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Exapunks
- olooney 8y agosteam store link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/716490/EXAPUNKS/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/716490/EXAPUNKS/
- deelowe 8y agoI've decided that any game zachtronics puts out is a day 1 purchase for me. Only game I've pre-ordered in years.
- cmyr 8y agoVery cool. A friend put me on to TIS-100 when I was curious to play around with assembly, and it was a very helpful (and fun) introduction.
- eltoozero 8y agoTIS-100 is also available on iOS, but unfortunately iPad only.
- duskwuff 8y ago> unfortunately iPad only. Mostly for practical reasons. I can't imagine how the UI would work on a phone -- either the text would be microscopic, or you'd have to scroll around constantly.
- lazerwalker 8y agoIt's of course far easier to armchair design, but I could imagine it working well enough? Each individual cell is ~12 lines of very short line lengths, yeah? You can easily fit a single cell on-screen with a keyboard while editing (or potentially while running), and then you could imagine a more abstract representation of a whole running system if you choose to zoom out while the system is running. A few years ago I built a prototype of an iOS editor for Core War (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Core_War), and it felt super-natural to have a custom keyboard whose keycaps were individual opcodes rather than ASCII characters.
- preordained 8y agoGod bless Zachtronics. One of the very few who scratch that special itch with their games, and man are they good at it.
- cambalache 8y agoYou are so right. These guys make the games I wish I could make if I were a game programmer/designer. Top notch. The other small game designer who I can recommend is this guy: http://www.crypticcomet.com http://www.crypticcomet.com .Too bad it seems he does not make games anymore.
- kqr2 8y agoWhich game are you recommending? Also what do you like about it?
- cambalache 8y agoHe has only 3 or 4 games. I recommend Solium Infernum http://www.crypticcomet.com/games/SI/Solium_Infernum.html http://www.crypticcomet.com/games/SI/Solium_Infernum.html, it is a TBS game, it is actually a computer table game, if such thing makes sense. If you have time, you can read here an epic AAR series https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/01/03/solium-infernum-the-complete-battle-for-hell/ https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2012/01/03/solium-infernum-...
- baud147258 8y ago> Too bad it seems he does not make games anymore From what I've heard on a thread discussing one of his games, it's the fact that his games are built with an old adobe tool (or something like this) and they can't be sold throught Steam. And apparentky selling directly from his site doesn't bring enough money anymore. And he doesn't want to relearn a new dev environment, since (if I remember right) he's not a developper, rather a game designer.
- joshu 8y agoi wish the little CPUs weren't so impoverished.
- cjbprime 8y agoOne (general-purpose) register! I guess we should think of it as a distributed systems simulator, not a CPU simulator.
- fpgaminer 8y agoThe 6502 only had one (general-purpose) register and it did just fine.
- cjbprime 8y agoNo, it looks like 6502 has at least accumulator/X/Y/SP. Exapunks only has one of those four, and no main memory.
- fpgaminer 8y agoYou said general purpose, which X, Y, and SP most certainly are not. You can't do much math ops with X and Y; SP is even more restricted. If we're being more generous then EXP clearly wins over the 6502 because it has two registers that can be used interchangeably. T's only failing is its propensity for being overwritten by TEST. EXAs also have attached memory in the form of a file. Accessing that memory takes a "few" more cycles than it takes the 6502 to access the zero page. But it's there none the less.
- boomlinde 8y ago> You said general purpose, which X, Y, and SP most certainly are not. You can't do much math ops with X and Y; SP is even more restricted. In that sense I wouldn't say that the accumulator in 6502 is a general purpose register in the first place, since it's just as useless for addressing as the X and Y registers are for arithmetic and logic operations. Each register in the 6502 has a distinct (but often overlapping) set of available operations, and that you can do arithmetic with one of them doesn't mean that it's a general purpose register.
- DivisionSol 8y agoI would highly recommend any Zachtronics game to anyone who enjoys programming as a hobby. Exapunks this time around was lovely, along the same vein as TIS-100 and Shenzen I/O, less like Spacechem/Opus Magnum/Infinifactory (which I would still highly recommend.) Going back further, I'll add http://www.zachtronics.com/ruckingenur-ii/ http://www.zachtronics.com/ruckingenur-ii/ and http://www.zachtronics.com/kohctpyktop-engineer-of-the-people/ http://www.zachtronics.com/kohctpyktop-engineer-of-the-peopl... as notable Zachtronics games to enjoy. Write code for swarm-like processes to hack networks and perform tasks before exiting the network without a trace.
