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[More_Badass]

http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/
$6.99, PC
https://youtu.be/ZkUHGvy2pNU

TIS-100 is an open-ended programming game by Zachtronics, the creators of SpaceChem and Infinifactory, in which you rewrite corrupted code segments to repair the TIS-100 and unlock its secrets. It’s the assembly language programming game you never asked for!

• Print and explore the TIS-100 reference manual, which details the inner-workings of the TIS-100 while evoking the aesthetics of a 1980’s computer manual!
• Solve more than 20 puzzles, competing against your friends and the world to minimize your cycle, instruction, and node counts.
• Design your own challenges in the TIS-100’s 3 sandboxes, including a “visual console” that lets you create your own games within the game!
• Uncover the mysteries of the TIS-100… who created it, and for what purpose?

Currently in Steam Early Access

Why Early Access?
“I was extremely pleased with our Early Access release of Infinifactory; although the game was largely “finished” when we released, we were able to make a huge number of improvements and additions to the game based on player feedback and turn a great game into an amazing game. We’re choosing to release TIS-100 as an Early Access title for the same reason: to turn a great game into an amazing game.”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“Approximately one to two months.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“The full version will include additional features and/or content based on player feedback. This could include new puzzles, new sandboxes, new assembly instructions, and even features as big as Steam Workshop integration if there is sufficient demand.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“Much like our Early Access release of Infinifactory, our initial Early Access version of TIS-100 is highly polished and would be perfectly acceptable to release in a traditional fashion. The campaign is finished and is fully playable, and all of the initially planned features have been implemented.”

 

[ElFly]

You tessellated the fuck out of the steam link.

Looks cool.

 

[More_Badass]

You tessellated the fuck out of the steam link.

Looks cool.

Fixed

 

[Toma]

Instabought the day I saw it, hopefully I'll have some impressions in a while.

 

[Weltall Zero]

Paging Toma... paging Toma...

This looks like the kind of thing I would love if my job wasn't already to be a software engineer . SpaceChem at least had some abstraction that fooled me into thinking I wasn't programming.

This also reminds me that I should eventually get Infinifactory.

 

[Toma]

Paging Toma... paging Toma...

This looks like the kind of thing I would love if my job wasn't already to be a software engineer . SpaceChem at least had some abstraction that fooled me into thinking I wasn't programming.

This also reminds me that I should eventually get Infinifactory.

Yes you should, and I was here before you

 

[BlackRainbowFT]

I also insta-bought it as soon as I saw it!

I'm on level 5 (I haven't had the time to play much) and it's really fun.

I particularly love the fact that there isn't a tutorial...

 

[Fragamemnon]

Instabought. My wife is going to have a new game to make fun of, she's been betting how long it will take for all my games to look straight out of late 80's CGA and this one sets a new high standard.

I code a lot for a living, but none of the kind of puzzle solving here applies to the kind of development work I do day in and day out. Should be a fresh, interesting experience.

 

[More_Badass]

I also insta-bought it as soon as I saw it!

I'm on level 5 (I haven't had the time to play much) and it's really fun.

I particularly love the fact that there isn't a tutorial...

Any more impressions? I loved SpaceChem and Infinifactory, but the presentation here makes me kind of wary. Is it less complex than it looks?

 

[peakish]

It looks very interesting and I'll probably pick it up on release. I know nothing about assembly programming, though, so could someone in early access give me a pointer on whether it'll be too tricky without knowing that? It seems like it could be a fun way to try that out.

 

[More_Badass]

It looks very interesting and I'll probably pick it up on release. I know nothing about assembly programming, though, so could someone in early access give me a pointer on whether it'll be too tricky without knowing that? It seems like it could be a fun way to try that out.

Pretty much what I'm trying to find out too. I know nothing about programming, but I'm always down for a Zachtronics game.

 

[Durante]

This I like.

 

[Theonik]

RISC or CISC.

 

[Ri'Orius]

I'm definitely getting this, but I intend to wait for release. It'll be hard, though...

 

[TheSeks]

That sounds good, but why assembly and not something modern?

 

[peakish]

I have to say that the trailer is one of the best I've ever seen for a game.

 

[TheCongressman1]

That looks incredibly difficult.

 

[Aeana]

I’m super excited to try it when I get a moment. It’s not real assembly, obviously, and it seems like it should be graspable wihout intimate assembly knowledge, kinda like how Spacechem was for people with little chemistry knowledge.

 

[Theonik]

That sounds good, but why assembly and not something modern?

