Show HN: Conway's Game of Life in boot sector
19 points - last Monday at 6:28 PM
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!
Comments
mysterydip today at 7:54 PM
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?
TZubiri today at 8:49 PM
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)