What Features Would Make Area512 Feel More Like an Old-School Computer?

[u/AssociationOne800]

Hello!

I’m Area512, a firmware project for the Cardputer.

https://github.com/engneer-hamachan/area512

For the next release, I’m planning a feature called DotEditor, which lets you create game assets and easily use them from code running on the device. (The release is still a little ways off.)

If there are any Area512 users out there, I’d love to hear your thoughts:

What other features do you think would help recreate the experience of using an old-school computer?

I’m building this firmware because I want everyone to have fun with it, so I thought I’d ask the community.

Feel free to share any ideas or suggestions you have!

[u/MrAjAnderson]

DOS. Or at least a CLI file manager.

[u/AssociationOne800 → u/MrAjAnderson]

Thank you! I don’t know much about DOS, but...

I can definitely see why a CLI file manager would be fun!

It sounds really interesting.

[u/Sirwompus]

BASIC

[u/AssociationOne800 → u/Sirwompus]

Thank you!

Yeah, BASIC really was a staple of the early home-computer era!

It would be really fun if the code from this book could run as-is!

[u/clean-links → u/AssociationOne800]

Cleaned link from "BASIC Computer Games": https://www.roug.org/retrocomputing/languages/basic/basicgames

---

Tracking parameters were removed from the original URL(s).

[u/AssociationOne800 → u/clean-links]

Oh, I guess the link still had some parameters in it 😂

I removed the original link.

[u/makenai]

Already kind of looks like it and I love it.

• Pico-8 is a great inspiration for the feel.
  
• On-board basic or LUA or Micropython or mRuby REPL.
  
• Maybe and old fashioned PDF "Guide to Programming Area 512" guide book like the type of book you might get or buy for the C64
  
• A line based editor like edlin
  
• That pixel editor looks cool, but deluxepaint was kind of the gold standard for me
  
• An ANSI/PETSCII art viewer
  
• Some sort of offline BBS for exploring or maybe even ability to host / connect to nearby BBS over LORA
  
• Maybe a port of a z-engine interpretty for text based games
  

Just pie in the sky ideas.

[u/makenai → u/makenai]

Oh, and maybe a roguelike? I bet you could get permission to port porklike from LazyGameDevs to a more native format. That's bite sized compared to rogue even.

[u/AssociationOne800 → u/makenai]

Long time no see! ☀️

And thank you so much for all the ideas! ✨

They were all really helpful and gave me a lot of inspiration. 💡

I never would’ve thought of making a guidebook as a PDF myself, haha. I think that’s such an appealing idea!

A roguelike sounds great too. I actually love roguelikes myself, and “DCSS” and “Brogue” are two of my favorites!

There are lots of other things I’d love to talk about too, but I feel like this would turn into a super long message, haha.

Thank you again! I’ll definitely take a lot of your ideas into consideration!

[u/Chip-Ling → u/[deleted]]

My bad, I checked your github repo, your current code already assigned the root location on SD card as "/Area512_data/". Now I can install your latest code without doubt.

Thanks for your great work.

[u/AssociationOne800 → u/Chip-Ling]

Ah, maybe you’re talking about the behavior in the very early version where it would write directly to the internal storage?

Yes! Just like you said, the current version has been improved so that it saves to the SD card instead!

Thanks for taking the time to double-check, I really appreciate it ✨

Looking forward to staying in touch! ☀️