# darena

an open-ended game of rocks and sand, and/or a simulator for compudanzas

the sandy space contains a bunch of rocks in either one of two possible colors, and yourself.

push and arrange the rocks to prototype and build your own computer, cellular automata, 1-bit art, etc.

=> ./img/screenshot_darena.png screenshot of the game. it shows a square clear space inside a textured world. inside the square there are several round rocks of two possible colors. there is a small platform, and a person.

what will you do with the sand?

# about

darena was developed as an exercise to learn about {uxn}

=> https://wiki.xxiivv.com/site/uxn.html uxn virtual machine and assembly language

on one hand, this happened as part of the {s-camino} practice.

on the other, this was thought as a potencial simulator of computational {performances}.

you can play with it in the web, thanks to the webuxn port by aduros:

=> https://aduros.com/webuxn/?rom=roms/darena.rom darena via webuxn
=> https://github.com/aduros/webuxn webuxn repository

# features

* a character that moves in all four cardinal directions
* rocks that can be pushed around, unless they are colliding with other rocks or the borders of the "arena"
* a toggling station where rocks can be switched to the other color
* realistic animation: the character slows down when pushing rocks, recovering their original speed when walking

# controls

use the arrow keys for cartesian movement within the space

# possible "improvements"

* add an "official" pulling option (you can pull rocks right now, but in a hacky way)
* save rocks state (position and color) to file
* optimize the use of memory for rock colors, using one bit per rock instead of one byte
* optimize for 256x192 screensize

# the code

this iteration has 31 rocks and a single toggling station where one can switch their color/state.

you can find the code in the {uxnería}
=> https://codeberg.org/sejo/uxneria uxnería repo