Turing Complete is a game about computer science | Hacker News Reader

Turing Complete is a game about computer science

turingcomplete.game

148 pointsmvdwoord30 comments

Discussed here 15 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28735441 (201 points/42 comments)

Ben Eater's breadboard computer is mentioned there, and unfortunately I couldn't reply to say thanks because the thread is too old.

For us programmers how the hardware works feels like magic, and his videos demystify that magic. The best educational value is seeing how he troubleshoots hardware problems.

Just in case it interests anyone, it sounds similar to NandGame (http://nandgame.com/), which is an online game where the challenge is to progressively build a microprocessor, starting from simple logic gates.

Show HN thread from a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17508151

Very similar at the start, yes.

Sounds like the Nand to Tetris course, gamified.

https://www.nand2tetris.org/

This course is what made me fall in love with computer science.

If you're into these types of games, I'd also recommend taking a look at the Zachtronics ones, in particular EXAPUNKS and Shenzen I/O, where you use pseudo-assembly to solve puzzles: https://www.zachtronics.com

And TIS-100! I find it most focused on programming aspect, thus best

I have also played TIS-100 and can also heartily recommend!! I should revisit that game and finish the last levels. :D

Agreed, I'd personally put TIS-100 above both EXAPUNKS and Shenzen I/O.

"KOHCTPYKTOP: Engineer of the People" is harder to run now because it is a Flash game. There are two alternatives:

In JavaScript: https://kohctpyktop-sandbox.netlify.app/

In Pharo: https://github.com/pavel-krivanek/PharoChipDesigner

I've recently finished the game, except for the assembly challenges, and apart from the sometimes too aggressive hand-holding (let me make my own instructions as soon as possible), it's a lot of fun.

I've gifted a copy to my sister, who appreciated it helping her understand boolean algebra for her high school assignments.

Mileage may vary. I have read reviews on Steam and one of the criticisms was that the game didn't give enough instructions.

Quoting a player (as I haven´t played it, yet):

"The problem with this game is that it doesn't teach you. It just shows you puzzles and wants you to figure them out."

I've been playing this a bunch, one assembly puzzle left. All in all it is an excellent game.

I've been studying assembly, mainly from the book, Systems A Programmer's Perspective. Which is an excelleng book, but this game really brought together what I was learning in there. I will be going back and starting it the book again.

As for the game, the developer has been extremely active, puts out multiple patches a day, and is very responsive on bug reports. I've submitted a couple myself. The game still has some rough edges, occasional crashes and the like, but there is only one developer working on it and those things do take a bit of time to track down.

There are a bunch of additions planned for it, 64bit width components, and a number of new puzzles. I look forward to that. The end state of the game leaves you with a sandbox and a number of the community of players have created some very interesting things, such as pipelined registers and a synth in there. Just about every puzzle has been solved with an ASIC of some sort too.

I have started playing it this weekend and it is tons of fun! Still in beta, but the author(s) seem to update regularly fixing bugs and extending the game.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1444480

They sometimes release multiple versions in the same day, based on feedback.

They recently modified the byte adder to accept and produce the carry bit and replaced the flip-flop with SR-latch.

Yeah, keep in mind there's been a couple of times where he's just deleted components completely and fucked up some circuit designs. It's 90% stable, just be aware it's still being actively worked on.

If you like this kind of games, i highly recommend MHRD.

Pardon my ignorance, but what is MHRD?

I assume they mean https://store.steampowered.com/app/576030/MHRD/

Based on the demo video, it looks like one step "missing" is that you don't manually implement the assembler in machine code. For those of you who have played: is this true? If so I totally get the omission, but I'm just curious.

I love this game. I feel like I understand computers way better after playing through it.

can this be played on linux? what is the meaning of `steamos + linux'? if `+' stands for combination, how does one combine two operating systems? or is `+' simply an unconventional `and'?

Steamos is Linux, so it's saying it can play on both

> both

does that mean steamos and non-steamos linux or steamos (which is a linux)? it would be nice to know whether playing this required installing a new operating system.

Even if it is only windows you could still (more likely than not) play it on Steam on linux.

I don’t even bother with the distinction any more. Just check protondb beforehand.

It means the game has a native version for Linux that will run on all Linux distros (what you referred to as a Linux). SteamOS is based on Debian (or most recently Arch) and Valve only officially supports Steam on Ubuntu LTS. But Steam will run on pretty much any distro you want.

I play it on linux. It runs just fine on my Ubuntu+awesomewm without me having to run through any hoops.

very cool! from logic gates to assembly...is there something stopping from implementing C and eventually a lisp?

I thought I was going to play the game for free. Little did I know, I was redirected to Steam.

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