A tiny machine for
less tiny worlds.

Babble v2 has byte variables and arrays, immutable assets, functions with up to four byte parameters and a byte return value, for loops, switch, and the familiar structured statements.

asset hero = [0x18, 0x3C, 0x7E, 0xDB, 0xFF, 0x24, 0x42, 0x81];
u8 position[2] = [28, 28];

fn move(u8 value, u8 key) {
    if (held(key)) { return value + 1; }
    return value;
}

fn main() {
    layer(0); fill(0);
    loop {
        layer(1); clear();
        position[0] = move(position[0], RIGHT);
        sprite1(position[0], position[1], hero, 2, REPLACE);
        yield;
    }
}

Declarations: u8 score;, u8 map[64];, const SPEED = 2;, and asset ship = [...]. Assets live in the immutable 512-byte asset ROM rather than consuming RAM or startup instructions.

Control flow: if/else, while, for, loop, switch/case/default, break, continue, return, and yield.

Arithmetic: byte arithmetic wraps modulo 256. Operators include + - * / % & | ^ ~ << >>, comparisons, boolean operators, compound assignment, and increment/decrement. Division by zero returns zero.

Functions: parameters use u8, arguments travel through R0–R3, and return values use R0. Recursive calls preserve the caller's parameters, locals, and live expression values on the 64-byte data stack. Keep recursion bounded: return addresses have 32 slots and frame data has 64 bytes.

ROM optimizer: enable Optimize ROM to fold constant expressions and arithmetic identities, branch directly from comparisons, thread jumps, and remove redundant or unreachable machine instructions. The build summary compares the optimized instruction count with the unoptimized baseline.

Editor: completion, snippets, signature help, hover documentation, bracket guides, minimap, compile markers, find/replace, multi-cursor editing, and glyph-margin breakpoints come from Monaco—the editor core used by VS Code.