Zachtronics Industries

Manufactoria

Zach — Thu, 20 May 2010 23:53:55 +0000

Who here likes my “engineering” games? Everyone? Excellent! Because I have something that you may like!

GO PLAY THIS GAME. RIGHT NOW.

And then go vote for it with 5-stars because this fellow is close to winning the weekly prize!

What is this? It’s a flash game called ~~Manufactoid~~ Manufactoria by a Nicholas Feinberg of mysterious origins. And it’s a proper game for engineers, about nothing less than finite state machines (and possibly more complex computational machines, as I haven’t beaten the game yet) in the guise of robot testing equipment. It even has charming flavor text and auto-save. Why are you still reading this? Go play this game!

EDIT: Yup, I see something that looks like a Turing machine. Incredible!

A Modest Protocol Proposal

Zach — Sat, 01 May 2010 03:08:24 +0000

Although it appears to have gone over some heads, the last post, Internal Developments, was intended as satire. Perhaps not enough of you have experience in production environments where XML is used like a glorious aether that ties everything together. Fortunately, I think we can spin this into something more informative.

As it turns out, I didn’t even write that abomination, nor the cryptic “release memo” that accompanied it. It was written by my friend and colleague Keith, who also wrote the prototypes for the shaders in Infiniminer and may be collaborating with Zachtronics Industries in the near future. Consider him the Senior Protocol Architect for Asset Interchange Formats.

Internal Developments

Zach — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 03:29:15 +0000

ORIGIN: ZACHTRONICS INDUSTRIES / WEST / ADVANCED GRAPHICS TECHNOLOGIES LABORATORY RE: GRAPHICAL ASSET INTERCHANGE CONVERSION TOOL PROTOTYPE DISTRIBUTION: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE / PUBLIC


DIRECTIVE: RELEASE TEXT FOLLOWS

DIRECTIVE: REPRODUCE VERBATIM
----
The Advanced Graphics Laboratory, a division of Zachtronics Industries, is pleased to announce that a recently developed internal tool has been approved for release to the public! This is a very exciting time for the Advanced Graphics Lab, as this marks the first public release of an internal tool from our lab.
We at the laboratory hope that you, loyal ZI consumer, can apply this compelling new standards-based technology to your own problems with as much success as we have here in the lab.
Sincerely,

[[IDENTIFER REDACTED; EMPLOYEE ID=2308]]

Senior Protocol Architect for Asset Interchange Formats
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ATTACHMENT: gfx_ichg_tool_alpha2.zip

DEPENDENCY: Python 2.x <http://www.python.org/download/>

DEPENDENCY: Python Imaging Library <http://www.pythonware.com/products/pil/>

STABILITY: EXPERIMENTAL
----

DIRECTIVE: END RELEASE TEXT

WordPress!

Zach — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 07:16:59 +0000

In case it’s not obvious, I’ve switched my site over to WordPress! Expect a proper template sometime in the next few days.

Happy Holidays!

Zach — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 09:02:00 +0000

It’s a good thing I make video games and not airplanes…

Zach — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 08:53:00 +0000

It has come to my attention that the NSIS installer script I’ve been using for ALL of my installers will delete the entire installation directory when doing an uninstall. For anyone who chose the default option, which is to create a new subdirectory in the “Zachtronics Industries” folder in “Program Files”, this is not a problem; the game-specific subdirectory is the only thing that will be deleted. However, if you’ve installed the game directly into a directory with other files, DO NOT USE THE UNINSTALLER, as it will delete those files too.

I’ve uploaded new installers that lack an uninstall option for now, and will hopefully figure out a better solution in the next few days. If anyone else encountered this problem in the past (but didn’t threaten to rip out my entrails) I apologize to you too.

Ruckingenur CE

Zach — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 10:35:00 +0000

Took me long enough.

I released the Ruckingenur Editor almost a year ago, but it wasn’t until I received two levels designed by Ariel for EKOPARTY that I had enough to publish a proper Community Edition. The other three levels are by Jonathan, AJ, and Fredrik. You can download the installer here:

Download Ruckingenur CE (13.6 MB)

Notepad Hijack Framework

Zach — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 22:09:00 +0000

A few people have asked about how I was able to make a game in a Notepad window, as seen in Notepad Weekend. I dug out the source code and cleaned it up into a framework of sorts, which I’m posting here in case any of you would find it interesting!

Download notepad_hijack_framework.cpp [3.3 kB]

The code is pretty simple, but will only work on Windows due to the extensive use of the Windows API. It uses FindWindowEx() to find an open Notepad window, SetWindowsHookEx() to set a keyboard hook so that we can catch keyboard events, and SendMessage(WM_SETTEXT) to set the text in the main text box in the Notepad window. If you wanted to launch an instance of Notepad instead of requiring the player to do it, you could presumably use ShellExecute().

“goodbye is only eybdoog backwards”

Zach — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 08:29:00 +0000

In the aftermath of Infiniminer, feeling nothing but disgust in the pit of my stomach, I told people that I was done making games.

A month later I knew it was a lie and that I could never stop making games, but the truth of the matter is that I’m done making these games. The forums will remain up and I will continue reading all comments, but it’s unlikely that I’ll be posting new content any time soon. Thanks to everyone who played and enjoyed my games; without you, most of my recent creations probably wouldn’t exist.

- Zach

And forums are back!

Zach — Thu, 28 May 2009 05:19:00 +0000

I decided to stick with PHPBB3, but coded in an anti-spam question. If you can’t figure out the answer, you probably shouldn’t be trying to register an account…

Zachtronics Industries Forums