THINGs in the 1984 ChipWitverse
One of the challenges of designing ChipWits was to come up with a simple but fun world for the bots to play in. When Mike Johnston and I started to shape our vision of the game we spent a lot … Continued
Interview by @TeaLeavesProgramming
We’re honored to have Peter B. (Host of the Tea Leaves Programming YouTube Channel) amongst our fans of the game. Peter picked up on our post about FORTH Programming Language and generously offered to do a ChipWits interview on his … Continued
Surprising Diagonal Movement Challenges
In a recent devlog post, we discussed Rotating 45 Degrees. Given a rectangular grid, the original game design allowed for diagonal movement rather than restricting to horizontal and vertical movement. This poses some surprising challenges. First, a tiny math refresher… … Continued
FORTH Programming Language (Going FORTH)
Why was the FORTH Programming Language used to create ChipWits? Long, long ago in an ancient era (1984) when microcomputers were a new thing, Mike Johnston and I fell in love with the Macintosh and bought one (for $4,700!) on … Continued
Rotate 45 Degrees
ChipWits wouldn’t be nearly as interesting if your robot couldn’t turn. Doug Sharp and Mike Johnston, the original designers of ChipWits, made two important decisions that affect the gameplay: The operator that causes ChipWit to rotate 45 degrees left or … Continued
History of ChipWits Part 1: The Title
How the Heck Did Mike Johnston and I come up with ChipWits? Hi, Doug Sharp here. Mike Johnston and I designed ChipWits, coded it, and published it in 1984. I’m proud of the game and thrilled we’re rebooting it. I’ll … Continued
Robot Claw
Perhaps the most important way your ChipWit interacts with the world is to pick up items. This is done using the “PICKUP” operator, which extends a robot claw and picks up whichever item is directly in front of the robot. … Continued
Happy Pi Day!
ChipWits wouldn’t be the same without Pi[e]. Enjoy Pi Day (3/14) and be sure to check out https://chipwits.com/ and subscribe to our mailing list for a 🎁 an exclusive preview of our new title theme 🎁 and to be the … Continued
Original Game Design
Before we start walking through our development progress on the reboot of ChipWits, we’d like to introduce (or review, for those who have already played) the game design of the original version of the game. Robots in Our Lives When … Continued
Game Design Blog: 3/4 Perspective?
Creating a new game can be overwhelming. There are many decisions to make, some of which become increasingly hard to reverse as development progresses. In our ChipWits game design blog we’d like to share some of the decisions we’ve made … Continued