Assembly is not just modern, it is timeless. Like C.
Where high-level languages die as their patterns and abstractions become obsolete low level languages laugh over their corpses.

 

[Toma]

OMG, this is brilliant.

 

[ElFly]

That sounds good, but why assembly and not something modern?

Prolly because it will be simpler than something that allows weird abstractions.

 

[Blizzard]

This looks dry and I've spent years doing embedded programming. I seem to recall times spent digging through enormous processor manuals. Judging by the reviews it's more fun than it looks, though.

I'm confused by one thing: Infinifactory is still in Early Access, isn't it? Is the developer working on the 2 games simultaneously now?

 

[Toma]

Any more impressions? I loved SpaceChem and Infinifactory, but the presentation here makes me kind of wary. Is it less complex than it looks?

You dont need to know programming for it, but it IS a typical Zachtronics style braintwisting puzzle game. Get ready to put on your thinking hat, especially because there is no tutorial

This looks dry and I've spent years doing embedded programming. I seem to recall times spent digging through enormous processor manuals. Judging by the reviews it's more fun than it looks, though.

I'm confused by one thing: Infinifactory is still in Early Access, isn't it? Is the developer working on the 2 games simultaneously now?

Its very similar to SpaceChem in concept. You get input and need to create output via certain operandi.
Infinifactory barely was "EA" worthy when it released (It basically already was a finished product and got added content and features since then) and this seems to be a smaller side project with less graphical elements.

 

[mclem]

The manual strikes me as both a really nice touch and an inconvenience; I need to go borrow a printer!

 

[BlackRainbowFT]

Any more impressions? I loved SpaceChem and Infinifactory, but the presentation here makes me kind of wary. Is it less complex than it looks?

Honestly I can't give a fair assessment about the difficulty since I've programmed a micro-controller before using assembly (I don't have a lot of experience though).

Also, there is a PDF manual that you -have- to read to know what the instructions are called and how the syntax works.

Still... it doesn't feel like work at all: it's heavily gamified with all those nodes, etc.

Personally, for ~6€ it's not like you're risking much (although that may depend on your financial situation... still, it's not 50&#8364. I think that in an hour you can decide whether you like it or not... and you can always get a refund!

SIDE NOTE: glitchspace is good too. Although I don't know if they're still updating it (I remember they had some sort of internal restructuring)

 

[More_Badass]

This looks dry and I've spent years doing embedded programming. I seem to recall times spent digging through enormous processor manuals. Judging by the reviews it's more fun than it looks, though.

I'm confused by one thing: Infinifactory is still in Early Access, isn't it? Is the developer working on the 2 games simultaneously now?

Infinifactory was already a 99% finished game when it launched on EA. Dev has only been adding more new content and tweaks, rather than building a game from a framework

 

[NotMyUsername]

The manual strikes me as both a really nice touch and an inconvenience; I need to go borrow a printer!

Is the manual something in-game or just like a .pdf file or something? I don't have a printer hooked up and that's the one hurdle I have before just buying it outright. If it's simply a file I can put on my phone and use that or something it'd be make it a little easier.

I could always e-mail it to my work e-mail and print it out there if needed.

Edit: Just saw the reply that popped in before I posted. Seems I could work around with the manual.

 

[Armaly]

Just blind bought 2 copies.

Is the manual something in-game or just like a .pdf file or something? I don't have a printer hooked up and that's the one hurdle I have before just buying it outright. If it's simply a file I can put on my phone and use that or something it'd be make it a little easier.

I could always e-mail it to my work e-mail and print it out there if needed.

Edit: Just saw the reply that popped in before I posted. Seems I could work around with the manual.

It's a 14 paged pdf file. Have to find the time to read through it before I play.

 

[Toma]

You dont really need to print out the manual. The most important orders are ingame (F1) and you can just keep the PDF open in the background for the other 1-2 pages you need.

 

[TheSeks]

Assembly is not just modern, it is timeless. Like C.
Where high-level languages die as their patterns and abstractions become obsolete low level languages laugh over their corpses.

I guess. But are classes actually teaching Assembly over something like C or Java or more "modern" languages?

Prolly because it will be simpler than something that allows weird abstractions.

I guess. Just seems weird. Though more people should do something like this for programming languages to engage people in learning them.

 

[Blizzard]

I guess. But are classes actually teaching Assembly over something like C or Java or more "modern" languages?

It depends on the school and degree. For computer engineering, where microprocessors, VLSI, VHDL, and similar may be normal topics, I remember at least 3 undergraduate classes that involved assembly language.

