- Hardware Sniffers: MISC: r0.5.0 revamp - 21 September 2026
MISC r0.5.0 is defined!Today I finished working on MISC r0.5.0, which brings in machine widening to 64-bit and 8 new registers, besides other, smaller upgrades.The most visible change, however, is that this revision brings in a rename of the architecture. When I started working on it, I first thought that "MISC" was unique, knowing (at the time) only CISC and RISC. In one of my videos at the time, I said that I wasn't aware of an already existing "MISC."However, as it turns out, there already is a rich history of an architecture called "MISC," which is why, in this revision, I renamed it to "DANGCSA," or "DANGXA" when spoken, since the "C" and the "S" kind of blend together. In free written text (like docs or posts such as this one), it will always be referred to as "DANGCSA/DANGXA." It stands for "The DANGLING Computer Superarchitecture," where the "super" carries meaning similar to th…
- Brain maps - 20 September 2026
Dev logThe other day I was working on House of Hex in the middle of the night, most photons coming from nowhere but my monitors and keyboard underlight. I had my window open for some time prior but not at that moment. Suddenly I saw a dark blob repeatedly crashing into my second monitor. I knew it was a fly due to its size, but it made me say in my head: "huh, a feedforward network." It's fairly odd to say something like that about a fly, but it was due to my amateur-level work on reinforcement learning agents and learning strategies, like PPO.Connectome, n.: "A connectome is a complete graph of a neural network. In principle, it is not an approximation or even a statistical average. It is a comprehensive list of every connection in a defined neural region." https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/connectomeAs I was observing the fly, I remembered that there was now…
- Hardware Sniffers: MISC and virtual memory - 13 September 2026
disclaimer: some may find some of this content opinionated, but it stems from arbitrary external authorities making choices on users' behalf and not allowing that to be changed. Various manifestations of that occur on the x86 and in existing kernels> Someone: "Virtual memory is free"> Me: "yeah, no"See something odd? I practically cannot use the last ~50Gi of my physical memory. Virtual memory, which doesn't exist physically, runs out prior to the actual physical resource. "Why?" ExactlyWe can all guess who holds the most virtual allocations:Name : msedgewebview2Id : 28620VM(GB) : 3614.21WS(GB) : 0.31Commit(MB) : 324Name : msedgeId : 15308VM(GB) : 3612.44WS(GB) : 0.29Commit(MB) : 218Name : msedgewebview2Id : 68292VM(GB) : 3612.35WS(GB) : 0.11Commit(MB) : 105Name : msedgeId : 64504VM(GB) : 3612.34WS(GB) : 0.52Commit(MB) : 539Name : msedgewebview2Id : 81696VM(GB) : 3612.18WS(GB) : 0.01Com…
- Hardware Sniffers: MISC's programming language, DANGC - 13 September 2026
Dev log #13Welcome to the next devlog!This one is both a dev log and a Hardware Sniffers entry to tell you a bit more about the MISC platform.A few years ago I started designing a programming language that I thought I wanted for systems programming. I still did and even now do most work in C99 (specifically C99), but the more I do, I increasingly realize that I have many things that I would change to make myself feel like I'm telling the CPU exactly what I want to do without any ambiguity. Last year and early this year I finalized the design of the first revision of this language, which is called DANGC. It is inspired (clearly, based on the name) by C, but it takes a lot from Ada, which blew my mind the first time I saw it (especially SPARKS).The main concept is that there are no types. I am tired of pretending that that are these various forms of data that we're exchanging between the…
- Hardware Sniffers: The EMIRU binary format - 11 September 2026
MISC has its own executable format called "EMIRU."The Executable Minimal Image Relocatable UnaryE: has a start and can be jmp'd toM: doesn't include overhead, such as relocation tablesI: is a set of bytes loaded directly into memory, at a program base, by the kernelR: supports address relocation at runtime without recompilationU: it is its own freestanding thing ("unary" used as a noun, similar to "binary")The format is kept as simple as possible, which is why it doesn't have a reloc table in itself. It is already supported by Crosstalk's Clang distribution, which is bundled with the game.
- All achievements will be removed due to a Valve leak - 10 September 2026
There were unique and progression-important achievements in Crosstalk that were meant to be secret, however due to a scoping bug Valve leaked their names, descriptions, and images to the likes of SteamDB. All achievements are thereby removed from the game. New ones may be added later on.SteamDB happily showing confidential achievements
- Crosstalk is postponed - 9 September 2026
Crosstalk hasn't reached its wishlist critical mass by today's release date, so it is postponed to a later date this year. Valve and other sources maintain that wishlists are a critical component of release time traction, and there is only one Crosstalk release, so it's better to have it once there's enough people to see it.On the development side, things are going well, and the Second Reality DLC went out two days ago. The only constraint is the public interest at this moment.Thanks for your understanding!
- The first Crosstalk trailer demo board has arrived - 7 September 2026
The board mentioned in this post as having been done by the fab has arrived! The conclusion that there are some improvements to be made remains, so this post is just to show a bit more photos.
