You start with basic logic gates like AND, OR, and NOT, then gradually combine them into adders, multiplexers, memory, an ALU, and eventually a complete CPU. Once you've built the hardware, you can write assembly programs that run on the processor you created.
The game is inspired by courses like Nand2Tetris, but everything runs directly in the browser with a visual circuit editor, simulations, and progressively harder challenges.
Also, for people interested in this type of thing, look up Ben Eater’s 6502 videos. Wiring up a 6502 (old microprocessor) to ROM and RAM on a breadboard; later he builds a “world’s worst video card” - more like a VGA display output card, still pretty cool.
FYI the author started publishing updates again; looks like he took 2 years to rebuild the game from the ground up and instead of launching it as "Turing Complete 2" he chose to simply publish it as breaking update, and is now continuing with updates to add features.
I advise the readers to check out not only Nand2Tetris but also Turing Complete game on Steam (and hopefully back on GOG at some point). The author came back to it and started posting updates a few months ago after almost 2 year silence. He rebuilt the engine with a huge performance boost and is now adding more and more features.
Not affiliated with him in any way, just think the game is great and his dedication to it deserves respect.
I have gotten my nephew into it with some success as well.
My child just informed me that Turing Complete has just released a major redesign and that the engine is even faster than before.
Also it would ne nice to have a level zero where you create the gates from transistors.
When I played through this last year it was surprising how much came back to me from the courses I took in college, and haven't touched at all in 20 years.
One bit of feedback: I'd love to be able to stare at the tests while I'm playing around with the logic gates; every time I switch to the tests tab then click around on the "board," the tabs switch back.
1. Please please please apply `user-select: none;` to everything within the circuit canvas. Almost more often than not I would end up dragging text that had been highlighted rather than any of the actual gates or inputs.
2. Having to switch between 'select', 'wire', and 'delete' modes is a bit cumbersome.
3. Absolutely no progress seems to be saved on navigation or page reload. I've completed the first level several times and if I go anywhere else or reload after completing it, the site shows zero levels completed and shows the tutorial again.
No you don’t. Once you get to memory you no longer have any tests that do anything and it’s impossible to actually progress.
The "Pipelining" level is completely broken - big completely empty grid, no components to place, and you actually think you're going to learn _pipelining_ in a _schematic editor_?
This is a vibe-coded slop project. Not interested.
You didn't test this thing at all, did you?
The post is about the game. When clicking on the Browse button and assuming you can read, you will see a collection of well-crafted products. I am not selling those myself. The website does not process payments, does not ask for donations, nothing like that.
Saying that the ALU example does not have tests is just a lie. I am not sure if you are a liar, or just frustrated about something, or maybe you're having a bad day, but for a person bragging about being an ex-employeeID at a big-tech firm and a GH-contribution-green-dots chaser, you should be more humble and think twice before accusing someone of doing illegal stuff.
Also, the later puzzles (starting with memory) don't have any real tests. Seems like it just doesn't really exist past that point.
- You should be able to drag/drop elements from the sidebar onto the canvas
- Wiring shouldn't be a separate tool, and you should be able to drag/drop wires instead of having to click on the two endpoints separately
- You should be able to delete the currently selected gate with the delete key, and the "delete" button in the toolbar should delete the currently selected gate instead of it being a separate tool
- There's not enough contrast between the grid pattern and the background of the canvas
- There seems to be some problems with moving overlapping components
- There's no way to move around the canvas
- The progress doesn't seem to save and there's no way to skip levels
I'd also like the ability to skip levels. I already know how gates and full adders work. It's just drudgery to get through them.
But do you know how an 8-bit Kogge-Stone adder works? Most of the sources I've read are quite unhelpful. I particularly "like" the ones (e.g. Wikipedia) that use some random pictures/diagrams from who knows where that either 1) have completely different symbols from each other and from what the text claims the symbols on the pictures are (e.g. the text talks about black and grey boxes, the pictures have red and yellow triangles); 2) shows a different kind of adder — the article about Brent-Kung adder has a Kogge-Stone diagram instead; 3) very obviously doesn't work the way the text claims it works/does what the text claims it does.
- allow drawing wires backwards from sink to source
- allow connecting inputs
Also there is a problem with the tests and the simulator that showed up in the SR latch level. Despite having the correct circuit, the tests failed until I swapped the two NOR gates. I can not reproduce it, but I would guess it has something to do with the component placement order, the update order of the simulator, and how the tests are executed. As the NOR feedback loop has no well-defined initial state, it probably settled in a placement order dependent way that made the tests fail. Maybe Q was already 1 and the test looks for a 0 to 1 transition when enabling S?
It is such a shame that the words "passion" and "well-crafted" are being actively devalued.