20250308 Major ALICE update!
For a couple months i've been working on a bunch of new stuff and improvements for Aubery's Logic Integrated Circuit Emulator (ALICE), and yesterday i concluded the works that have been planned! I am very happy to tell everyone that ALICE now crashes much less, the circuit tracing GUI became much more usable, and even more high-level devices were programmed!~
Circuit integration now works in full - watch me go from a basic logic gate based single-bit full adder to a 4-bit adder IC with a whole demo setup to test it, inside the same project!
Some high-level devices were added: everything but the ALU seems to be working correctly. TruthTable allows you to build a circuit and then compose its truth table in realtime! Using the pre-made compounds can be easier on the CPU than user-made ICs, even though i'm working on making everything run even faster. Oh, and now there's a "text" device to leave notes right on top of the circuit!
All devices now show a memo on what they do when selected, and a cohesive (although still and forever lacking) manual was started!
Finally, there are now demo projects! They and the manual are bundled within ALICE itself, so no need to download them separately from anywhere. I will work on adding more to them, with the general goal of one day having a "full basic 8-bit CPU" on the list!
Aside from these novelties, i worked real hard and made the GUI run smoother and explode less. Frankly, the code was pure spaghetti before this overhaul, and now it's at least meatballs with a side of spaghetti. It became better, i promise. Along with this, a bunch of minor bugs were eliminated, and i'm slowly ridding the project from depending on my old bmco.js utility library, which would make it run smoother.
There's a lot of plans for this project, and seeing people using it at all would greatly increase my motivation to implement them. Not like i am not motivated.. but you could make things happen faster! So! Use the thing, tell me when it explodes in your face - with saves and bug error texts preferrably - and show me what you made with it!
And one last thing: ALICE is now hosted on Gitea because i am tired of github's copilot bullshit. I will shut down the github repository soon enough -- nothing to lose, since there are no open issues out there or anything. If you feel like digging through my caverns of nonsense, or run ALICE locally, go ahead and download the source code from the Gitea repo!
