Starters Guide for Sizecoding very small programs / visual presentations using TIC-80

[superogue]

Hi,

For those interested there is a whole subculture dedicated to writing small audio visual demonstrations in the least amount of bytes possible (usually a 2^n size like 32,64,128 or 256 bytes) on a variety of platforms (dos, atari, spectrum, arm, commodore, javascript and yes also TIC-80). This is called sizecoding.

Unlike some other virtual/fantasy consoles, the TIC-80 actually lends itself for this pretty well, due to its simple cartridge format. Allowing people to create metadata-less TIC cartridges in 256 bytes or less, a couple of examples:

Exotic (256 bytes)
Metropolis '80 (128 bytes)
Episode CCLVI (256 bytes)
Marblelous (256 bytes)
(* note that because of required metadata&screenshot, the online versions are slightly larger than the actual TIC carts)

Now this march (12-14th) we are organising a sizecoding demoparty with many competitions, including a dedicated VM/TIC-80 intro competition at Lovebyte party. A 512byte TIC-80 invitation intro for the TIC-80 has also been released for this

For anyone interested in doing some sizecoding of their own on the TIC-80, we've prepared a nice little guide at: http://www.sizecoding.org/wiki/Virtual_Machines#TIC-80 that is dedicated specifically to some of the techniques used to make a small program, and complements the already excellent TIC-80 wiki.

Hope to see some of you guys take a shot at sizecoding for the TIC-80 and feel free to submit and entry for Lovebyte ;-)