn't going to be broken immediately and only programmers will be able to play it.

Like day 1 some programmer is just gonna roll in with a large automated fleet of ships running on these computers.

I'll tell you even more, Notch said in one of his tweets he's going to add network capabilities so that these computers are able to talk to each other. So that fleet can potentially form a hivemind of sorts. Also, hacking others' ships, viruses, coordinated attacks and all that. Isn't that awesome?

Depends on gameplay, but I can see non-programmers playing.

In the beginning they might not have to use much code at all.

When they've advanced a bit they might just use code copy-pasted from the Web.

At the intermediate stage maybe they need something a little more advanced, so they go to a website where you can buy pre-written programs.

Then maybe they rise to a level where they can afford to pay someone to write some custom code for them, so they do so and improve their operations by x%.

But all that depends on how the rest of the game works. At the moment all we know is that the game involves space ships and assemblers.

Someone should try a Boost.Spirit implementation!

The syntax of the assembly language is so simple that using Spirit would be an overkill (I was pondering to go with Haskell/Parsec but didn't, for that exact reason).

Spirit is extremely concise. In what way do you think it's overkill?

I just don't think it's necessary to bring in such powerful libraries for something that can be easily accomplished with simpler tools. After all, it makes your code easier to understand for people who are not familiar with boost.

It is true it adds an external dependency.

Internet down? Generate your own Hacker News front page for the next few days offline!

    parts = ['emulator', 'assembler', 'compiler', 'disassembler', 'debugger']
    languages = tiobe.read().split('\n')
    for i in range(31):
        print "{} for DCPU16 written in {}".format(random.choice(parts).title(), random.choice(languages))

Excellent use of ANSI COBOL2000 there. Very readable langauge.