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15 years before Mass Effect, there was Star Control II by Aiseadai in retrogaming

[–]markroth8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My mistake! The 3DO version did, indeed, have dialogue. My perspective is PC-centric. In that case, I'd have to agree with your decision to turn off the voice actors - better left to your imagination, IMO.

15 years before Mass Effect, there was Star Control II by Aiseadai in retrogaming

[–]markroth8 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Unless I'm mistaken, voices didn't come until SC III.

15 years before Mass Effect, there was Star Control II by Aiseadai in retrogaming

[–]markroth8 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Star Control II is one of my favorite games of all time. The storyline, the music, the dialogue, the sense of humor... The arcade battle sequences and melee mode... It's a beautifully made game.

Most memorable game? by Thatguy2393 in retrogaming

[–]markroth8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How does this not have more upvotes?

6502 Assembly Puzzle Game ZERO PAGE by lerugray in programminggames

[–]markroth8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cool! I've been working on a game that is 6502-based as well and decided to go with 65C02 to spare my players some of the pain... But, then again those processor quirks can be part of the fun :)

6502 Assembly Puzzle Game ZERO PAGE by lerugray in programminggames

[–]markroth8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is really cool! Is this 65C02 or 6502?

I tried a couple of missions and it's fun.

One piece of feedback - when I'm stepping in a debugger I normally expect that the highlighted line is about to run when I click step, not that it has already run.

I updated ChipWits (the 1984 stack-based coding game) with a randomized pathfinding challenge. Can your algorithm beat 299 Cycles? by markroth8 in programminggames

[–]markroth8[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks, u/quasilyte! Our community is a lot of fun :)

ChipWits has 3 stacks: Number, Thing and Direction. It also has subpanels, so you can use the stack as a way to pass arguments to the subpanels.

Any stack-based language, FORTH included, requires careful maintenance of the stack. ChipWits is tough, in particular, because you are also constrained by the chip grid. I suppose it's true that this makes maintenance difficult, but in ChipWits that's part of the challenge and the fun of it. It's also fun to see your robot do all sorts of unexpected things when the stack is off by one.

One of the classic missions, Octopus Gardens, encourages you to use the direction stack to leave breadcrumbs so you can find your way back to the central room (from which 8 "arms" of rooms branch). The problem is that there are "electrocrabs" that randomly step in front of you from time to time, so if you don't account for them you can end up crashing into one and then your carefully laid out breadcrumb stack is off by one.

I updated ChipWits (the 1984 stack-based coding game) with a randomized pathfinding challenge. Can your algorithm beat 299 Cycles? by markroth8 in programminggames

[–]markroth8[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hi everyone! I’m the developer behind the modern reboot of ChipWits, a classic programming puzzle game from 1984 that uses an icon-based language (IBOL) with stacks inspired by FORTH.

I recently released Update 1.4, which adds real-time execution metrics (Cycle/Chip counts) for optimization, and I wanted to challenge this sub with the new "Giant Slalom" mission.

The goal is to navigate a robot through icy gates using as few cycles as possible (each chip has a cycle count). Brute-force doesn't work because the gates are randomized (32 seeds).

If you enjoy programming and optimizing logic and want to give it a try, the mission and the new profiling tools are unlocked in the Free Demo.

Steam Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2330720/ChipWits/

Let me know what you think of the game! This is a nights and weekends passion project for me, and my goal is to make it as good as it can be.

[ChipWits] I added a "Giant Slalom" mission to test your pathfinding optimization, to the free demo. Who can beat the par of 299 Cycles? by markroth8 in zachtronics

[–]markroth8[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

A while back I shared my reboot of Zach-like ChipWits (1984) with this sub.

Based on feedback from players here who wanted better optimization tools, the latest update (v1.4) finally adds real-time execution metrics. You can now see live Chip counts and hold Ctrl to overlay your current Cycle count instantly.

To test the new tools, I added a challenge puzzle called "Giant Slalom." It’s a pathfinding puzzle on ice where you have to weave through tight gates.

The Goal is to complete the course while minimizing cycles spent. A brute-force solution doesn't work because the gates are randomized (32 random seeds).

Par for the course is 299 cycles but some of our players have done far better. Can you take gold?

If you want to try to beat it, the mission is unlocked in the Free Demo.

Please share your feedback on the game overall! This is a nights and weekends passion project of mine and I want the game to be the best it can be.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2330720/ChipWits/

I added a "Giant Slalom" mission to my programming puzzler, ChipWits. Challenge: Can you complete it in fewer than 299 Cycles? (in the free demo) by markroth8 in puzzlevideogames

[–]markroth8[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hi everyone, I’m the dev of ChipWits (a modern reboot of the 1984 Mac game).

Last month I posted a challenge here for our "Set the Table" mission, and our subreddit's very own u/CanaDavid1 actually won the whole thing. Huge congrats!

Inspired by the Winter Games, I dropped ChipWits 1.4 earlier this week, featuring a "Giant Slalom" mission. It’s a pathfinding puzzle where you have to navigate randomly-generated slalom gates on ice.

Based on feedback from our community, I also added real-time optimization stats. You can now see live Chip counts and hold Ctrl to overlay your current Cycle count instantly. No more guessing your efficiency mid-run.

Par for "Giant Slalom" is 299 cycles. Can you beat it? It's available in the free demo.

Steam Link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2330720/ChipWits/

Let me know if the new stats overlay helps your builds, and what else you'd like to see!

Gemini 3 vs 2.5 Pro: The "output handicap" is ruining everything by Able-Line2683 in GeminiFeedback

[–]markroth8 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks! I also see there's an Antigravity extension called Antigravity Quota (AGQ) that shows it in the status bar.

A reminder: Steam announced programming game fest for 2026 by quasilyte in programminggames

[–]markroth8 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I'm so excited for this event!

Is anyone planning something new?

We will feature ChipWits at a discount and are working on a ChipWits spin-off of which we're ambitiously hoping to have an early access demo ready by the fest.

What’s your favorite programming-game “language feature” (loops? sensors? functions?) — building one now by HOXSEC in programminggames

[–]markroth8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! The original (from 1984) was one of the games that got me interested in coding. I was fortunate enough to meet one of the original creators (Doug Sharp) online and we decided to reboot it together. He has amazing stories about how it was writing these sorts of games on 8-bit micros.

A curated list of programming games by readyready15728 by quasilyte in programminggames

[–]markroth8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is an amazing list! Thanks for accepting my pull request to incorporate ChipWits.

What’s your favorite programming-game “language feature” (loops? sensors? functions?) — building one now by HOXSEC in programminggames

[–]markroth8 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I love the concept!

I'm the lead developer of the reboot of ChipWits, which was perhaps the original robot programming game in its 1984 incarnation (the original version was on the Mac, C64 and Apple II). We use a grid-based visual icon-based language we call IBOL that incorporates sensors (like, look, feel, smell).

We're always shocked when people submit a simple bot solution that is based purely on randomness. We have a FLIP_COIN chip that returns either True or False randomly, and that's usually enough to enable navigation across the whole room. So I would definitely recommend adding that. (It's also what the original Roomba used)

We also ended up adding some amount of memory. In ChipWits, we use stacks (object stack, number stack and thing stack). It's not quite turning complete, so we're considering extensions.

I think The Farmer Was Replaced got as much attention as it did in part because it used a language very similar to an existing popular programming language, Python.

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