Johnny Lee Miller simulator sim Exapunks is the most recent puzzle game from the makers of Opus Magnum. I’ve already instructed you ways cool and hard it is. But I believed I’d pop by to indicate you the neat issues gamers are making inside this code-drenched different 1990s. Y’see, there’s an in-game handheld console known as the Red Shift, and since Zachtronics are recognized for his or her frighteningly-detailed hacking games, you may program your individual games for this Game Boyish system (to not point out different nonsense). Then, when you like, you may ship the cartridge to different gamers.
While this doesn’t have the identical hypnotic high quality as Opus Magnum’s great click-clacking alchemy machines, they’re nonetheless spectacular. Here, hackerperson ‘furrykef’ made the Red Shift bleep-bloop the Super Mario Bros theme.
“I took a .vgm file of the theme (which is basically a list of writes to the NES’s sound hardware registers) from the internet and wrote a Python script to convert it into DATA statements for a Redshift music engine,” they are saying in a Reddit post. Of course! Why didn’t I consider that.
“This took me long enough though that I’m not sure it saved much time over doing it by hand. On the upside, I can now convert other pieces of NES music this way if I want.”
Making music is one thing different individuals have found out. Fellow mirrorshades wearer ‘gtw123’ recreated Exapunks’ personal title music within the fictional console.
And one other code wrangler known as ‘Fun Maker’ made the Skater’s Waltz, used because the theme for historical Konami penguin sim Antarctic Adventure .
Of course, that wasn’t sufficient, so additionally they went forward and “bootlegged” the whole game.
Making these games means typing a lot of little strains of code, all stuffed into tiny spider-like bots who discuss to one another, trapped inside a Game Boy. It’s not precisely easy, however individuals have made issues just like the Game of Life and, in fact, Pong. Made right here by ‘LadyApoLLo’.
There’s even a cartridge for video poker (though I haven’t seen this in motion but).
However, this Asteroids clone, once more made by ‘gtw123’, might be my favorite.
As for my very own Exapunks code-tinkering, effectively, let’s say I threw my 56ok modem throughout the room in frustration as a result of I couldn’t get a spiderbot to speak to his good friend in a well timed vogue. That was one of many earlier puzzles, and I haven’t gone again to it. I discover it exhausting to make my bots environment friendly, and after the machine-like readability of Opus Magnum’s marble transportation I’ve discovered it exhausting to return to pondering in summary numbers that may usually zap between bots with out being simply tracked.
All of that simply makes what the gamers have performed right here extra spectacular. These monstrous persons are making tiny shifting lights and little beeping noises out of nothing however MATH. That’s magic. There needs to be a complete business based mostly on these things.
