yukiiro-nite/hex

general overview / notes

Hopefully hex will be a hexagonal grid based spacial programming system. So far, here are the general ideas i have for it:

• Hexagonal grid (obviously)

• Each hexagon can have hexcode inside of it

• 1 byte can indicate all directions combinations on a hexagon as well as up and down

• There can be multiple layers of hex grid

• Extra bytes in a hex could be used to execute commands

• Three modes: Edit, Remove, Run

  • in edit mode, the user can click on a hex to edit it's hexcode and other attributes
  • in remove mode, clicking on a hex will clear it
  • in run mode a user can click on a hex to add it to the hex queue

• when a hex runs, it will add hexes to the queue using the direction hex

• the hex queue will be added to in a clock-wise motion starting from the top

• once the current tick's hex queue is empty, the next tick will start with the new queue

• if the next tick's queue is empty, the program will end

• individual hexes may have a background color and border color for inactive and active states

• individual hexes may have some kind of internal storage

• hexes may be able to acces some kind of global storage

• hexes may be able to access the storage of their neighbors

opcodes

• Ideally there should be very few op codes, maybe 16 as to fit onto one hexcode
• A neighbor code (NC) is a 1 byte value that refers to any combination of hex neighbors
• a hex stops running when a next is successfully called
• A location (L) is a 4 bit value that refers to a location (self, neighbors, global stacks A-G)
• ACC is the local hex's accumulator
• All processes that read from L read from the top of the stack. this pops the value.
• Io location consists of two L, for a total of 64kb of memory locations
• [Feature?] the neighbor codes of those who called the current hex should be stored in one of the global stacks
• all nexts should be able to accept a location for a neighbor code, which will grab the value off of the top of the stack
  • next NC
  • next if zero NC
  • next if greater than zero NC
  • next if less than zero NC
  • add L to ACC
  • sub L to ACC
  • push L from ACC
  • pop L into ACC
  • set val in ACC
  • nxz L NC
  • nxgz L NC
  • nxlz L NC
  • negate the ACC
  • read io location into ACC
  • write io location into ACC
  • nop? I don't think i really need a nop, but there's one here if i need it.

TODO

• build a parser for the instruction set
• build a runner for the grid
• add a run options panel

Open questions

• How do other assembly / machine languages handle by value and by reference?
• are there any order to opcodes? are their bin values random?