Kohctpyktop: a game for engineers

Technology
Kohctpyktop: a game for engineers
kohctpyktop.jpg

Feeling nostalgic for those frantic days in the digital design lab? Wish there were perhaps a game that put you in the place of an engineer, trying to design new ICs to meet the goals of some unspecified organization? Want to get your SI on? No idea what I am talking about?

Well then, let me introduce you to Kohctpyktop: engineer of the people, by Zachtronics Industries. It’s the first game I’ve ever seen where you have to design integrated circuits as a challenge, sort of like pipe dream for electrical engineers. In the game, you are placed in the role of a silicon designer, who must lay down metal, and n and p type doping to make BJTs, in order to create different types of logic circuits. The game takes a little bit of artistic license in the way circuits are run (there isn’t any ground, and one would certainly use FETs to build most of these devices), however it is an interesting logic puzzle, and perhaps a good introduction to learning about digital circuits. The only thing that took me a while to figure out is that you need to press shift to access some of the features. [via HeatSync Labs]

10 thoughts on “Kohctpyktop: a game for engineers

  1. keithmo says:

    Looks like a lower-level (and slightly less game-like) version of Rocky’s Boots. http://www.warrenrobinett.com/rockysboots/

    1. Gareth Branwyn says:

      Gawd, I loved playing Rocky’s Boots and Robot Odyssey with my son when he was little. Those were great trailing wheels for budding makers.

  2. Youngfrey says:

    I don’t know of any recent ones, but both Rocky’s Boots and Robot Odyssey had complicated circuit design in them. Robot Odyssey in particular required some rather complicated control circuits be built to make robots navigate complicated areas.

  3. Mask De Smith says:

    This game is almost exactly how you do the layout for cmos ICs (sort of). It’s like cadence except it doesn’t cost a million dollars for a license and you feel like some sort of russian agent instead of unappreciated

  4. Laine says:

    This reminds me of the week of all-nighters trying to complete my final project for VLSI design (http://www.ece.ucdavis.edu/~bbaas/116.winners/). The program we used was open-source and quite powerful. http://opencircuitdesign.com/magic/magic.html

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