PC32 is a 32bit graphically oriented computer language that allows for a fast development cycle. Based off the original ColorFORTH, the language implements its own editor, an interpreter, a compiler and a simple but fairly powerful x86 assembler.
The language runs natively managing the computer registers directly. These are arranged as follows:
- EAX: Top of Data Stack, used in arithmetic, logic and pretty much everything.
- ECX: Second parameter register, used in a complementary manner alongside EAX.
- EDX: TMP register.
- EBX: A register, used to read memory incrementally. It also holds the pointer to the source code being compiled.
- ESI: Data Stack pointer
- EDI: B register, used to store memory incrementally. It also holds the pointer to the memory being compiled to.
- ESP: Call Stack pointer, used as in any C application would(return addresses, temp storage).
- EBP: Offset Memory register, used to access memory as an array.
PC32 has 32MB of available memory fixed at at anytime at address 0x08052000, the programmer is free to use it as they please. malloc can be used to get more memory but it has to be managed using the free word.
Source is held in memory at all times, its divided in blocks of 1024 bytes. Replaces the space(char 32) for a tag containing function/color and length, it also encodes numbers as their direct byte representation while letters are kept as traditional ASCII.
PC32 is strictly a 32bit application and as such it needs a 32bit environment in order to be built, in linux you'll need multilib support.
- libmikmod(compiled for 32bit) for sound, you can turn this off by taking out -llibmikmod in the makefile
- NASM
- GLFW
NASM and GLFW dont have to be 32bit as far as I understand.
In order to build it just:
- Activate the multilib environment for your shell
- go to PC32 directory
- make
The whole thing should also build for Windows and run natively, but I haven't been able to get it to build successfully probably due to library linking. If you get it working please do write to me, I'll add it to the main release.
After successfully building the language you'll have a fairly large executable file due to itself containing the 32MB of available memory. The executable reads the data.blk file which contains the source code, make sure to make a backup of the data.blk file It should boot on block 300 which is the tutorial.
Press F5 to execute a block, the source and block you're in gets automatically saved anytime you execute.
