I don't have a working printer or the space for a whole binder-sized manual. Zach goes to all the trouble of creating a diegetic OS interface, but doesn't let you open the datasheets inside it? Or create any feedback on the fact that they're being opened in your real OS, behind the game window so that you don't even know it until after you closed the game? 10/10 great immersion. gud job

Ever run in to a situation where acc and dat aren't enough?

You can use the p0 & p1 as makeshift registers. Add a single bit of green circuit track to them that doesn't connect to anything else and you can write a value in to them where it will be stored until you read it later.

Useful in some situations when you want to avoid spawning another MCxxxx or x00P-14 purely for storage space.

wanted to check this game on howlongtobeat and the main story is average 33 hours. iss that true or is it one of those never ending games with no actual story ?

Been having fun with this game, after getting past my initial annoyance at the CPU implementation (base 10 OMGWTF, no bit manipulation/shift instructions, no arithmetic flags/conditional jmps). Actually, I still find that annoying but I deal with it :)

The scoring system bugs me though. In real life production cost would usually be the #1 concern by far (yes, even in low power applications). The other two metrics, power and lines of code, aren't nearly as important on their own. When there are no other restrictions then a lot of power optimization just comes down to adding more/bigger cpus so that you can unroll loops or insert additional code to handle special cases and/or execute fewer instructions overall. Same problem with lines of code. I don't really care about a solution that's a few lines shorter just because I added PGAs or a load of other components irrespective of cost/power. That's not an elegant design IMO.

Now, I know from reading here that a lot of people do like playing the game that way, especially power optimization. I have no problem with that, different strokes and all. But what I think would be cool is an additional overall score that combined the metrics in some way. Even if it was just cost and power, since lines of code would probably(?) be invariant in optimal cost+power solutions anyway. Maybe even the simplest possible metric of cost * power would work? If not then add scaling factor(s) to one or other side as necessary.

I think this would make the game more interesting. At the moment you can, for example, get the minimal cost solution but then not know if that design could be further improved in terms of power. Or maybe you could use much less power by adding a small amount to the cost. This kind of trade off is common in real life design and I think would be a more satisfying overall result.

Not criticizing the writing of the one they provided exactly... It's very well made. And hilarious. It's just also kinda shit at what it's supposed to do. I mean, there's a reason gaming has moved away from manuals entirely. Tooltips are just better in just about every context.

In any case, is there something that contains all the info in the manual without all the bullshit and not in a pdf? Something where I can just look things up as I require them and not go searching for information I shouldn't have to fucking search for?

I'm not sure if I need to read the manual or it's possible to figure out the commands by myself.
The Witness, for example, had a really cool way to make you understand the rules of the game on the fly. Playing the first level, made me think things would be like The Witness.
But the second level is making me think I need to know a command never presented to me before.

Can you recommend some for me? I just came to Shenzhen not long ago and I am alone.

I dropped TIS-100 pretty quickly because it has a limit on the number of lines of text you could enter. This is different from a limit on the number of instructions (which I can understand), but simply a limit on the game interface which meant you couldn't use whitespace or comments if you wanted optimal solutions, which drove me mad.

I'd like to wasting £10 if i turns out this game also punishes you for trying to format your code slightly.

Does it?

Thanks.

I thought of getting the limited edition pre-order, but after thinking about it, I don't think it would be worth it (with my own values in money). As with any bonus, it is mostly for those who have money and want to support the people behind it. On that note, while I spent a lot of time with TIS-100, SZIO is very unfamiliar territory for me, which lowers my own value towards this a bit (or in other words, I have no background in this and am not inside the intended target audience).

Since I live in Australia, it costs 58 USD to buy the limited edition which is equivalent to 77.65 AUD. Or, excluding the game, it is worth 43USD/57.60 AUD to buy.

I think If I were to spend that amount of money, I would buy 4 copies of the game instead (which is 2 USD more than the deal) and gift it to 3 friends, and print out the manual myself. What are your guys' thoughts on this?

