The Incredible Machine | Hacker News Reader

The Incredible Machine

filfre.net

205 pointsdoppp48 comments

You can play it online https://classicreload.com/dosx-the-incredible-machine.html https://classicreload.com/the-even-more-incredible-machine.h... https://classicreload.com/the-incredible-machine-2.html

Or archive: https://archive.org/details/the_incredible_machine_1992

I loved Sierra’s games: it was my gateway into the world of computers and was my inspiration for being a software engineer. I still have all my Sierra games, original boxes, documentation, and disks.

I also have a few—around 24 issues of InterAction magazine.

Incredible Machine was different than most other of Sierra’s point n click adventures but still inspired nonetheless.

My plan at one point was to move to Coursegold California and contribute to building the next Sierra adventure...

Oh well...I’m older now, and just hack on distributed systems...but thank you Sierra for allowing me to be inspired and intrigued of what it means to create...

Okay I’m getting cheesy now...

Sierra was just so great, particularly their Impressions Games group. Lords of the Realm, Civil War Generals, Caesar, the Dr Brain games

Sierra even published Half-Life

The Caesar series was my favorite growing up. And the other city-building games that followed, like Zeus, Pharaoh, and Emperor.

There have been a handful of indie games lately doing things in the same style, but nothing that seems quite polished enough yet.

They also published Homeworld. I've yet to find a comparable - let alone superior - 3D space RTS.

To save people a lookup, this is one heck of a history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sierra_Entertainment_v...

please keep in mind sierra was "just" the publisher for a lot (most?) of these games, such as the one in question (TIM) which were actually developed by other game studios.

In the early ‘90s era almost all Sierra games were developed in-house. The Incredible Machine is a special case because it was developed by Jeff Tunnell who had previously co-founded a game company (Dynamix) that Sierra had acquired. So when he wanted to do his own thing outside of Sierra’s multimedia-oriented production system, Sierra decided to publish his game rather than lose him.

For anyone interested, please consider contributing (time) to an early effort to build an open-source contraption game, using the Godot engine:

https://github.com/GodotGarden/contraption-game

Here are the upcoming tasks:

https://github.com/GodotGarden/contraption-game/issues

Pull requests, ideas, and feedback would be really appreciated.

What tech stack is this implemented in?

>using the Godot engine

it's at http://godotengine.org/

And it still inspires! A year ago I released (open source) "Quantum Game with Photons": http://quantumgame.io/.

I pretty much make it explicit:

"Wave optics and quantum mechanics as a game. Play for fun! Learn quantum mechanics as a side effect. It’s a puzzle game, heavily inspired by The Incredible Machine and Chromatron."

Hey I've played that before!

I really liked it. Great game. Thanks for making it and sharing it with the world.

The same team who was behind TIM has created a recent version called Contraption Maker: http://contraptionmaker.com

Any info about Wine compatibility?

I have only used it on Win 10, yet on Steam they claim OS X and Linux compatibility: https://store.steampowered.com/app/241240/Contraption_Maker/

I found TIM and TIM2 in 1996 on a compilation CD. First I was after Warcraft, Command and Conquer and Dune, but when you don't have an Internet connection or money to buy games, you try out every last game on every CD you find :D

It was basically the Minecraft of that time. I played this game in sandbox mode only, didn't even realize it had a puzzle mode, because I didn't speak English at that time.

TIM was one of my favorite games of all time. One of the nicest features of it is that for more complex puzzles, there were so many different ways of achieving the result, sometimes in very strange and peculiar ways. Most games at the time did not allow such freedom to the player.

As a child I played a lot of the "toon" version they came out with. I wonder if that helped foster my love of programming now.

The modern, truly amazing unofficial "remake" of this game would be <strong>Crazy Machines 3</strong>. http://www.crazy-machines.com/

Crazy Machines started in 2004 with the same idea as the Incredible Machine, but the company behind it never disappeared and just kept going and going...

The makers have a new game called Contraption Maker, which I have yet to download, as I feared it will consume me like TIM series did when I was growing up. These are some of my favorite games of all time.

After just learning about Contraption Maker from the comments here, I couldn't stop myself from buying it.... So far, I'm pleasantly surprised – it's close enough to TIM that I'm happy! So, maybe being stronger than I was and holding off instead is a good idea ;)

Quite possibly my favorite game ever, except one of the last levels stumped me. Sierra had a hell of a run for a while as a producer in the 90s.

Now I'm going to have to go see if I can find it on gog or the few abandonware sites that still exist

Last line of the article points to a complete set on GoG [1]

[1] https://www.gog.com/game/the_incredible_machine_mega_pack

Fantastic, time to engage the nostalgia machine. Now if Civil War Generals would just land on there...

Wow. For $3.39 right now. Done deal. This is some serious nostalgia here.

Just bought myself a copy and took a walk down memory lane. My 6 year old also thought it was a really fun game.

Related by name: the incredible proof machine https://www.joachim-breitner.de/blog/682-The_Incredible_Proo...

> One need only glance at a screenshot to be reminded of the old children’s board game cum toy Mouse Trap, a simplistic exercise in roll-and-move whose real appeal is the elaborate

Either I'm very tired or someone made a horrible typo.

See: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/cum#English

But unfortunate still, I agree.

Wow, TIL. Thanks, did not know about this expression :)

I'd say the way you used it is acceptable enough in some contexts, but 'cum toy' might be a bit unfortunate.

The Economist has a habit of using the phrase "militia-cum-party": https://www.google.com/search?q=economist+%22militia+cum+par...

That summons up quite an image....

It is my new band name.

The article's use of the term "erector set" had me similarly puzzled.

also never forget Marble Drop, one of my childhood favorites!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUE399XSoqE

The Incredible Machine was my favorite game growing up! My indie studio is currently developing a similar chain reaction game called Ruberg but for VR: http://rubergthegame.com/

Just another "this is one of my favorite games growing up" post that have popped up here. This is one of my favorite games growing up.

The version I owned had over 100 puzzles. After beating them all, to this day, I lost the will to play any other similar puzzle games. I have this feeling of, been there to Nth degree. Some puzzles were very hard and took many tries.

We had to play this game during math class (at age 12, approx '95), no joke. Think it was like 2 lessons of 50 min each. Some people weren't familiar with DOS. The first 5 min of the class was getting the game running.

I was already familiar with games such as Lemmings though. Puzzle games are great for children. I'd love a more recent Steam port for my kid.

This was the most mind-blowing game I've ever seen, no other has ever made a more strong first impression.

This game I loved and played a lot. I liked puzzle games more than most other genres besides horizontal shmups and I played a lot of them since the early 80s; this one stood out. I am reimplementing several other old ones to get back into game dev (with the Godot engine).

Wow, I remember playing Creative Contraptions on our Franklin Ace 1200. I also loved the game mouse trap and had more fun playing with the contraptions than the board game itself. I also later on bought the incredible machine for windows. Good stuff.

Was fortunate to meet Jeff Tunnell a few years back at PAX West, shockingly humble guy for someone whose work was a huge part of my childhood. It was inspiring to see someone stick to that indie development mindset after all those years.

Countless hours spent on this game on my parents' Windows 95 desktop!

One of my favorite games as well. Pleasantly surprised when there was a Swedish iOS app for kids with similar concepts, Pettson och Findus uppfinningar, that my five year old nephew showed me.

We had this on our primary school computers! Awesome stuff.

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