I'd like to thank TROLOZY and randallmeyer2000 for being deeply inspiring. TROLOZY inspired me to work on an
input peripheral protocol. randallmeyer2000 inspired me to consider tiling pieces of a chessboard matrix where every tile is 100mm*100mm or less because it obtains a cheaper rate for manufacturing. The triangular packing of keyboards led me to designing scalable keyboard tile which is smaller than 100mm*100mm threshold. This design has 18mm keyswitch spacing and a hexagonal perimeter. In particular, 5.5 18mm hexagons is exactly 99mm. After doodling a Ludo board, considering keyboards and chess computers, and doing the calculations for hexagonal tiling, the next obvious step was to make patches of hexagons for hexgrid table top role playing. Indeed, I've found that it is possible to make 12, 13 and 14 hexagon patches which fit together quite snuggly while never exceeding the 100mm*100mm threshold. Indeed, I'm so confident about about this system, I ordered 15 designs; mostly in multiples of 100.
This means I'm imminently expecting about 30kg of PCBs to be delivered to the Sheep Pen. Actually, I'm load balancing my orders across PCBWay and JLCPCB. In turn, JLCPCB is load balancing my order across Factory 1, Factory 3 and Factory 4. It is an enviable problem to have but I think that I've outgrown the hobbiest PCB manufacturing companies. After ordering, I ran the calculations and I think that I consumed 0.6% of PCBWay and JLCPCB's daily manufacturing capacity. It reminds of the time when I purchased 0.01% of the daily neodymium manufacturing capacity. That was fantastic because it was two weeks before China embargoed neodymium export to the US. Needless to say, sales were brisk and profits were good. Actually, I still have about 40% of those magnets. I should add magnets to the
list of giveaways for newbie hobbyists.
This may be wandering a little off topic but I assume that programmers are more likely than average to play one or more table top role playing systems. Indeed, character statistics aren't hugely different to register state. In particular, the six stats of AD&D tally somewhat with a 6502's accumulator, two index registers, stack pointer, flags and program counter. This observation is most pertinent to anyone making an educational resource to teach 6502 programming.
If anyone want to test a fiberglass hexgrid game system then send your postal address and I'll send out a complimentary set of hexgrids. Also indicate if you'd like some of the functional prototype PCBs in addition to the decorative ones (which are, amusingly, randomly sampled for electrical testing at the factory). Apologies for the awful photography but please find enclosed an example of some prototypes. Top of image: MallWorld theme tiles. Never heard of MallWorld? That's an amazing "rabbit hole". Left of image: standard sword 'n' sorcery theme. Right of image: Artic theme. (It took me 4.5 hours to make a decent set of snowflake designs.) Bottom of image: Floor is lava.
Likewise, if randallmeyer2000 wants a PCB version of 6502-opoly, I could try designing it, although manufacture is likely to be uneconomic.
To answer randallmeyer2000's question about the quantity of opcodes: 12 opcodes form the majority of 6502 programs. However, if one player has a "Monopoly" on LDA or INX, it would greatly reduce the value of all addressing modes which use RegX. A more workable system might be similar to the poker variants in which cards are common to all hands. Alternatively, opcodes can be greatly reduced by modeling a stack architecture. This arrangement is also more tolerant to omissions. If you're brave enough to delve into the
Forth Forum, you'll find that omissions in any dialect of Forth are trivially overcome. This type of property would lead to a mentally stimulating game which is varied and interesting. It is also possible to implement it with a 6502 on the game board.
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