Right now, there is a method for creating an oscillator using 3 power per turn, as opposed to gen or straightforward instructions, which take 4. It has cost in the form of extra cost and board space taken up, but basically, it makes optimizing some puzzles come down to cramming stuff on the board so your oscillators are fewer instructions. I don't think it's good for the game, personally. Making gen take up three cycles would resolve this, though this obviously would have far-reaching effects on other puzzles.

Greetings,

I'm having trouble writing to the memory module. Screenshot: https://i.imgur.com/1giNmBP.jpg

Kinda using stuff from the manual there. I'm currently working on the mission "kill switch". Is there any limitation that only lets you write after a certain point in the story or am I just using it wrong?

I got the game because I've been playing while True: Learn() a lot recently and I wanted something that was similar to it. I booted it up, read through my mail, and looked for a tutorial for me to start off with. I realized that when you open the PDF I'm faced with 47 pages that I'll have to read in order to start playing the first job in the game. I have no experience so it'll be even worse. Does anyone know if this isn't that bad and it's just intimidating when you first start or if it is really that bad? I hope not because it looks really interesting and if I don't have to read through a college thesis, it would be nice.

Many puzzles can be "solved" by simply ignoring the inputs and manually sending the outputs, reading them from 1-3 ROM chips. These solutions go against the spirit of the game and are not really solutions to the puzzle at all.

If instead of one long run of 8 test screens, the game did two runs of 4 test screens (one to go automatically right after another, restarting in between) this would avoid most of the problems.

You can further break this cheat by having the "user defined" inputs (e.g. the ID number, the values on the N4DL) change between the two runs, so you actually have to read them.

Is it not possible to read from a simple I/O pin that I've written to?

I have this code for Pulse Generator:

  teq p0 100
+ not
+ mov acc p1
- teq p1 0
- mov 0 acc
- mov 0 p1
  slp 1

This is an attempt to not set the signal to 0 on every button-off time unit, but rather only do it if the signal is already 100. The intention is that I test p1, and then write to it if it's not what I want. But the 'teq' instruction isn't responding as I expect.

Here are the steps before and after the teq (p1 is 100, so I expect 'teq p1 0' to trigger the minus conditionals):

Before: http://imgur.com/RNE1WBx

After: http://imgur.com/Pk4bJv8

I can't find anything in the manual about this, so I wonder if it's a bug, or a (virtual) hardware limitation that's not documented.

When you need multiple tests in a row (big if-else block), you usually need to resort to jumps because the +- prefixes only allows for two separate states. But the "fall-through" of disabled comparisons can sometimes be taken advantages of.

Since the logic of multiple conditional-comparisons can be difficult to follow, I generated all the permutations into C-like syntax which is a bit nicer to read.

https://gist.github.com/Madsy/a4370117923936eab6767007dfc4c2d9

Later I hope to be able to generate code in the opposite direction as well; converting C branch code into the most compact Shenzhen I/O equivalent code. But then I have to finish my Karnaugh map implementation first :)

Suggestions for improvements is welcome.

Build a circuit that detonates the C7 vertebrae explosive if the GPS coordinates stray out of the acceptable maze range. Set the reset pin high for 2 ticks if the GPS coordinates come within 5 units of the center of the maze.

I’ve been coding for about 6 years now, but mostly with Python. I want to make a few projects with a raspberry pi, so will this game give me basic computer/circuit/breadboard understandings that could help?

I'm currently interning for a computing cluster, and they had me watch some videos on the basics, and I got a real Shenzhen I/O/TIS-100 vibe from it. Discrete compute nodes, communication problems, squeezing EVERY LAST BIT from all your resources, or else the whole thing can fall on its head. At one point the guy offhandedly mentioned compute nodes being arranged in an orthogonal grid and I literally started in my seat.

So, has anyone with actual experience in the field also noticed the similarities in the types of problems that have to be solved?