Blockly-Z80

[haroldoop]

Hello,

 

As a first step on a project of mine, I'm trying to adapt Google's Blockly to generate Z80 assembly code.

I already have a working demo; so far, it can generate code for printing strings, do math, use global variables and make fixed-size loops. It can also compile the Z80 asm code into a fully working Sega Master System ROM.

 

The source code is available at GitHub. I'm currently targetting the Sega Master System, but it can be easily ported to any Z80-based platform,

[artrag]

A blocky compiler for z80! Very fun!

you should add a couple of extra i/o functions aiming to msx and colecovision.

In order to keep things very simple you could start with simple out and input functions to be mapped in the z80 commands, but this would move complexity to the user side

[+5-11under]

My kids would love to see this for the ColecoVision!

[CrazyBoss]

i tried it for Android one time, but found out i could use ages to drag the blocks around to make just a little functionality - good learning for programming btw.

 

I also found something which was impossible to do, which could be done with real programming, dont remember what is was, but a quite simple thing. But again I think its ment to be some kind of TOY, dont think the next Colecovision or MSX game will be written using this kind of tools. (Please dont take this the wrong way).

[+5-11under]

This may be looking too far ahead, but...

 

It would be great to have a complete environment, especially given that this is largely targeted to beginners. For instance, my kids are somewhat familiar with block programming, and can get some things working. However, getting them to save files, compile, and run files in a separate emulator would be difficult for them. If they could do that all in one environment, whether online or within one program, they could do it. Include some limited graphics tiles/sprites, and have everything available on one screen, and life would be good.

 

Example of limited (but useful) game maker: http://studio.code.org/s/playlab/stage/1/puzzle/10

[haroldoop]

Well, I'm actually intending to use this as a scripting editor for a game making system that would allow non-programmers to make simple games for classic systems; it would probably include:

 

• A 16x16 tile editor for background tiles;
• A 16x16 tile editor for sprites (yeah, the sprites would have a fixed size, at least for the first versions);
• A color palette editor (maybe not on the first versions, though);
• A map editor (without scrolling, at least on the first versions);
• A library of predefined 'behaviors', that would be used to define how the sprites would move;
• An editor for custom behaviors, using Blockly; it would mostly be used for high-level stuff: the low level stuff would already be done in assembly;
• The editor would be able to generate an ASM file which would then be used to make the final ROM.

As you can see, the last two steps are, at least partially, done; now, I need to do the rest.

 

[haroldoop]

New update: now the tool can generate ROMs for either SMS or SG-1000.

 

I've started implementing ColecoVision support, too, but that isn't working, yet.

[+5-11under]

New update: now the tool can generate ROMs for either SMS or SG-1000.

 

I've started implementing ColecoVision support, too, but that isn't working, yet.

 

So close... . Looking forward to it.

[haroldoop]

Thanks!

BTW, there's yet another update:

• Numeric comparisons implemented
• If/elsif/else implemented
  

[haroldoop]

New update:

• All of Blockly's native boolean logic blocks have been implemented.
• Repeat while/repeat until has been implemented.