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

Show HN: Conway's Game of Life in boot sector(github.com)

25 points by 0xAX 2 days ago | 3 comments

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!

mysterydip 4 hours ago |

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?

0xAX 3 hours ago | |

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 3 hours ago |

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)