- Scaevolus 8y agoI beat this last night. It's easier than TIS-100 (no 9 instruction limits!) and Shenzhen I/O, following the general polishing trend of Zachtronics games becoming more beatable. SpaceChem (their first puzzle game) was stupidly difficult [1] [2]. My personal ranking: Opus Magnum > Shenzhen I/O > Exapunks > Infinifactory > TIS-100 > Spacechem. [1]: https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/172250/Postmortem_Zachtronics_Industries_SpaceChem.php?print=1 https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/172250/Postmortem_Zac... [2]: https://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/feature/172250/completion_thumb.jpg https://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/feature/172250/comp...
- ehsankia 8y agoIs that an enjoyment or difficulty ranking?
- brian-armstrong 8y agoOpus Magnum had some puzzles that were rather tedious, I think maybe more than average. There's always a point in these harder puzzles where you know what you need to do and then slogging through the execution is daunting on its own.
- mirceal 8y ago+1 for SpaceChem being stupid-hard. In spite of that I thoroughly enjoyed it.
- dixego 8y agoI think the dev's goal has been towards balancing the difficulty not so much towards making difficult puzzles that are rewarding to beat, but towards making reasonably challenging puzzles that become rewarding to revisit and optimize as you get better at the game. In a way it sort of mirrors when you've just started learning programming, when every task takes large amounts of thinking "how am I even going to solve this?", implementing a solution that is sure to not be very optimal or even well written, vs. being an experience programming, when "how do I solve this?" is only the first step towards "how do I make my solution _better_?". I hope we keep getting more Zachtronics games for a while; there really aren't too many games out there that are comparable to them.
- kawsper 8y agoLooks cool, but why would they not allow me to fullscreen the YouTube video? I see that a lot is it the default from YouTube?
- baud147258 8y agoI think it's a setting in the YT video
- bitwize 8y ago1997, yo. Massive corporations rule everything, people are getting wet-wired into cyberspace, pollution and overpopulation and climate change have thrown everyone but the super-wealthy into a desperate struggle for survival... and Hanson's "MMMbop" is playing on the radio. Just the concept made me smile.
- znedw 8y ago>The year is 1997. You used to be a hacker, but now you have the phage. You made a deal: one hack, one dose. There’s nothing left to lose… except your life. Is this not the plot of Neuromancer?
- sshine 8y agoHe'd made the classic mistake, the one he'd sworn he'd never make. He stole from his employers. He kept something for himself and tried to move it through a fence in Amsterdam. He still wasn't sure how he'd been discovered, not that it mattered now. He'd expected to die, then, but they only smiled. If course he was welcome, they told him, welcome to the money. And he was going to need it. Because -- still smiling -- they were going to make sure he never worked again. They damaged his nervous system with a wartime Russian mycotoxin. Strapped to a bed in a Memphis hotel, his talent burning or micron by micron, he hallucinated for thirty hours. The damage was minute, subtle and utterly effective. For Case, who'd loved for the bodiless exultation of cyberspace, it was the Fall. In the bars he'd frequented as a cowboy hotshot, the elite stance involved a certain relaxed contempt for the flesh. The body was meat. Case fell into a prison of his own flesh.
- ethbro 8y agoEarly Gibson vs late Gibson begs the question -- What's more punk? Unfocused but incandescent adolescent rage or technically executed vicious critique?
- fake-name 8y agoI love the idea of almost every ZachTronics game. My issue with them is that they get close enough to actual programming that I invariably quit, and go actually work on a hobby programming project, rather then play. As a result, I generally buy the game, play the first few levels, and then go make some commits on a programming puzzle that has an actual end-result that I benefit from. I really wish the games used an actual language or assembly opcode set. If I could play TIS-100 and practice ARM or AVR assembly, that would be amazing.
- colordrops 8y agoYou just articulated what has been bothering me about these games! I couldn't put a finger on it. I tried them out, and found them to be incredibly well made, and yet couldn't get myself to play them. I felt like I was seriously wasting time that I could spend doing actual programming, so I stopped. I think these games would do really well targeting an audience that is new to programming.
