Simple Balanced Ternary Computer Virtual Machine - A virtual base 3 computer.
Five years ago, to this exact day:
TDA Mark 1, SBTCVM's initial prototype, was uploaded to GitHub.
Its been a huge undertaking, and we are just getting started. Id like to take a moment to thank everyone who's helped with SBTCVM, for all the hard work that's been done.
And with that, lets hope for another 5 years!
Signed, Lead Coder & Project founder:
Thomas Leathers.
fttarget, (or Falling Ternary Targets) is a `falling target` style plotter game for SBTCVM Gen 2. it joins Oncoming Trains as one of Gen 2's two SBTGA-based example games.
While, its not possible to adequately depict here, SSTNPL has recently gotten a HUGE performance improvement across the board. the reason? fairly simple actually....
null is an SBTCVM Assembly keyword that maps to the opcode 0 in the SBTCVM G2x ISA. for a unfortunate amount of time SSTNPL has been using nulls as an easy way to target the next block of generated assembly with a label, there were two problems with this, however:
enter zerosize. this fairly obviously named assembler keyword, doesn't generate much of anything at all... its sole purpose is to make it possible for compilers, like SSTNPL's compiler, to target the next line of assembly code, without writing that line first.
as simple a change as this may be, its definitely improved performance of many different SSTNPL modules and applications.
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| included demo of mode 31 |
In terms of uses, Mode 31, offers FAR greater information density than the older 243x243 mode 30.
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| modified plottertext showing VERY small text. |
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| 575x575 tritmap |
BINRLE is an efficient 2-tone RLE image compression format supported by the BINRLE options in gfxcon.py
it features 2 additional interpolated conversion modes:
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| 2-line interpolation |
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| 4-line interpolation |
SSTNPL for the longest time has been limited to its goto+label system, and its stack-based subroutine system, when it comes to controling code flow...
not anymore...
Helpful Links:
SSTNPL Documentation (which has been updated with information on the new features.)
SBTNET is the one of these three items thats planned to be tested with Gen 2.
The basic idea of SBTNET is a fully balanced ternary networking system similar to TCP/IP, emulated using a client-server scheme built against TCP/IP.
Its intention is to be used with not only SBTCVM, but other balanced ternary systems as well, as SBTNET's protocol schemes will be open, and the refrence client & server code Free (libre) open source software.
The SBTCVM-BTT2 text encoding is planned to be extended with additional control codes, and chosen as standard for SBTNET.
Gen 3, while it will be based upon and backwards compatible with SBTCVM Gen 2's ISA, roms, disks & compiler toolchain, the VM itself will be 12 trits, generally be expanded ISA & featureset wise, and fully reimplimented in the Rust programming language.
CerberOS is a future project for SBTCVM Gen 3. (one that will influence much of Gen 3's ISA extensions over Gen 2's ISA)
Its design goal is to implement a highly portable ternary *nix-like OS, that may stand as a foundation for other ternary OSes, and act as the OS for more ternary systems than just SBTCVM.
A purpose-built portable programming language will be designed for this task, as neither existing SBTCVM Gen 2-compatible languages are portable enough,to handle a portable Ternary OS Kernel of the type CerberOS will require.