The introductory programming courses were in Scheme, Java, Python, or whatever, but assembly was still around in other places.

 

[Theonik]

I guess. But are classes actually teaching Assembly over something like C or Java or more "modern" languages?

Most half-decent computing classes will teach at least briefly at least one Assembly dialect. It would depend on the modules you choose however in some school.

I guess. Just seems weird. Though more people should do something like this for programming languages to engage people in learning them.

There is a lot of ACTUAL attempts are gamifying REAL programming learning. Not particularly novel as a learning tool.

You dont really need to print out the manual. The most important orders are ingame (F1) and you can just keep the PDF open in the background for the other 1-2 pages you need.

Meh, I think printing it out adds to the experience.

 

[Weltall Zero]

I guess. But are classes actually teaching Assembly over something like C or Java or more "modern" languages?

Again, thinking of assembly as "old" makes little sense. It's not something most programmers will need to use on a daily basis, but as the lowest level of human/machine interaction, it will always be used whenever some heavy optimization is needed.

And yes, it was taught (and mandatory) when I went to college. OK, that was in the nineties, but I doubt that has changed or will ever change.

It makes the most sense to use (a fictional version of) assembler in a game, as the very reduced and simple operations make for a shorter learning curve than learning a higher level language. Of course, given the same tasks, a higher level language would be infinitely easier, but in a game you design the challenges around the tools you have, so that doesn't really matter.

 

[Blizzard]

It depends on what you are working on of course, but it was just a year or so ago that a coworker who was relatively fresh out of college ended up digging in the Linux kernel source.

They had to change/add some assembly instructions, because some of the lowest-level operations that higher-level code needed were apparently very slightly broken. Because they were set up improperly, when tons of simultaneous operations were happening, there was a chance things would start locking up or crashing inside the kernel itself. This was an enormous pain to track down.

I'm not sure I could have done as good of a job as they did, and it was quite impressive that they found it. It was a keen reminder that even in the days where one just assumes say, the Linux kernel is properly set up on your particular processor, you might end up very delicately changing some assembly.

 

[Joseph Merrick]

jesus, this is beautiful

That sounds good, but why assembly and not something modern?

oh my god, what are you writing

 

[Toma]

I love you Zach. <3

 

[Koren]

Will definitively buy...

I should have a look to Infinifactory, too, because I really enjoyed SpaceChem (too short), although I wasn't fond at all of tower defense bosses and the kind of exploits you can (must) use to reach best times.

 

[BrokenFiction]

http://www.zachtronics.com/gibson/

TIS-100 was born out of the issues they had designing and bootstrapping a Z80 computer, the Gibson. Interesting read.

 

[TheSeks]

Again, thinking of assembly as "old" makes little sense. It's not something most programmers will need to use on a daily basis, but as the lowest level of human/machine interaction, it will always be used whenever some heavy optimization is needed.

oh my god, what are you writing

I don't mean old as in "dinosaurs lol" I mean old as in it isn't going to be a major focus for most programming classes now a days. It'll be taught, sure. But I seriously SERIOUSLY doubt most people are going to be 24/7 Assembly.

 

[Toma]

I don't mean old as in "dinosaurs lol" I mean old as in it isn't going to be a major focus for most programming classes now a days. It'll be taught, sure. But I seriously SERIOUSLY doubt most people are going to be 24/7 Assembly.

This game isnt supposed to teach you assembly though. Its just a fun puzzle game with a made up assembly style language.

 

[More_Badass]

OMG, this is brilliant.

I love you Zach. <3

Come on, you got to give us more than that

 

[Toma]

Come on, you got to give us more than that

Sorry, was busy playing

I just played it 6 hours straight, about 3 hours of which were being stuck on level 7 and trying to figure out how to approach it. This game is similarly ZEN like Zachtronics other games, which is great. It basically is SpaceChem with a more rudimentary Interface and mostly focussed on maths and simple logic circuits. It is also much closer to SpaceChem than Infinifactory in how solving each puzzle would be pretty easy if you had unlimited Space/Reactors, but you mostly need to work around the limitations given by the game.

There is one caveat to it though: It is hard. As I said, I am stuck for 3 hours on level 7, and while this game simply ate away my time like it was candy, the difficulty curve is likely much less forgiving than it was in the other games. I really appreciate that, as I thought Infinifactory was always too easy, but just as a fair warning: SpaceChem and Infinifactory were MUCH easier in the first levels.

Great stuff. Looking forward to breaking my head over this tomorrow again.

