- Released
- Cancelled
- Role
- Design & Implementation
- License
- Closed Source
- Disciplines
- Design
Animation
Programming
The key to fantasy consoles, like the Pico-8 or the TIC-80, is constraint. The Pico limits the user to some 8192 parser tokens of Lua script, 256 8x8 sprites and a similarly sized tilemap region for level creation.
However, the Pico and the TIC still ship with fully functional Lua interpreters aboard; their constraints are only cosmetic and they are otherwise completely accessible to the modern programmer.
The Stanley is designed with different constraints in mind. There are still artificial limitations like sprite counts and the screen size (240 x 128). Only eight colours — a slight variation of GrafxKid's Rabbit palette — can be drawn.
The key challenge posed by the Stanley, however, is the language. The Stanley's custom programming language is a serial syntax that lacks higher-level abstractions, inspired by BASIC, the Kenbak-1, and Zachtronics' hack-puzzler Exapunks.
This project was superceded by Lena, another game development tool whose creative possibility space is similar to Stanley's, but whose interface and inputs couldn't be more dissimilar.
