Tao Te Ching Gameboy Research

Compiled Gameboy ROM

A while ago I was inspired by J Schrier's Gameboy software and hardware research which explores the I Ching, the Stations of the Cross, the Rosary, and Mao Tse Tung's Little Red Book. So I modified an Apple IIe program that I always considered to be Taoist in nature and rewrote it for the gameboy.

It generates nonstatic images that at times can be quite visually appealing. You can pause it at any time, but it will spit out a verse from the classical Chinese text, the Tao Te Ching. The point is that you can never pause or even consciously consider any moment without losing its beauty through intellectual abstraction.

I never finished the project -- I was going to add color and package this in cartridge form, and enter the entire classical text, but since I have to pack up most of my computers in my move this weekend, I didn't want it to be forgotten. If anyone wants to pick up where I left off, the code is posted below.

Note that the menu screen and some of the screen captures display "HAL666" because that was the name of the Apple IIe program I originally wrote to be used on stage.




SOURCE CODE -- No License, but let me know if you do anything with it

taoteching.c
taoteching.h

OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS:

TAO TE CHING
At the start menu, the user may press any button when he is ready, and nonstatic images, or moments, will begin to generate. Sometimes they are visually appealing. Once in tao mode, the user has the following controls:

PAUSE (AWARENESS)
When one wishes to preserve a moment, he may press the START button to pause it exactly as it is. But he may not be happy with the results, because no moment can be paused without intellectual abstraction. The instance one realizes one is in a moment, he is pulled out of it by that very realization.

CATCH (ANTICIPATION)
When one likes the way an moment is forming and wishes to wait for it to complete its current rotation, he may hold the SELECT button until the rotation is complete. The image will then be frozen, but again abstracted intellectually.

INVERT (SAMENESS OF OPPOSITES)
When one wishes to view the opposite of what he is currently viewing, paused or not, he may press the A button to do so. But he may find that the opposite of that moment is more similar to that moment than anything less polarized, like a tree, a smile, or a song.

CLEAR
When one wishes to empty the abnormalities on the canvas, he may press the B button.