 

[More_Badass]

Sorry, was busy playing

I just played it 6 hours straight, about 3 hours of which were being stuck on level 7 and trying to figure out how to approach it. This game is similarly ZEN like Zachtronics other games, which is great. It basically is SpaceChem with a more rudimentary Interface and mostly focussed on maths and simple logic circuits. It is also much closer to SpaceChem than Infinifactory in how solving each puzzle would be pretty easy if you had unlimited Space/Reactors, but you mostly need to work around the limitations given by the game.

There is one caveat to it though: It is hard. As I said, I am stuck for 3 hours on level 7, and while this game simply ate away my time like it was candy, the difficulty curve is likely much less forgiving than it was in the other games. I really appreciate that, as I thought Infinifactory was always too easy, but just as a fair warning.

Great stuff. Looking forward to breaking my head over this tomorrow again.

Do you think someone with absolutely zero coding/programming knowledge could get a hang of the mechanics?

 

[Toma]

Do you think someone with absolutely zero coding/programming knowledge could get a hang of the mechanics?

Yes, its a puzzle game first and foremost and the only hurdle between you and the enjoyment of the game is learning the basic mechanics/controls. I didnt know the way this "language" behaved either before, so here is a basic example:

MOV <from> <to> - moving values from a to b
ACC - the "cache"/numeric content in a single block
ADD <from> - adding a value to the ACC value of a block

Examples:
MOV UP DOWN - Moving value from a top block to the lower one
MOV UP ACC - moving value from the top block to the current one
MOV ACC DOWN - moving value from the current block to the lower one

So if you have X and Y values in different blocks, you could add them like this (lets say the blocks are [X] [EMPTY] [Y]):

X Block:
MOV ACC RIGHT (moving to the empty block)

Y BLOCK:
MOV ACC LEFT (moving to the empty block)

EMPTY BLOCK:
MOV LEFT ACC (receiving from the left block X)
ADD RIGHT (Adding value from the right block)

And tadaaa, your EMPTY block value would now be X+Y.
If you understood that, you just learned the game mechanics.

 

[KDR_11k]

That sounds good, but why assembly and not something modern?

Because ASM is more game-like to deal with since you directly think about resources and probably even cycles knowing Zachtronics. Also I guess inventing a higher level language that still has some fun challenge to problem solving would be really tough.You could go for esoteric languages but if you did e.g. Befunge that would just be Space Chem, INTERCAL is probably not as funny to deal with as read about and Brainfuck-isomorphisms are just boring, I'd rather use an FSE directly (but that would be Manufactoria).

FPGA programming with something like Verilog would be interesting since you have issues like the critical path but I figure the simulation would be waaaaay too complex.

 

[More_Badass]

Yes, its a puzzle game first and foremost and the only hurdle between you and the enjoyment of the game is learning the basic mechanics/controls. I didnt know the way this "language" behaved either before, so here is a basic example:

MOV <from> <to> - moving values from a to b
ACC - the "cache"/numeric content in a single block
ADD <from> - adding a value to the ACC value of a block

Examples:
MOV UP DOWN - Moving value from a top block to the lower one
MOV UP ACC - moving value from the top block to the current one
MOV ACC DOWN - moving value from the current block to the lower one

So if you have X and Y values in different blocks, you could add them like this (lets say the blocks are [X] [EMPTY] [Y]):

X Block:
MOV ACC RIGHT (moving to the empty block)

Y BLOCK:
MOV ACC LEFT (moving to the empty block)

EMPTY BLOCK:
MOV LEFT ACC (receiving from the left block X)
ADD RIGHT (Adding value from the right block)

And tadaaa, your EMPTY block value would now be X+Y.
If you understood that, you just learned the game mechanics.

So it's essentially a different take on SpaceChem's core concept? Because that's what that sounds like

 

[Trouble]

Picked it up because I love SpaceChem and I FUCKING LOVE Infinifactory.

 

[KarmaCow]

So they're just stripping away the veneer of it not being a programming game? Cool, I'm down to try it out.

 

[More_Badass]

Picked it up because I love SpaceChem and I FUCKING LOVE Infinifactory.

Infinifactory is definitely my favorite Zachtronics game so far. As much as SpaceChem blew me away, I love that you're building tangible things, piece by piece, with cool futuristic tech, and the addition of the Z axis seems simple but it's not.

 

[BrokenFiction]

There's a lot to love about this game, but especially the sound effects. They remind me so much of the old school terminals in Alien: Isolation on Sevastopol station.