This would be huge if it was « rogue like », where you could buy new more performant components that allow you to reach further into the game. The game makes you naturally lose, and there are milestones that you can reach (bosses, or loot that stays throughout sessions).
For instance you could unlock GPUs, docker containers, another SSD, antiviruses…
Also consider RTS elements, like assigning certain schedulers to handle workloads which are swappable and tuneable, maybe with some skill tree unlocks.
Education is the space that I'm hoping AI with unearth, and games like this could become a common part of the education. I totally see kids playing something similar for hours, learning core CS concepts and benefiting. Perhaps making a shooter would be awesome too: reclaiming memory, collecting cycles and energy and resources to train the model.
Another hope I have that we could learn math/physics that way. Having a better more visual and intuitive understanding of some math concepts would be great. Perhaps having a truck go through the plot of a function and learning about limits and maxima and minima would be great etc. Same story: playing something like this for several hours could burn in kid's/adult's mind a pattern of undersatnding calculus that would last a lifetime.
The absolute bane of my existence, I had a time a week ago repairing my bootloader after I (stupidly) did 3 months of windows updates after running a bunch of disk repairs and other recovery based things after I (again, stupidly) fell for a fake repo for deepseek tui and infected myself
For Windows CMD+R menu, run it by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+Enter (elevates to admin). You may have to do it twice for some unknown reasons after reinstalling the OS.
Had to learn this recently when my wife’s computer refused to register requests to boot into bios despite spamming F12 / Del many different times across many different USB ports. Such a pain in the ass.
This was fun to play...for about 2 minutes before all the manual work of moving processes around got very tedious, which may be the point of the game. What I would like is a little code edit window where i could code simple routines to handle the scheduling, then be able to watch the result.
I love this idea! I totally see it in the classroom or being played by someone who's trying to learn how to make an OS (which is on my personal bucket list)
What I didn't like, is the tutorial is separate from the game. It would be awesome imo, if there's a tutorial stage where the game is explained hands-on (maybe pausing the game with explainers, until I start to get how to play) Otherwise I have to memorise the instructions before trying the game.
I never get to the point where I had to manage memory. Am I doing something wrong? I just move processes to the CPU in order of highest-starved first, then move them off when they're green.
Computers were first marketed into replacing the work of humans that had a job called "computer" (what spreadsheets finally did)... Operating systems were create to replace computer operators (what they didn't)... For a while some people called compilers "automatic programmers".
The marketing and management of IT always had this fixation with replacing people. It always has been the wrong answer and the real value always came from making people better.
A lot of these puzzle/micromanagement games are very similar to stuff folks do for work. I stopped playing an entire category of puzzle games once I realized it was basically programming, which I do all day for a living anyway. Gamified programming is still programming.
I have a problematic relationship with Zachtronics games for this reason.
I love TIS-100, but at some point I realized I was studying the user manual for a fictional computer, trying to learn it's fictional assembly language, to optimize some multicore data flows.... and decided I should probably get paid for doing that in real life instead.
I do like some of them, like pico 8 is a constrained game programming environment, and it takes me back to the days of the power of qbasic, being able to do dang near anything without burying yourself in a massive layer of abstraction and complexity.
I’m one of those people. And what we do is write actual software for fun rather than pretend software in a computer game.
If I wanted logic flow embedded in a game then I’d want it in an environment that’s far removed from traditional programming. Such as building contraptions in Minecraft.
That's why you can speed up the simulation. Certain portions of flight are dramatically more entertaining than others. So take an hour to boot up the 777 from cold and dark, setup all the computers and management, do all the preflight, manage taxi and takeoff, then run the actual 7 hour flight at 10x speed so you can do the fun landing.
But even games that seem like just a job can be fun. Euro Truck simulator is fun because you are entirely self directed. Each job produces tangible results and you feel yourself progressing in a clear way that you often do not feel in a real job.