- fake-name 8y ago> I think these games would do really well targeting an audience that is new to programming. That's why I really, really wish they would use a real architecture's opcodes, or a real language.
- WorkLifeBalance 8y agoThat doesn't bother me because actual opcodes are the least transferrable skill of the parts of programming they teach. Yeah, I'm not going to be able to go from the games straight into x86 programming but when I come across the idea of op-codes and registers again I'll be in more familiar territory. What they do teach very well is the Test / Execute / Debug loop and problem solving.
- therein 8y agoExactly how I felt about Factorio. Building and optimizing pipelines... I do that at work.
- daveFNbuck 8y agoI love Zachtronics games, but they have really ridiculous performance requirements. My MacBook Pro heats up like crazy playing them.
- poisonarena 8y agoSame, I think it is because it was built in Unity
- no7hing 8y agoJudging from the installed game files it seems to based on SDL2 and not Unity3D.
- phyllostachys 8y agoI asked Zach about it once (in email), he said: > We do all of our development in C# using a custom low-level “game engine”. At some point we need to do a writeup about it, it’s kind of interesting tech. But I think they have at least one Unity game... or so I thought.
- no7hing 8y agoWould also love to read a detailed writeup about their custom engine. Also found this quote[1] from an AmA on reddit: > We've used C# since SpaceChem. I can't imagine using anything else, honestly. Infinifactory and TIS-100 use Unity, while everything else uses some kind of lightweight SDL-backed C# engine. > SHENZHEN I/O and Opus Magnum are both using a very minimalist C# "engine" inspired by some of Casey Muratori's ideas on game engines and game programming. It uses DirectX or OpenGL for graphics, and SDL for everything else. It's basically just one giant Update() loop, and is the greatest game engine I've ever had the pleasure to work with. Despite this, I would not advise novice game programmers to do the same. [1] - https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/78wv2h/im_zach_barth_the_creative_director_of_the_game/doxgfx5/ https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/78wv2h/im_zach_barth_...
- forty 8y ago
- everyone 8y agoExapunks is 'Early Access' I'm waiting for the full release to play.
- fpgaminer 8y agoThat's certainly important to note. Though in this case the game is done already and basically "release" quality. I think they did the same thing for TIS-100 as well; Early Access for a bit even though the game is done and 99% bug-free.
- OberstKrueger 8y agoThey've been releasing games this way for a while. Early Access with most of the pieces in place, with some polish on graphics, balance, and music for a few months before it's all finalized. Shenzhen I/O and Opus Magnum were done that way for sure.
- kosievdmerwe 8y agoThat’s one option, but another more fun option might be to get the game now and be active on the reddit or at least lurk there. This adds another layer of enjoyment as you get to participate in coming up with optimization tricks. And that said, from experience with previous games in they have released what will happen is that they’ll only do the following things: reorder a small number of levels for balance, add a small number of quality of life features and then after release they tend to add another set of puzzles, where the first set would have already justified the asking price. It’s early access in name only imo.
- Phrodo_00 8y agoAw I thought it was going to be an actual hacking game, more like uplink or hacknet. I really want a new game that's as good as uplink...
- strmpnk 8y agoUplink was fun but I'd say this game has far more "hacking" in it. You have to do things like: - crack passcodes - manipulate tv station tapes - soft-mod console disk firmware - dial-up various hosts using a programmable modem interface etc. Obviously it's all in a toy world but I'd say it's much more like what I'd imagine a hacking game should be than uplink.
- aherz 8y agoThis looks like a lot of fun. I just started playing gladiabots (https://gladiabots.com/ https://gladiabots.com/) which will probably scratch that itch for a while. Exapunks seems to have a bit more of a learning curve and story from what I can tell from the trailer.
- flaviuspopan 8y agoThis is why I'm obsessed with HN. Thank you so much for linking this, it's exactly what I've been hoping someone would make!
- grashalm01 8y agoExapunks is to programming as piano tiles the mobile game is to playing a real piano.
- yayitswei 8y agoLooks like there's a Javascript-based puzzle API as well: http://www.zachtronics.com/virtualnetwork http://www.zachtronics.com/virtualnetwork
- jdhopeunique 8y agoIt'd be kind of nice to have opcodes like some sort of Forth language just for variety and fun.