Human Resource Machine: AKA Programming Simulator 2015

[bigyihsuan]

Link to site here

Human Resource Machine is a game about coding your character in an office building to move boxes with numbers on them form the INBOX to the OUTBOX. Easy, right?

WRONG.

There are 11 different functions in the game, not including comments and labels. These are enough to simulate an entire programming language/computer... ON YOUR COMPUTER! Amazing isn't it?

After playing for several hours and getting frustrated at the lack of high-level programming language features (like for/while loops, multiplication, division, MODULO), I now respect early progammers that had to use machine code/assembly language/something a tiny more advanced.

Here's an example of the hacks that you need to do here:

There is a level where you have to code a program that outputs all of the numbers less than the input all the way to 0.

In-Game:

-- HUMAN RESOURCE MACHINE PROGRAM --

a:
    INBOX   
    JUMPN    c
    JUMPZ    f
b:
    COPYTO   0
    OUTBOX  
    BUMPDN   0
    JUMPZ    e
    JUMP     b
c:
d:
    COPYTO   0
    OUTBOX  
    BUMPUP   0
    JUMPZ    g
    JUMP     d
e:
f:
g:
    OUTBOX  
    JUMP     a

There's most likely a way to translate it to a different programming language, but I'm to tired to deal with the JUMP functions.

[Guest]

That's cool

[Beowolf]

Link to site here

After playing for several hours and getting frustrated at the lack of high-level programming language features (like for/while loops, multiplication, division, MODULO), I now respect early progammers that had to use machine code/assembly language/something a tiny more advanced.

Thanks, but in all honesty, we were having a wonderful time and didn't feel limited. By the time I was doing assembler (1976) the good assemblers allowed macros, so every programmer created his own personal version of whatever constructs he missed. Figuring out later how some other guy's code worked was where it got frustrating.