A game company (https://www.zachtronics.com/) that have made a series of games where you either build machines or write instructions to solve a task. An example is Opus Magnum where you convert input elements to output elements.
The games track things like cycles taken to complete the task, size/area of the machine, and cost. Those scores are shown on separate leaderboards and optimizing for one can come at the cost of another (e.g. faster machines may be bigger and/or more expensive).
Great concept but I did not have a ton of fun playing after the novelty wore off after a few minutes. It would've been more fun if time stood still and I had the opportunity to plan what I do at each cpu cycle. I was looking forward to managing cpu cache hits and ram usage.
Tangentially reminds me of https://deadlockempire.github.io/ where you play the role of the scheduler, but your job is to make vulnerable programs misbehave.
I can think of very few things that I'd rather not do then to be an OS. Talk about a thankless "game"...and I'm glad this came up.
Since when have games become more about just completing boring tasks and not about using your mind and dexterity to kill evildoers? Hell, the original Space Invaders was 100x more fun then this, and all we had to do was press a button to kill advancing aliens.
My wife plays a game where you use a pressure washer to clean areas up. Also plays a lawn mowing simulator. Oh, and a game where you run a supermarket, where you maintain inventory, stock shelves, and operate the checkout. Some people just like these types of things.
The game got too tedious to play by hand, so I wrote a script to play it automatically. It handles CPU, I/O, and processes quite well - but doesn't recognize a crown on a process and doesn't handle memory management at all.
I found that even on the easy level, the number of processes keeps growing slowly, and there isn't enough CPU time to keep all processes satisfied. I feel like the game is inherently setting you up for failure. Here is the script if anyone wants to play with it:
// ==UserScript==
// @name Auto-play "You're the OS!" game
// @include https://plbrault.github.io/youre-the-os/
// ==/UserScript==
(async function() {
const IO_EVENTS = {x: 160, y: 25};
const CPUS = 4;
const CPU1 = {x: 50+46, y: 50+42};
const SQUARE = {w: 64+5, h: 64+5};
const PROCESS = {x: 50+46, y: 155+42};
const PROCESS_ROWS = 6;
const PROCESS_COLS = 7;
let cnv = document.querySelector("body > canvas");
while (cnv.width != 1280 || cnv.height != 720)
await new Promise(res => setTimeout(res, 100));
while (true) {
const pixels = new Uint32Array(cnv.getContext("2d").getImageData(0, 0, cnv.width, cnv.height).data.buffer);
function getPixel(x, y) { return pixels[y * cnv.width + x]; }
if (getPixel(IO_EVENTS.x, IO_EVENTS.y) == 0xFF808000);
await pressKey("Space");
let cpuStatuses = [];
for (let i = 0; i < CPUS; i++) {
const p = getPixel(CPU1.x + SQUARE.w * i, CPU1.y);
cpuStatuses.push(
p == 0xFF000000 ? 1 :
p == 0xFF9A9B9B ? 2 :
p == 0xFF00FF00 ? 3 :
p == 0xFFE6D8B0 ? 4 :
0);
}
let processStatuses = [];
for (let r = 0; r < PROCESS_ROWS; r++) {
for (let c = 0; c < PROCESS_COLS; c++) {
const p = getPixel(PROCESS.x + SQUARE.w * c, PROCESS.y + SQUARE.h * r);
let s =
p == 0xFF000000 ? 1 :
p == 0xFF9A9B9B ? 2 :
p == 0xFF00FF00 ? 3 :
p == 0xFF00FFFF ? 4 :
p == 0xFF00A5FF ? 5 :
p == 0xFF0000FF ? 6 :
p == 0xFF00008B ? 7 :
p == 0xFF000050 ? 8 :
0;
if (s >= 3)
processStatuses.push({r, c, status: s});
}
}
processStatuses.sort((a, b) => a.status - b.status);
for (let i = 0; i < cpuStatuses.length; i++) {
if (cpuStatuses[i] < 1)
continue;
if (cpuStatuses[i] >= 2)
await pressKey("Digit" + "1234567890".charAt(i));
const p = processStatuses.pop();
if (p !== undefined)
await clickMouse(PROCESS.x + SQUARE.w * p.c, PROCESS.y + SQUARE.h * p.r);
}
await new Promise(res => setTimeout(res, 300));
}
async function clickMouse(x, y) {
const rect = cnv.getBoundingClientRect();
