The game itself I love. But I have some issues with it's implementation.<p>To be specific, it maxes out the CPU even when it's not doing anything. Given that it's supposed to emulate low-level hardware, at very slow speeds, and does not have any demanding graphics, I fail to see why it should do that.<p>(It's something I've seen happening in more games as of late, actually. For example, Desktop Dungeons - a very fun game which has no business demanding <i>anything</i> from my computer since it's turn-based, uses sprites, and barely animated. And yet my laptop heats up as soon as I open the game.)<p>In fact, it's a bit ironic, given that the whole theme of the game is squeezing out performance out of bare metal hardware, and I admit that I'm more annoyed by it for that somewhat irrational reason.
To be fair the TIS-100 runs slower in the game to improve the visuals. To let you see (albeit in a blur at higher speeds) your code run rather than a click button, instant "level complete" popup. (note: I don't own TIS-100 yet, but it's fairly similar to their other game spacechem)
I too wrote a TIS-100 simulator in C ( <a href="https://github.com/hthh/tis100sim" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/hthh/tis100sim</a> ) - it's interesting to compare styles.<p>(I get a bunch of errors on OS X unless I change "CC=gcc" to "CC=clang", btw)
I've been looking for a simple computer/CPU simulator for kids to play on. Something like this <a href="http://thlorenz.com/visulator/" rel="nofollow">http://thlorenz.com/visulator/</a> is almost there but it's a bit too complex for elementary/middle school level kids to start on. A game would be even better but the one we're discussing here (TIS-100) is basically designed to confuse and challenge rather than illuminate. Suggestions and pointers are extremely welcome.
<a href="http://retroforth.org/docs/The_Ngaro_Virtual_Machine.html" rel="nofollow">http://retroforth.org/docs/The_Ngaro_Virtual_Machine.html</a> This virtual machine has been implemented many times in various programming languages. The retro forth download includes most of the implementations.
Zachtronics makes amazing games. This is the same guy who wrote SpaceChem and Infiniminer (the inspiration for Minecraft)<p><a href="http://www.zachtronics.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.zachtronics.com/</a>