1. TIS-100 Free Download PC Game 2019 Overview TIS-100 is an open-ended programming game by Zachtronics, the creators of SpaceChem and Infinifactory, in which you rewrite corrupted code segments to repair the TIS-100 and unlock its secrets. It’s the assembly language programming game you never asked for!
2. Instruction set and instruction parameters may specify a port or internal register. Any use of a port will block until the corresponding node connected to that port completes the communication by reading or writing a value.
3. TIS-100 is an open-ended programming game in which you rewrite corrupted code segments to repair the TIS-100 and unlock its secrets. It's the assembly language programming game you never asked for! Print and explore the TIS-100 manual, which details the inner-workings of the TIS-100 while evoking the aesthetics of a vintage computer manual!
4. TIS-100 official site is an assembly programming puzzler, having you literally learn and write code to fix up corrupted code in the mysterious eponymous '80s computer. Yes, you do need to learn and write the TIS-100's assembly code. Computers are puzzles!After.

Recently I became infatuated with TIS-100, a game which aptlydescribes itself as “the assembly language programming game you never asked for!”

TIS-100 is an open-ended programming game by Zachtronics, the creators of SpaceChem and Infinifactory, in which you rewrite corrupted code segments to repair the TIS-100 and unlock its secrets. It’s the assembly language programming game you never asked for!Print and explore the TIS-100.

The point of the game is to program the (imaginary) TIS-100 CPU to solve problems. For example,you might need to take input from two ports and swap them, then write the outputs to two otherports.

The game flies in the face of all modern game design: The first thing you need to do is sit andread a 14 page PDF that outlines the TIS-100 instruction set. And when I say “read”, I mean “learn”,because a quick skim is not going to cut it! There are no tutorial levels or handholding.You must read the manual.

After solving the first few problems and feeling good about myself, I approached some of myprogrammer friends and tried to get them to buy the game so I could compare my solutionsto theirs. I swear I tried bringing this up with 3 people and had the exact same conversation:

Them: “So, it’s a game about programming…”

Me: “Yes, it’s so much fun!”

Them: “But I program all day.”

Me: “Me too!”

Them: “The last thing I want to do when I come home is program again”

awkward silence

Them: “You’re nuts.”

The rabbit hole goes deeper

Despite not having any close friends to play with, I plowed through the puzzles in the game. One inparticular was quite devious; The TIS-100 is, as I mentioned, an imaginary CPU. And it is clearlydesigned to be puzzling rather than practical. It has only two registers, and one is a backup thatcannot be addressed directly. This afformentioned puzzle involved taking the input of two numbersand dividing one by the other. You then output the resulting quotient to one port and theremainder to another.

It was quite fun to work through, but to my dismay my solution was quite inefficient. If Iclicked the regular “Play” button to execute it it would take several minutes to finish.Even if I ran it in “Fast” mode it would take about 5 seconds to complete successfully.

This was obviously unacceptable.

A typical person might call it a day and say, “well, the realvictory is solving the puzzle!”. Another, more eccentric person might spend the timefiguring out how to optimize their solution so it executes in less time. And then there’s me.

Introducing my TIS-100 emulator

I decided the most logical thing to do was to implement the TIS-100 CPU myself in pure C.This seemed like a good idea to me despite having not used C in about 15 years.

Amazingly, most of the concepts came back fairly quickly. Maybe C is like riding a bike?Maybe using so much Javascript (and its C syntax) kept me on the ball? I’m not sure.

I first wrote a parser to input the TIS-100 assembly language as defined in game. It writesit to memory in byte code, which is then interpreted. The resulting performance is reallyimpressive!

The Unity version of TIS-100 that runs on my Mac executes my division program in about5 seconds, which is an eternity as far as programs go! My C emulator runs the code in asleek 0.005s, or roughly 1000x faster!

Tis 100 Walkthrough

The full source code is on GitHub, so feel free todownload it and check it out. I’ll even accept pull requests as I’m sure there’s a lot ofroom for improvement.

Why did I spend my time on this pointless project?

I try to not use the word “crazy” often because I don’t want to trivialize mental illness,but let’s be honest: I have to be a least a little off base to attempt a project like this.Programming is a legitimate hobby of mine. I make a living at it but I also do it in myspare time. TIS-100 was a perfect storm of programming and fun, and I didn’twant it to end.

Tis 100 Steam

Obivously I’m not the only onewho enjoyed the game, so there is a market for this kind of thing. Maybe this isthe long tail of games?

Tis 100 Download

All I know is I had a lot of fun doing it, and I hope someone has fun with myemulator. Let me know if you do!