const opts = {
bubbles: true,
clientX: rect.left + x * rect.width / 1280,
clientY: rect.top + y * rect.height / 720,
};
cnv.dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent("mousemove", {...opts, buttons: 0}));
cnv.dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent("mousedown", {...opts, buttons: 1}));
cnv.dispatchEvent(new MouseEvent("mouseup", {...opts, buttons: 0}));
await new Promise(res => requestAnimationFrame(res));
}
async function pressKey(code) {
cnv.dispatchEvent(new KeyboardEvent("keydown", {code, bubbles: true}));
cnv.dispatchEvent(new KeyboardEvent("keyup", {code, bubbles: true}));
await new Promise(res => requestAnimationFrame(res));
}
})();
This didn't get a lot of traction the other time I saw it, but one easily imagines this as part of a a game to teach operating systems, starting from no MMU all the way to how we manage distributed supercomputers like a DGX GB300, or Google's borg.
This would be huge if it was « rogue like », where you could buy new more performant components that allow you to reach further into the game. The game makes you naturally lose, and there are milestones that you can reach (bosses, or loot that stays throughout sessions). For instance you could unlock GPUs, docker containers, another SSD, antiviruses…
Also consider RTS elements, like assigning certain schedulers to handle workloads which are swappable and tuneable, maybe with some skill tree unlocks.
unlimited possibilities to expand the game scope through a tech tree: - Hyperthreading - interrupts - compressed main memory - L3 caches - TLB caches - CFS - cgroups - TSO/GSO - performance / efficiency cores - dynamic clock speed - thermals - PCI bandwidth / lanes - ...
Game could start with a single CPU and 2-3 processes and then all this comes on top step by step and you can automate it away through tech tree.
Severe Running direct process scheduling keyboard control game mechanic!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrUWFo2D1Xs
Or a bitburner-like game, where scripting the solution is required.
Education is the space that I'm hoping AI with unearth, and games like this could become a common part of the education. I totally see kids playing something similar for hours, learning core CS concepts and benefiting. Perhaps making a shooter would be awesome too: reclaiming memory, collecting cycles and energy and resources to train the model.
Another hope I have that we could learn math/physics that way. Having a better more visual and intuitive understanding of some math concepts would be great. Perhaps having a truck go through the plot of a function and learning about limits and maxima and minima would be great etc. Same story: playing something like this for several hours could burn in kid's/adult's mind a pattern of undersatnding calculus that would last a lifetime.
Rebooting could be a mini-game where you dodge the user's BIOS keystrokes a few times before they give up
The absolute bane of my existence, I had a time a week ago repairing my bootloader after I (stupidly) did 3 months of windows updates after running a bunch of disk repairs and other recovery based things after I (again, stupidly) fell for a fake repo for deepseek tui and infected myself
Oh man, you've had a week from hell my friend. Uploading virtual platonic data-free hugs
I'm pretty sure this is exactly what is happening in real life. I pressed F12 damnit! Go into the bios already!!
Some friendly tips from post-silicon validation:
sudo systemctl reboot --firmware
shutdown /r /t 0 /fw
These reboot directly into BIOS.
For Windows CMD+R menu, run it by pressing CTRL+SHIFT+Enter (elevates to admin). You may have to do it twice for some unknown reasons after reinstalling the OS.
Had to learn this recently when my wife’s computer refused to register requests to boot into bios despite spamming F12 / Del many different times across many different USB ports. Such a pain in the ass.
