1. History

2. Games developed
     Infiniminer    SpaceChem    Other games  

3. References

4. External links

History

Zachtronics was founded by American video game designer and programmer Zach Barth. Barth started creating games early in life and further developed his programming skills at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), where he joined the game development club.^[2][3] Barth studied computer systems engineering and computer science at RPI. He was one of three students leading the interdisciplinary team of the CapAbility Games Research Project, a collaboration of RPI with the Center for Disability Services in Albany, New York. In 2008, the team produced Capable Shopper, a shopping simulation game for players with various degrees of disability.^[4][5]

Barth's initial games were generally free browser games offered on his website. One of these was Infiniminer, the block-building precursor game of Minecraft by Mojang.^[6] His earlier, non-commercial, games included twenty that were published on his old website and "five good ones" which he transferred over to the new site. Four of these use Flash to make them cross-platform, in spite of Flash's "terrible" development environment. The other one is based on .NET for greater programming convenience. SpaceChem also used .NET, as Barth considers C# to be "the best language ever invented". For marketing reasons, Barth decided against XNA with its capability to cross-publish to Xbox 360, and switched to OpenGL, which allowed him to target the three operating systems required for inclusion in the Humble Indie Bundle.^[2]

After completing The Codex of Alchemical Engineering and getting positive feedback from it, Barth came up with the idea of making commercial games. The first of these was SpaceChem, which he developed the Zachtronics label for. It was also the first game where he took in a number of collaborators to help.^[2] SpaceChem was critically praised, which led Barth to continue to develop more games under the Zachtronics label. A few ideas failed to come to light, and with expectations for the studio to make another game, he opted to make Ironclad Tactics, which was more a real-time based card game rather than a puzzle game.^[9] Ironclad Tactics did not do as well as SpaceChem, and Barth realized there was more a market for the puzzle games that he had previously developed, and turned back to his Flash-based games. Initially he looked to take The Codex of Alchemical Engineering to make it a full commercial release, but instead ended up producing Infinifactory and later TIS-100.^[9]

In 2015, Barth joined Valve Corporation to work on SteamVR.^[7] He worked there for 10 months before departing.^[8] Near the time he started to work at Valve, Barth had been considering shutting down Zachtronics due to stress of running the business alongside the new responsibilities at Valve. Sometime between the release of TIS-100 and Shenzhen I/O, Barth had come into contact with Alliance Media Holdings who offered to buy the studio and to manage the publishing of the games, while allowing Barth retain his creative lead and control.^[9]

Since the studio's acquisition, it has published Shenzhen I/O, and Opus Magnum, which is the spiritual successor to The Codex.^[9]

The studio intends to publish a book Zach-Like in 2019 that includes design documents and other reference material used by Barth and his team during the development of his games.^[10]

Games developed

Zachtronics' games have generally been focused around engineering puzzle games, designing machines or the equivalent to take input and make output; these are generally part of the broader class of programming games.

Infiniminer

Barth wrote Infiniminer in his spare time, with the help of a friend, and released it in steps of incremental updates during April–May 2009. It quickly garnered a following on message boards around the Internet.{{citation needed|date=March 2012}}

Infiniminer was originally intended to be played as a team-based competitive game, where the goal is to locate and excavate precious metals, and bring the findings to the surface to earn points for the player's team.^[12] However, as the game gained popularity, players gravitated towards the emergent gameplay functionality of building in-world objects, instead of the stated design goal of competition.

Zachtronics discontinued development of the game less than a month after its first release as the result of its source code leak. As Barth had not obfuscated the C# .NET source code of the game, it was decompiled and extracted from the binaries. Hackers modified the code to make mods, but also started making clients that would target vulnerabilities in the game as well as build incompatible game forks that fragmented its user base. Barth, who was making the game for free, then lost interest and dropped the project, as development of the game had become too difficult.^[2] The source code of Infiniminer is now available under the MIT License.^[13] Building Infiniminer requires Visual Studio 2008 and XNA Game Studio 3.0.^[14]

Infiniminer is the game that Minecraft was initially inspired by (and subsequently FortressCraft, CraftWorld and Ace of Spades). The visuals and mechanics of procedural generation and terrain deformation of Minecraft were drawn from Infiniminer.^[15] According to Minecraft author Markus Persson, after he discovered Infiniminer, he "decided it was the game he wanted to do".^[16]

SpaceChem

Zachtronics is also known for its puzzle game SpaceChem in which the player creates chemical pathways similar in style to visual programming.

In March 2011, Barth stated the possibility of making expansion packs to SpaceChem and adding a free update and editor which would allow users to create their own levels which could then be shared to other users, with the best ones being picked out by Zachtronics to be published and these were released on April 29 as the Shareholders' Update.^[19] Barth hinted at the prospect of a sequel and also stated that it would be fantastic to have SpaceChem on a future Humble Bundle.^[2] The game was included in the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle charitable sale in early October 2011.^[20] The following year SpaceChem was the featured game on IndieGameStand, a site which features indie games with a pay-what-you-want model with a portion of the proceeds going to charity. Barth chose the Against Malaria Foundation as the charity to which 10% of the proceeds were donated.^[21]

Other games

• The Codex of Alchemical Engineering
• Magnum Opus Challenge
• Ruckingenur II
• Bureau of Steam Engineering
• KOHCTPYKTOP
• Ironclad Tactics
• Infinifactory
• TIS-100
• Shenzhen I/O^[22]
• Opus Magnum^[23]
• Exapunks^[24]

References

External links

• {{Officialwebsite|http://www.zachtronics.com}}
• {{Officialwebsite|http://thesiteformerlyknownas.zachtronicsindustries.com|Old official website}}

• Twister (fish)
• Twister (ice cream)
• Twister II
• Twister (Lake Compounce)
• Twister (magic trick)
• Twister (pastry)
• Twister (rollercoaster)
• Twister roller coaster
• Twister (Roller coaster)
• Twister (roller coaster)
• Twister roller coasters
• Twisters
• Twister (Software from Brokat AG)
• Twister supersonic separator
• Twister (tree)
• Twistetal
• Twist (film)
• Twist, Germany
• Twist (Goldfrapp song)
• Twisting By The Pool
• Twisting by the Pool
• Twisting sheaf
• Twisting the Night Away
• Twisting Torso
• Twist in My Sobriety