New community dev tool uploaded: XCI: eXtremely Compact Interpreter

SlithyMatt · Post by **SlithyMatt** » Sat Jun 27, 2020 3:44 am

Very cool! Good luck with your game!

SlithyMatt · Post by **SlithyMatt** » Wed Jul 29, 2020 4:58 am

If you are interested in using XCI to make a game, I am working on an Atom plugin that will provide syntax highlighting. I have keywords and comments working so far:

https://github.com/SlithyMatt/language-xci

SlithyMatt · Post by **SlithyMatt** » Fri Jul 31, 2020 3:41 am

The language-xci package is now published:

https://atom.io/packages/language-xci

You can simply install the package from within Atom by searching for "xci". It's the only thing that comes up!

SlithyMatt · Post by **SlithyMatt** » Tue Aug 25, 2020 1:51 am

A huge shout-out to @Jestin for making this vim plugin for XCI: https://github.com/jestin

Not only will it do syntax highlighting like my Atom package, it will also do coloring of pixel-nibbles in sprite and tile hex files:

I never expected to create a language for 8-bit development in the 21st century, much less have people start developing tools for it!

Jestin · Post by **Jestin** » Thu Aug 27, 2020 9:07 pm

It was a fun exercise. If I have time, I'd like to expand it in two ways:

Add code to do a "best guess" approximation of colors from the palette. Right now it's just my own fiddling with terminal colors

Add a command to set the colors from one of XCI's palette files

Full link: https://github.com/jestin/vim-xci

SlithyMatt · Post by **SlithyMatt** » Fri Aug 28, 2020 12:17 am

3 hours ago, Jestin said:

Add a command to set the colors from one of XCI's palette files

Easy enough to do. Just have to search for an XCI File with a "palette" key and then you have the path to the palette hex file, and you will have the 12 bit color values for the primary palette offset.

Jestin · Post by **Jestin** » Fri Aug 28, 2020 12:25 am

The first is what's really required to do the second. Other than gVim, vim can only specify codes for terminal colors, so your palette within vim is completely dependent on the terminal it's running in. There are some vim plugins out there (mostly syntax highlighters that attempt to do the same thing with CSS hex codes) that do a best guess approximation for the terminal. When looking into it a few weeks ago, this seemed like the best option. I just haven't had the time to dive into it yet.

Starsickle · Post by **Starsickle** » Tue Sep 08, 2020 3:27 am

Really neat - Definitely will keep my eye on this. Please continue supporting it with updates, tutorials, and workflow videos and documents.

SlithyMatt · Post by **SlithyMatt** » Tue Sep 08, 2020 4:10 am

40 minutes ago, Starsickle said:

Really neat - Definitely will keep my eye on this. Please continue supporting it with updates, tutorials, and workflow videos and documents.

Oh, I will! Especially since my first commercial game for the X16 is being built with XCI:

SlithyMatt · Post by **SlithyMatt** » Fri Sep 18, 2020 1:33 am

Big news for XCI and the Commander X16!