You are a life saver. I never knew about --firmware!
This was fun to play...for about 2 minutes before all the manual work of moving processes around got very tedious, which may be the point of the game. What I would like is a little code edit window where i could code simple routines to handle the scheduling, then be able to watch the result.
This is why we must daily thank the elves inside our machines. It's tough work!
As an OS, I wish the user would launch fewer programs. What a chore.
I love this idea! I totally see it in the classroom or being played by someone who's trying to learn how to make an OS (which is on my personal bucket list)
What I didn't like, is the tutorial is separate from the game. It would be awesome imo, if there's a tutorial stage where the game is explained hands-on (maybe pausing the game with explainers, until I start to get how to play) Otherwise I have to memorise the instructions before trying the game.
Regardless, amazing little game.
I never get to the point where I had to manage memory. Am I doing something wrong? I just move processes to the CPU in order of highest-starved first, then move them off when they're green.
Fun fact: operating systems were originally programs intended to replace most of the work of a human job description, that of computer operator.
Computers were first marketed into replacing the work of humans that had a job called "computer" (what spreadsheets finally did)... Operating systems were create to replace computer operators (what they didn't)... For a while some people called compilers "automatic programmers".
The marketing and management of IT always had this fixation with replacing people. It always has been the wrong answer and the real value always came from making people better.
Anybody remember corewar, where each player wrote an adversarial programs in redcode?
So while we're trying to make computers do what humans do, we play pretend being computers.
Fabulous concept, but personally I did not find very fun actually playing.
A lot of these puzzle/micromanagement games are very similar to stuff folks do for work. I stopped playing an entire category of puzzle games once I realized it was basically programming, which I do all day for a living anyway. Gamified programming is still programming.
I have a problematic relationship with Zachtronics games for this reason.
I love TIS-100, but at some point I realized I was studying the user manual for a fictional computer, trying to learn it's fictional assembly language, to optimize some multicore data flows.... and decided I should probably get paid for doing that in real life instead.
I do like some of them, like pico 8 is a constrained game programming environment, and it takes me back to the days of the power of qbasic, being able to do dang near anything without burying yourself in a massive layer of abstraction and complexity.
Many programmers program for fun outside of work.
When I play games scratching programming itch I always think if I'd be better of working on pet projects instead.
I’m one of those people. And what we do is write actual software for fun rather than pretend software in a computer game.
If I wanted logic flow embedded in a game then I’d want it in an environment that’s far removed from traditional programming. Such as building contraptions in Minecraft.
After you switch to managing LLM agents all day, programming at home will be fun again. Just don't use an LLM to play the game...
That's what bugged me about the old MS Flight Sim games. It felt like the actual job.
That's why you can speed up the simulation. Certain portions of flight are dramatically more entertaining than others. So take an hour to boot up the 777 from cold and dark, setup all the computers and management, do all the preflight, manage taxi and takeoff, then run the actual 7 hour flight at 10x speed so you can do the fun landing.
But even games that seem like just a job can be fun. Euro Truck simulator is fun because you are entirely self directed. Each job produces tangible results and you feel yourself progressing in a clear way that you often do not feel in a real job.
Yes, but many dream about actual flying for real, but cannot so enjoy this substitute.
(I enjoy more arcade style)
But just think of the great training this will provide for your enslaved upload in the future!
Tell me you play Zachtronics without saying Zachtronics
What’s Zachtronics. Never heard of it.
A game company (https://www.zachtronics.com/) that have made a series of games where you either build machines or write instructions to solve a task. An example is Opus Magnum where you convert input elements to output elements.
The games track things like cycles taken to complete the task, size/area of the machine, and cost. Those scores are shown on separate leaderboards and optimizing for one can come at the cost of another (e.g. faster machines may be bigger and/or more expensive).
