I made a NES emulator in 15 minutes
I made a NES emulator in 15 minutes on HackerTube: recommended by 3 Hacker News commenters across 5 separate months, 2013–2022.
Bisqwit writes a NES emulator in C++ in about 15 minutes of tool-assisted, sped-up coding, narrated with captions. It shows an accurate emulator built with a compile-time generated 6502 instruction table. Part 2 covers compiling and running it.
What HN commenters said
9 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
petercooperJan 2019Strongly recommends
Agreed. My favourite programming YouTuber by a long stretch. If anyone is unfamiliar with him and wants to watch some of the "classics" I'd recommend these: His "cracking videogame passwords" series: [link] Creating a Doom-style 3D engine in C: [link] Creating a Rogue-like game in C++11: [link] Creating a PIC16 emulator and NES music player: [link] Creating a NES emulator: ▶ this video Creating a DOS VGA raytracer: [link]
in “Let’s Create a Speech Synthesizer in C++17 [video]” · View on HN
molticrystalOct 2022Recommends
Those who enjoy this might also enjoy "Creating a NES emulator in C++11" [0] [1] [2] while not short in bytes of code(space) there is a nice video series short in minutes(time). Bisqwit takes you on a 30 minute tool assisted coding journey of making an NES emulator and also provides a 15 minute followup Q&A video explaining different aspects. [0] ▶ this video [1] [link] [2] [link]
in “Smolnes: A NES emulator in less than 5000 significant bytes of C++” · View on HN
petercooperOct 2016Recommends
[link] is by far my favorite and I've spent many hours watching him. He does things like create a Doom-style engine from scratch: [link] .. create a NES emulator: ▶ this video .. work back from a C++17 example to show why new C++ standards are needed: [link] .. and even building a Tetris clone in GW-BASIC: [link] .. Right now, he's doing a series on cracking 80s videogame passwords: [link] Sirajology - [link] - is another interesting one. He moves a bit too quickly for me, but does things like explain machine learning in 5 minutes or how to generate music with systems like Tensorflow.
in “Ask HN: What is your favorite YouTube channel for developers?” · View on HN
atestiMar 2015Recommends
Here's a very clean and clever NES emulator in C++ by Bisqwit of TAS fame: ▶ this video He presents the code in the style of a tool assisted run, typing it in in high speed. I never saw templates used like that to create the unrolled CPU dispatcher
in “Nes emulator written in go” · View on HN
petercooperApr 2014Recommends
[link] record high quality videos at many programming conferences each year and then share the recordings on YouTube. So much to enjoy here, especially if you're open source leaning, like most of the events they do. O'Reilly puts up lots of good stuff at [link] although the webinar recording quality leaves a lot to be desired. A real random set of tech topics though and often something worth watching. Entrepreneur - [link] - usually puts up lots of short videos with a business tip in or something. Sometimes longer interviews. Usually worthwhile if a little superficial at times. The guy who founded Something Awful has a ridiculously addictive channel - [link] - he generally plays horrifically poorly produced indie games with his sidekick Shmorky and I could listen to their absurdist banter all day. It's a bit of a mish mash but [link] always blows my mind when he does his coding videos such as coding a NES emulator in C++11: ▶ this video [link] is awesome if you're into supercars. He's currently doing a tour of European supercar events and factories putting up a video each day. Far Lands or Bust - [link] - is a guy who started to walk towards the 'far lands' in a Minecraft maps years ago. He's something like 10% of the way but is still plodding along recording his progress. This is a real pilgrimage with all the highs and lows that entails. MrThaiBox123 - [link] - is a British IT expert who seems to have an endless supply of cash to buy gadgets, phones, and amazing computer setups.
in “Ask HN: Your favorite YouTube channels?” · View on HN
0xcde4c3dbNov 2018Cites it
The main advantage to NES emulation is that it's a very mature area of study. High-quality documentation is much more readily available than for other systems, and there's more public discussion of the specific problems that NES emulator authors encounter (both primarily on nesdev.com [1] [2]). There's even a sort of tool-assisted speedrun of writing an accurate NES emulator, if you're into that sort of thing [3] [4]. [1] [link] [2] [link] [3] ▶ this video [4] [link]
in “Goboy: Multi-Platform Nintendo Game Boy Color Emulator Written in Go” · View on HN
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iofjAug 2015Cites it
I love having streams of coding open while working. It makes me type faster (I think). Sound is off though. ▶ this video
in “The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code” · View on HN
grapeshotDec 2013Cites it
It's possible to do something like that in C. In C++, you can even do some template magic to create all the appropriate functions for each opcode based on something like the original instruction decode ROM. Brilliant and short code, but very difficult to write in the first place. Here's a very apropos example of this technique as applied to the 6502. ▶ this video
in “Show HN: I made an easy-to-understand 6502 emulator in pure C” · View on HN
GhotiFishOct 2013Cites it
Yes. It is certainly more pithy. ACTUALLY! It reminds me of a technique Bisqwit used when he made his emulator. He used strings to define the behavior of certain instructions, the strings were actually interpreted at compile time. Though I think this is a C++ specific trick. ▶ this video he brings in the instruction table at 1:30
in “A quick look at the Redis source code” · View on HN