load tiny base64 encoded carts from site URL (feature)

[runlow]

Example URL https://tic80.com/play#ECMAAHjaKylKTE5VykjNyclXKM8vyklRCvF0tk2tyCzhAgCMHAmREQ

The proposed feature

• site loads the tiny cart contained within the URL itself
• the cart itself already has compressed code (no need for extra compression)
• similar to how pico8 education edition opens "url carts"
• this would be a normal just small TIC-80 cart encoded in base64
• char count of the URL will probably need to be capped, pico8 EE caps it at 2040 chars
• that's quite a lot still, code is already compressed, palette and wave tables are one byte via chunk 17
• "export url" command would save this url to clipboard. if palette/waves are default it would use chunk 17
• base64url may or may not be better for this than base64

Why?

• the idea that the cart itself fits in the URL is kinda neat I think, I get that it's not everyone's cup of tea
• meant for tiny carts, tweet carts, sizecoding, short examples whipped up on the spot, fiddles
• there's already a WIP and demoscene sections, guess this would be a different way that doesn't store anything on the server

Converting a cart for debug This is one way to extract the cart. First copy the last part of the URL after #, then run these commands in a shell. So from the example earlier:

$ echo "ECMAAHjaKylKTE5VykjNyclXKM8vyklRCvF0tk2tyCzhAgCMHAmREQ==" | base64 -d > foo.tic
$ tic80 foo.tic

Without padding you'll get an error but it will still work. This will run the TIC-80 cart and print the message "hello world". There's a bit of overhead from ZLIB compression in the cart but it's worth it with bigger code.

To do the reverse:

$ base64 -w0 foo.tic
ECMAAHjaKylKTE5VykjNyclXKM8vyklRCvF0tk2tyCzhAgCMHAmREQ==

Then add it to the end of the URL. It's the same as the original string but with padding (the = at the end).

Examples of this in other projects https://twitter.com/Xietanu/status/1569382180505223171 https://twitter.com/nobonoko/status/1517928168535044097 https://exoticorn.github.io/microw8/#examples https://itty.bitty.site/ https://dollchan.net/bytebeat/#v3b64q1ZKzk9JVbJSKrGzM1ErUaoFAA

[bztsrc]

Just my humble opinion, but if this is going to be implemented, I don't think using the "https://tic80.com/play" URL prefix is good, because it is misleading. It would be much better (and more standard compliant) to use the data URI scheme for this. Like

data:application/octet-stream;base64,ECMAAHjaKylKTE5VykjNyclXKM8vyklRCvF0tk2tyCzhAgCMHAmREQ

Here the scheme "data:" replaces the "https:" scheme telling that the URL in itself contains the data, so no network connection needed. The mime part could be something tic specific too, application/octet-stream is a jolly joker for binary. Otherwise this data URI is standardized and widely supported, so you can place these "data:" links on any website just like you would place a "https:" link for example. Both are valid URLs.

Just a thought, bzt

[nesbox]

Let's try, I like the idea Thanks