OTOH I now have a lot more sympathy for my cpu's, I should give them some slack
This is not quite as exciting as psDooM [1]
[1]: http://psdoom.coffeefish.org
Reminds me of psDooM
https://psdoom.sourceforge.net/
Does this game make me MCP? Can I battle Jeff Bridges with discs?
Get Tron to Sark so he can communicate!
Great concept but I did not have a ton of fun playing after the novelty wore off after a few minutes. It would've been more fun if time stood still and I had the opportunity to plan what I do at each cpu cycle. I was looking forward to managing cpu cache hits and ram usage.
Oh gosh this reminds me of a college project where we had to build the heap allocator in C. This is giving me nightmares
14 minutes and 533,000 pts. I unlocked the auto sort option which helped immensely
Pretty cool, I would love to see a version where you code the tasks instead of madly click on stuff.
It's possible. Look for "Run with an automated script" in the README.
Tangentially reminds me of https://deadlockempire.github.io/ where you play the role of the scheduler, but your job is to make vulnerable programs misbehave.
Need OOM Killer button to kill nasty process
Maybe that's what the Linux scheduler is actually - humans' consciousness stuck inside the computer managing the processes.
Sounds like that black mirror multi-part episode "White Christmas".
So that's why the Matrix needed humans to power their systems!
The original idea of the Matrix was for the humans to be processors, but they changed it because they thought people wouldn’t understand that.
That would have honestly made far more sense than as a battery.
Master Control Program
Now we just need to write an OS that will play this game and we'll be golden.
Nice work! I have a kid trying to learn about OSes right now and I think this can be helpful for him
This looks like a lot of fun
I can think of very few things that I'd rather not do then to be an OS. Talk about a thankless "game"...and I'm glad this came up.
Since when have games become more about just completing boring tasks and not about using your mind and dexterity to kill evildoers? Hell, the original Space Invaders was 100x more fun then this, and all we had to do was press a button to kill advancing aliens.
My wife plays a game where you use a pressure washer to clean areas up. Also plays a lawn mowing simulator. Oh, and a game where you run a supermarket, where you maintain inventory, stock shelves, and operate the checkout. Some people just like these types of things.
I have a pressure washer and a mower. I am happy to let her come to my house and use them on my house. I’ll even let her pick up my groceries!
Games are just something someone finds enjoyable to do.
You have all kind of games, some that are actual programming, some that are purely reflexes and dexterity, some that are in between.
> Since when have games become more about just completing boring tasks and not about using your mind and dexterity to kill evildoers
I encourage you to browse Steam a bit if you are asking this.
It's a whole category on Steam!
https://store.steampowered.com/category/sim_hobby_sim/
I kind of agree, but on the other hand many boring, meaningless things are gamified with the addition of points.
Is Monopoly about skill? Chance? Or just scratching that itch of getting more tokens than the other person?
The game got too tedious to play by hand, so I wrote a script to play it automatically. It handles CPU, I/O, and processes quite well - but doesn't recognize a crown on a process and doesn't handle memory management at all.
I found that even on the easy level, the number of processes keeps growing slowly, and there isn't enough CPU time to keep all processes satisfied. I feel like the game is inherently setting you up for failure. Here is the script if anyone wants to play with it:
This is cool! I may introduce it to the undergrad OS course I teach at UCSD. Does it have memory hierarchy?
Cool stuff! Would love to see this recommended in introductory OS classes to give an intuition
Easy, just give all RAM to Chrome.
Played this originally, glad to see scripting included
What a fun idea for a game!
got rebooted at 332k @ normal. maybe being an OS wasn't my calling :)
This didn't get a lot of traction the other time I saw it, but one easily imagines this as part of a a game to teach operating systems, starting from no MMU all the way to how we manage distributed supercomputers like a DGX GB300, or Google's borg.
Have any useful algorithms emerged from these kinds of games?
Like has someone invented a novel scheduler or sorting algorithm?
sounds a lot like a tweet from the parody account @PeterMolydeux !
What's he doing these days?
Great idea!