minimicro-sysdisk VS minimicro-editor-themes

Mini Micro comes with a bunch of built-in playing card images which come from Kenney's Boardgame Pack. I love these card images, and when I started the project my goal was to demonstrate a game made using only these built-in assets.

Among the built-in images in Mini Micro is /sys/pics/digits.png. It looks like this:

Here we're using shellArgs[1:] to get the list of files passed to the script, and then file.info to get some details about each one. This script skips directories (of course it could be expanded to handle those too), and then collects all the other files more than 30 days old, with the help of the dateTime module.

You can use this to make your code do different things depending on where it's running. For example, the Acey-Deucey game included with Mini Micro at /sys/lib/acey-deucey.ms is designed to work on command-line MiniScript, too. But the latter doesn't have the Sound class, so we "mock" that class at the start of the program, so the rest of the code doesn't need to worry about it.

He's currently divided his work into two projects on GitHub: MiniScript.TS is the language core, while MiniScript-NodeJS adds Node.js support and a script-runner. The latter includes support for print and input, the import command, and a subset of the Mini Micro /sys disk.

This might be of interest if you already know BASIC, and want to quickly bang out a game or utility. MiniBASIC provides a good set of high-resolution drawing commands, suitable for making plots, graphs, and diagrams. It also has access to all the data on the built-in /sys disk, including stock images, sounds, and a complete English word list! And, being completely cross-platform, Mini Micro (and so MiniBASIC) runs identically on any desktop computer (and soon mobile devices, too). So if BASIC is already in your wheelhouse, MiniBASIC offers a great way to take advantage of these Mini Micro features.

This uses a couple of tricks which you could glean from the startup.ms file on the system disk (/sys/startup.ms):

So as usual, I come away with a realization for something that really ought to exist in MiniScript: an efficient sort algorithm that takes a comparison function as an argument. I'll code this up soon, and who knows, it might even find its way into a future version of /sys/lib/listUtil.

One lesson learned is that I should always validate my function inputs. Had my findPath function simply checked that it was being passed two 2-element lists, I would have caught my error right away and fared much better. Grabbing code from somewhere else is no excuse; the first thing I should have done is examined the parameters, and added a quick qa.assert to me sure I call it correctly.

Once again, my starter program did me no good; nor did I need any of the stuff I've been gathering in my custom aoc module, or even the standard /sys/lib modules. The solution was plain, unadorned MiniScript. ❤️

These are a collection of small challenges you can do in MiniScript. Some of them need the free Mini Micro environment, because they make use of graphics or sound; some can also be done in Stardew Valley using the Farmtronics mod, while still others can be done in any MiniScript environment.

Mini Micro is the free neo-retro virtual computer that is a popular environment for writing retro-style games and demos in MiniScript. It contains a large number of demo programs in the /sys/demo directory. But did you know there is an "attract mode" that cycles through some of these demos — even self-playing a game of Asteroids?

The MiniScript community has been really growing lately, in part due to our partnership with Micro-Jam. Some amazingly talented game devs have started building games for Mini Micro, and even though most of them are made in a weekend, they're really fun to play! Here are a few of my favorites.

Last month for Micro Jam 018, a game jam with the theme "Water" and restriction "health is power", developer Florian Castel developed an amazing puzzle game called Sub-Optimal (in only two days!) using MiniScript and Mini Micro. He ended up winning not only "best MiniScript entry," but also first place overall, beating out 84 other entries!

Last weekend I participated in Micro Jam 013, which had a theme of "Lava" and a prerequisite of "Time is Limited". As I'm a sponsor of that jam, I wasn't eligible for any prizes, but I wanted to enter anyway, both for fun and to demonstrate what can be done with MiniScript and Mini Micro.

“Coding joyfully” couldn’t be a better description of the goals of MiniScript and Mini Micro as well. MiniScript is a relatively new language, created in 2017 to provide a clean, simple, powerful, and fun language for computer programming. It’s small enough that the language core can be described in a single page. But with functions as first-class objects, support for object-oriented programming, and sophisticated handling of lists and maps, it’s powerful enough for real work.

I recently discovered a C++ library (circle) that simplifies writing C++ programs to run on the Raspberry Pi, directly "on the metal" — without any operating system. I've had a Raspberry Pi 400 on my side table for a couple years now, running the standard Linux distribution, but not getting much use. What I really wanted was an experience like the classic home computers of the 80s: turn it on, and within seconds you are at a friendly blinking cursor, waiting for you to type some BASIC (or in our case, MiniScript) code.

Since its introduction in 2017, MiniScript's community has been steadily growing. And a delightful community it is — it spans the gamut from brand-new, never-coded-before beginners to experienced software engineers.

[LANGUAGE: MiniScript]

I am sponsoring a private leaderboard/contest for people tackling AoC 2023 using MiniScript, a new(ish), simple, clean programming language. Join us! No previous experience in MiniScript is needed; check out the 1-page Quick Reference and you will quickly see what the language is like.