Interested and would like to know more? The first dev kits should be available sometime in 2025[2]. Development updates will be given in this account[3].
[1]: not a png in bluesky.
[2]: it's happening, probably (started a week ago).
[3]: frequency of the updates is not guaranteed (life happens).
01.04.2025 17:14 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Viinyl programs start with the "% viinyl/1" header, and then include any number of declarations. Top-level declarations can introduce classes, update class and instance vtables, or introduce initialisation code that's executed directly at the booting phase. It's a pretty straightforward message-passing language otherwise.
You could program each of the 3 chips (the vii98 processor, the viiju GPU, and the voiz APU) directly in assembly, but we've got you covered with a high-level language.
Viinyl is a class-based OOPL modelled after Smalltalk with some modern niceties like delimited continuations. Here's a peek:
01.04.2025 17:14 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
The pngs double as the card's art and the game's data (the encoding "steals" the last 3 bits of each RGB component --- the PNG alpha channel is not supported).
Here you have the card for the demo game "The Witch's Garden is Off limits!!", which features a cute witch in a lolita getup holding oversized shears and shocked that her rabbit familiars are eating her flowers again. At the bottom of the card you have the regular contacts for the chip, where it gets inserted in the console, an indicator of the position where the card should go, and a small EEPROM flash chip under the Vii console logo.
Rather than cartridges or discs, Vii uses NFC-enabled 85x54mm cards which hold all the game data (up to 8Mbit). Once you load the game in the console by inserting it in the back pocket you can simply tap the card to load the game and start playing.
This png[1] is a game card for the emulator, btw!
01.04.2025 17:14 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Here are some very early stages captures of our prototype. The Vii has a very cozy form-factor, measuring tiny 8x8x1.5cm (ears included!), which sits just right in the palm of your hand.
But you still get a 480x480px IPS screen with a beefy 1GHz processor, 512MB RAM, and a capable GPU! (yes, that)
01.04.2025 17:14 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0
Just picture this: you're standing in front of the bed of white lilies near the aquarium waiting for your date when she comes running to you, apologetic. "Have you been waiting for long?"
You reply nonchalantly, "Oh! No, I just got here," before you realise you have, in fact, been waiting for an hour already. But, hey, it truly does feel less of a guilty mistake when that waiting time was over in a flash.
Vii is a 4-colour handheld that fits in your bag so you can catch up on your adventure games when you're too early for a date, again.
Available April firs— soon?
It's special announcement day. We'll be releasing a new handheld: Vii!
Combining the convenience of makeup compacts, the power of 32-bit CPUs, and the timeless elegance of phone cards & rotary dials, you can look cute while gaming anywhere.
Give rotary dials as a video game input a try (soon)!
01.04.2025 17:14 — 👍 8 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 2
I'm finally picking up the work on my fantasy/DIY console, Kate, and this week I'm hoping to wrap up the application that lets you publish cartridges for it.
It started as a CLI tool, but I'm a big fan of software that actually lets you see how things will look like for end users, so:
01.01.2025 20:43 — 👍 8 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0
The journey from here. - The Lambda Garden
On to a few more years of secure OS development and programming language design!
Giving it an official start now, as we get ready to focus on making stable versions of Kate and other tools in the project, I took the time to write a few words about where we are, and where we're going :>
~niini
lambdagarden.org/devlog/2024/...
17.11.2024 14:42 — 👍 4 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0
