POLYBIUS™
POLYBIUS™ is a programming language created by a company under the name Sinneslöschen in 1982. The coding language was rumored to have spread through discarded floppy disks found in junk bins at Ham Radio festivals. There is multiple reports of men in black, coming in and escorting the sellers associated with these junk bins, along with all of their bins.
Mental effects
There is reported effects originating from trying to comprehend and use this programming language POLYBIUS™. These effects contain, but are not limited to.
- Headaches
- Flu like symptoms
- Loss of time
- Seizures
- Amnesia
- Death
Specifics
⚠ FURTHER READING OF THIS ARTICLE CAN CAUSE THE LISTED SYMPTOMS ABOVE ⚠
POLYBIUS™ uses 32000 bytes for the usable memory space, these bytes are split into 400 different rings, each ring containing 80 bytes. As the programmer you control a cursor or "Rocket Ship". If you reach the end of a ring you loop back to index 0 of the ring. Same happens if you reach the end of the 400 rings. If you move forwards or backwards you will be on the same index of the ring but on the next ring. Cells wrap at 255 back to 0. Upon starting a POLYBIUS™ program it starts off by checking the RAM and ROM these are announced to the terminal via "ROM OK" and "RAM OK". To print a character you will need to follow a Polybius square where 21 would be 2 and 1, Mapping that to a Polybius square gives you your character.
You have 2 accumulators
- Lifes (You will have 255 lives in the beginning of the program)
- Score
You can lose lives via ████████████.
You are able to increment your score by ███████████████████████.
Polybius square
POLYBIUS™ Comes with its own special Polybius square this is used to output characters, it is as follows.
[1] |
[2] |
[3] |
[4] |
[5] |
[6] |
[7] |
[8]
| |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
[1]
|
P | O | L | Y | 1 | 9 | 8 | 2 |
[2]
|
A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H |
[3]
|
I | J | K | L | M | N | Q | R |
[4]
|
T | U | V | W | X | Z | 0 | 3 |
[5]
|
4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | ! | " | # | |
[6]
|
$ | % | & | ` | ( | ) | * | + |
[7]
|
, | - | . | / | : | ; | < | = |
[8]
|
> | ? | @ | [ | \ | ] | ^ | - |
For example "HELLO, WORLD." in this would be.
H 82 E 52 L 43 L 43 O 21 55 , 17 W 44 O 21 R 83 L 43 D 42 . 37
Now, without an explanation to the characters it would just be.
82 52 43 43 21 55 17 44 21 83 43 42 37
Instructions
| Symbol | Instruction |
|---|---|
| █. | Move left on the ring |
| █. | Move right on the ring |
| █. | Move forward in the rings |
| █. | Move backwards in the rings |
| █ | Increments a cell |
| █ | Prints out a letter according to the Polybius square. |
This is still a work in progress so things are "Censored" because they are not thought of yet.