- Hardware Sniffers: The DLU - 4 September 2026
Welcome to the next Hardware Sniffers post entry.Today, the topic is the DLU, which stands for the DANGLING Logic Unit, and it is the first CPU of the MISC architecture.The DLU consists of the following parts:dangalu.sv: the DANGLING Arithmetic Logic Unitdangdsu.sv: the DANGLING Sound Unitdangddu.sv: the DANGLING Display Unit (80x25 text mode + a framebuffer mode, which some parts refer to as "gfx mode," such as Crosstalk itself)dangdiv.sv: division logicdangcmp.sv: a comparatordangdec.sv: the DANGLING instruction decoderdangmem.sv: the DANGLING memorydangmemctrl.sv: the DANGLING memory controllerdangreg.sv: an individual DANGLING register, also referred to as a "dangreg"regfile.sv: the DANGLING register file, which contains instances of dangregsdangt.sv: the DANGLING timerfont.sv: a character generatordangex.sv: the DANGLING expansion interfacedangserial.sv: UARTdangnet.sv: networking…
- Dropping old achievements that are no longer achievable at release - 3 September 2026
Previous achievements are being removed so that the initial Early Access release state of the game contains only those that can be awarded at that time. They will return once EDA features return.
- Hardware Sniffers: The MISC architecture - 2 September 2026
The Minimal Instruction Set Computer is a 32-bit Sail-validated instruction set architecture created very early in the development of the various parts that comprise Crosstalk, specifically to perform daily computing operations without unnecessary overhead and complexity. MISC defines an array of processor opcodes, flags, and memory rules that dictate how a conforming processor is interfaced with and how it will load, access, and execute.MISC is separate from any specific processor. The difference is equivalent to the difference when saying "x86" versus "80386." When you see a reference to MISC, such as in a game's target platform list, it means that it runs on the architecture itself, no matter what CPU implements it. Conversely, you may see a game say that it's compatible with a specific MISC CPU, which would mean that a CPU implements something on top of MISC that is unique to itself…
- Hardware Sniffers: About - 1 September 2026
Hardware Sniffers is a MISC-native game that attempts to teach people enough about computer architecture and numbers that they'd have no problem reading memory dumps and recognizing hex patterns at a glance, esp. alignment, pointers, structs, and hex-ASCII conversion. It convers the following learning tracks:NumbersRadixEndianWidthMagnitudeShapePatternsStringsSpotRegionLayoutHeapAfter the completion of each of these tracks, the story and some other planned MISC-native games will become available.This post initializes an array of educational and informational posts about Hardware Sniffers and the MISC architecture in general.
- The "Second Reality" - 31 August 2026
Dev log #12Hey there!The original 1993 "Second Reality" demo by the Future Crew is coming as a free DLC, usable from within the DANGLING kernel.Credit to the Future Crew and its members involved in the original demo: Psi, Trug, Wildfire, Purple Motion, Skaven, Marvel, Pixel, Gore, AbyssVideo:It took me quite a bit to get the music playing since FC modified the STMIK. The solution turned out to be:plaintext = stored ^ (uint8_t)((si * 4) ^ si)Other things that escaped me at first:sh = (ls_x * nx + ls_y * ny + ls_z * nz) / 250000 + 32shade level for the plasma cube, which is in the source but ... I guess I'm blind.and the order of the individual parts.I ported it to MISC as accurately as I could, though there are some artifacts.For example, in the PAM ("Alkutekstit III"), the starship that flies above the camera just doesn't render correctly. I haven't been able to get it working. I though…
- The first MISC-native game, Hardware Sniffers, is coming shortly - 31 August 2026
The first game native to the MISC architecture will be released one day after the game releases and will serve as a mandatory gate to two other pieces of DLC.
- The roadmap and the DLC strategy - 29 August 2026
DLC announced for Crosstalk will serve as a public roadmap during the Early Access phase of development. Incidentally, another benefit falling out of that is that players will be able to pick what they want to use and preserve storage on what they don't.Most DLC will be free.
- Unannouncing Linux support - 27 August 2026
Hello,I decided to remove the announced Linux support for Crosstalk. The latest build doesn't link statically, and I will not ship it with dynamic linking except where necessary, such as with the Steamworks SDK, which is only provided as a shared object.Distros mostly ship shared objects and I am not recompiling every dependency right now. Linux support is thereby postponed.Thank you
- Discord testing is open and accepting new players - 26 August 2026
Hey there!Crosstalk's early testing is currently open and ready to accept new players. If you'd like to participate, then please join the Discord server: https://discord.gg/QsJ2fbJmqQ.As always, if you like the game, then don't forget to wishlist to stay tuned:Thanks!
- Linux support is in - 25 August 2026
Having cleared some minor obstacles that were preventing Crosstalk from running on Linux, it's now scheduled for a Linux release on the same day as the Windows version.
- The demo PCB is done - 25 August 2026
Hello.As posted about a month ago, Crosstalk was postponed because I couldn't validate that the PCB export functionality was working correctly. Many things related to Crosstalk's timeline and initial content have changed since, but I still wanted to post about the result.The fabricator's finally done the board and has sent QC images over (and will ship two instances of the board + components shortly):I did find some issues in the output and will fix it when it's closer to the EDA suite's release, but overall, this shows that the functionality worked reasonably well.Original post:https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/4898790/view/687512719325135542?l=english
- MISC has an LLVM backend - 23 August 2026
Dev log #11Hello.This dev log brings news about a much larger addition to the Crosstalk ecosystem and outside of it than nearly everything before. My ISA, MISC, and the processor for it, DLU, which now supports my kernel, DANGLING, is now supported by my custom LLVM backend, which basically means that a large portion of UNIX-native C code can be compiled (assembled and linked, too) for MISC directly. I briefly mentioned this earlier, but now it's verified and can compile entire games, which can then run natively under DANGLING. POSIX libraries are shimmed to what used to be my utility library but it now also the standard library of DANGLING, LDG, or libdangling. I want to also support win32 eventually, but that's not currently a priority. However, the LLVM suite itself runs on Windows just fine and will ship with the game. Once Linux support comes to Crosstalk a few months after the Win…
