Show HN: Conway's Game of Life in boot sector

hckrnws

Show HN: Conway's Game of Life in boot sector

by 0xAX

Hello HN!

On these weekends, I was sitting and thinking about where our industry is going, and how fun it was earlier, when we wrote more code than chat messages. The thoughts quickly turned into a wish to build something like we did earlier. In my case, it ended up as something much "earlier" than I had in mind initially...

So, Conway's Game of Life running from a 512-byte x86 boot sector. Maybe you will find it interesting. I tried to comment the code as much as possible, which might be especially useful if you are learning assembly.

Have fun!

eggy
02d
Yeah, I worked my way through Oscar Toledo's book, "Programming Boot Sector Games". I used to program in 6502 machine language and assembler. If you like Life, you should check out Andrew Ilachinski's book, "Cellular Automata: A Discrete Universe".
mysterydip
13d
One of my favorite simulations! Thanks for sharing, hope the journey was enjoyable and you do more.
Love the use of VGA memory for the simulation grid. Were you able to double buffer, or how did you handle holding the previous state while processing the next one?
1. 0xAX • OP
  02d
  Yes, it was really fun!
  Yes, doubled if you meant... To calculate the next generation I dumped the current (vga memory) after the grid is rendered to a buffer in memory and calculating the next one right to video memory back.
TZubiri
02d
It's a great "DOOM" alternative, it requires a bit less raw resources, and it can be self coded. I managed to code one on an old Nokia phone (apps were Java applet things)