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CppCon 2016: Jason Turner “Rich Code for Tiny Computers: A Simple Commodore 64 Game in C++17”

CppCon · 264.4K views · 2016-09-24 · 1:19:52

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Overview

Jason Turner's CppCon 2016 talk builds a simple Commodore 64 game using C++17, showing how constexpr and const let a modern compiler produce tight 6502 code. He walks through assembly output to show abstractions being optimized away.

On Hacker News

A perennial favorite, recommended as proof that expressive modern C++ can compile to efficient code even on tiny retro hardware.

Recommended by 13 HN people across 10 months · HN mentions 2016–2024

Topics

C, C++, Rust, Go & systems languagesDemoscene & retrocomputingCompilers, interpreters & program analysis
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c++17commodore 64constexpr6502compiler optimizationretro games

What people said

MereInterest · 2017-02 · Strong recommendation

Absolutely. There was a fantastic talk at CppCon last year, using C++17 to program a game for the Commodore 64. Using standard C++ idioms, the optimizer was easily able to make it compile down to efficient machine code. [1] [VIDEO]

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dmit · 2016-10 · Strong recommendation

For those who haven't seen it, there is a wonderful talk by Jason Turner about writing a simple Pong clone for the Commodore 64 in modern C++: [VIDEO]

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0xcde4c3db · 2023-02 · Recommendation

There's a great talk [1] in which C++17 features are used to build an efficient Pong clone on C64. As I recall, the author wound up writing an (obviously limited) x86-to-6502 translator to get around the lack of 6502 support. [1] [VIDEO]

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Sources

Video by CppCon, played through YouTube.

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