Comment by eterm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by eterm | Hacker News Reader

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I'm a big fan of this genre of game, I have a small but growing steam collection of different ones. ( And some non-steam such as nandgame ).

Turing complete is one of the better ones, the simulation seems reliable and the missions, after a fair bit of early access re-jigging are reasonably well structured.

However, the UI isn't always super smooth, and the lack of hand-holding means it's better for someone like me who's gone through a similar journey before in other simulators.

If you're looking for something similar that does a better job at explaining the concepts then I'd recommend "Silicon Zeroes". The game as a whole feels even slightly less polished, but has a cute storyline and in my opinion does a better job at explaining each level and what it's trying to introduce, and does a much better job with problem solving issues related to "The Clock".

If you don't actually enjoy the the electronics part so much and just enjoy the psuedo-assembly aspect, then I'd recommend TIS100 or Shenzhen I/O.

If you prefer well-crafted puzzles then something like "Human Resource Machine" may be more your style.

It's also worth noting this Turing Complete news post: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1444480/eventcomments/3806156...

After no updates for a year, there was a news post in August 2023 to say, "Sorry, there's a big new update coming soon!".

And radio silence since then too.

It seems the developer has got stuck with such a monumental "big rewrite" that it's ended up taking vastly longer than anticipated.

I've been waiting for it to leave early access before going back into it, but I fear I might be waiting forever.

Might as well ask you. I’m toying with the idea of a zachronics style game about analog computing. Building the circuit sim currently. But I can’t tell if it would actually be fun, or if i can find a way to make it fun.

Digital computing has the benefit of abstraction. You don’t need to know Ohms law to think about logic gates. If I commit to analog computing, then I absolutely have to find a way to teach the math. The operations are no longer Boolean, they’re a combination of a bunch of different electrical equations. Even if it’s simple math, it doesn’t have the same ethos a programming game typically has.

Does this even sound interesting? Would you play it?

If I remember right there's a Zach-like game called "Signal State" which is focused on analog circuits. ( I'm not sure how much or similar that is to analog computing ). It might be worth checking that out, get a feel for what you think works and doesn't work so smoothly in that problem domain.

The key to a fun zach-like game is making it more like a puzzle game than a simulator, and as such the level design is paramount. Ideally someone should have a good feel for whether they're likely to pass the level before they hit run. If it's a tricky problem, they should be able to get a sense of how to debug / fix an issue from the feedback they get from the output.

You don't want your players to end up trying a bunch of random things to try to brute force their way through the problem, they ought to be able to reason about the solution.

You ideally don't even want to teach the maths, if even an expert needs to hand-crank calculations outside your environment then you're going wrong somewhere. Try to find a way to visualize the current or predicted states in a way that those calculations can either be abstracted or represented in a different way, so that someone can play without doing the maths themselves.

An alternative is to provide a mini sandbox area within the problem they can play around to get a feel for the maths so they can break the problem down that way. If you can find a way to represent the calculations within that somehow, then that'd be a bonus.

I've been thinking about the same concept, and trying to find a way to introduce analog computing as something that goes together with the story in the game. Analog computing was historically used to solve differential equations, and differential equations can describe most of physics, so one idea was to make a "history of scientific modelling" as a game, where you take the role of say, Newton, and try to find an equation of some orbital motion, given a table of observations.

I'm also building a circuit simulator (stuck on that for a while, tbh), although not necessarily simulating electronic analog computers, but rather the computational principles that could also be applied to mechanical circuits, or just numerical computation.

As for abstraction, I really like the approach of Pure Data, you can group some nodes into more abstract ones.

Not the OP, but that sounds like a blast to me! I'd definitely play it!

Another game that did a similar thing (that I'm a HUGE fan of) is Spintronics [0].

It goes a whole step further from just creating analog circuits digitally and lets you build them both online and in board game form. I backed it on kickstarter and was amazed at how well the game turned out. Haven't finished it yet due to life getting in the way, but if you're looking for inspiration, their circuit simulator is available online for free.

As a fan of Zach-likes, I'd definitely be interested and play what you're cooking up :)

[0] - https://upperstory.com/spintronics/

Yeah Spintronics was absolutely a bit of a inspiration after the Steve Mould video he did. In fact I'm still racking my brain for some kind of physical analogy rather than circuits, since you can reason about them better. AlphaPheonix talks a lot about how water + gravity is a really good intuitive analogy for voltage, with pipe circumference you could get something like current, but that would be a totally different (and also 3D) game.

I find the physical Zachtonic games to be the most compelling, Opus Magnum especially, because you're essentially learning a brand new way to compute using space and time as your algebra rather than logic gates. I'd love to find something more akin to that.

I think water flowing through pipes would be perfect analogy for electricity. I believe the author addressed it somewhere and said he couldn't make it work so had to stick to gears and springs. It turned out to be fine but I preferred Turing Tumble honestly (digital rather than analog). But both are very good, can't believe they're indie products.

Turing Tumble was a blast too! Solved a lot of the puzzles while on camping trips with my parents hanging out in their RV. I think they enjoyed the abstraction from computers to just figuring out how to make the balls fall in the correct way.

> If you don't actually enjoy the the electronics part so much and just enjoy the psuedo-assembly aspect, then I'd recommend TIS100 or Shenzhen I/O.

(Shameless self-promotion, but I think it's relevant here...)

And if you've already beaten TIS-100, but would like an even more tedious assembly language experience, I put a (free) single-instruction (subleq) game on Steam: SIC-1

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2124440/SIC1/

As a zachtronics' fan I also recommend "Opus Magnum" and "Exapunks". In Exapunks you need to learn a new assembly-like language and use it to command your robot agent. I had a ton of fun in it.

I remember I only played the first few challenges of Human Resource Machine. The puzzles felt a little too easy, and solving them wasn't very challenging, so I never went on to the later parts.

MHRD is also great in this genre. I’ve played it multiple times. I’m happy to hear there are more like it. https://store.steampowered.com/app/576030/MHRD/

Is anyone able to contrast NAND Game and MHRD? They sound very similar.

Thank you for this comment. Would you happen to know of a similar kind of game that teaches machine learning or deep learning?

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