franeklubi / dino

Chrome's t-rex based bootsector game (512 bytes) written in 16-bit x86 assembly (now with 8086 support!)

dino

;  ______     ______     __      __     ______        ;
;  \      \   \_    _\   \  \\   \  \   \      \      ;
;   \  \\  \     \  \     \  \`\  \  \   \  \\  \     ;
;    \  \\  \     \  \     \  \ `\ \  \   \  \\  \    ;
;     \  ``  \    _\  \_    \  \  `\\  \   \  ``  \   ;
;      \_____/    \______\   \__\   `\__\   \______\  ;
;        A tiny game in 512 bytes (bootsector)        ;

Dino is a bootsector game (512 bytes) written in 16-bit x86 assembly, that's based on Chrome's t-rex runner game!

The game can now be assembled for CPU 8086!

---

• How to play
• How to compile
• Controls
• Acknowledgements

---

How to play

There are various ways to play dino: you can either use an x86 emulator, or burn the binary to a floppy (or some other medium), and try booting your old pc off of it.

I recommend using an emulator, namely qemu.

• To use qemu, first compile or download the binary (a.bin) from the releases section, then run this command:

$ qemu-system-x86_64 a.bin || qemu-system-i386 a.bin

• If you have make, nasm and qemu installed, you can just use this command:

$ make run

How to compile

To compile dino you'll need to have nasm installed on your machine.

• If you have make installed, just use it like so:

$ make

• If you want to compile by hand, use:

$ nasm -f bin -o a.bin dino.asm

• Alternatively, if you want to generate a 1440KiB floppy disk image, use:

$ make floppy

Controls

• Use shift to jump
• Use ctrl to crouch

Acknowledgements

• I wish to thank nanochess (Oscar Toledo) for inspiring me to make this project and for writing his book (Programming Boot Sector Games), that helped me greatly.
• I'd also like to thank Mateusz, for helping me with creating the sprites included in the code.

Dino: 512 bytes
This README: 2154 bytes (not counting the preview gif)

dino's Issues

Dino 2.0

With the newly gained 39 bytes it's now possible to add more enhancements to the game, e.g.:

• more random enemy spawning algo (with difficulty level rising preserved, of course)
• better collision detection (although I think it's good enough)
• one more enemy
• crouch sprite for the dino
• more varied cactii
• better scoring (now it only indicates how many enemies you have avoided, maybe the scoring system could be revised)

Some BIOS, [Shift] and [Ctrl] cannot work

@franeklubi
Hi,
Some BIOS, [Shift] and [Ctrl] cannot work.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/425979

Suggest

• Use ↑ to jump
• Use ↓ to crouch
  Or
• Use w to jump
• Use s to crouch

Set up workflows

Please include the binary

A suggestion: We normally leave binaries out of repos for size and portability. In this case, saving those few bytes prevents less experienced users from giving it a go in a VM.

Tabs

Reformat to use tab indentations instead of spaces

Add 8086 compatibility

For now, the game can be assembled for CPU 186 and up. I wish it to be able to be assembled for 8086 processor

Development has started on branch 8086-comp - all it needs is finding a couple of bytes to shrink it to 512 bytes overall