Pico-8

Oh heck… it’s just about Advent of Code time! I am SO FAR from being ready.

Turns out the elves just really loved the Atari 2600 so much, they built their little handheld computers around them. And now it’s up to us to fix one.

The promised difficulty boost for Day 5 failed to materialize, instead being largely a puzzle about reading formatted input.

I did this puzzle last night while writing the post about Day 2. This time I’m not in quite so much of a rush. Weekends. The puzzle description is best read on the AoC site – they’re always fun to read :-) Advent of Code always starts out slowly, getting people used to how things go before they start pouring on the hard stuff. You can see some concepts come up that will undoubtedly become key in later puzzles. Yesterday was modulo arithmetic. Today was sets. Naturally, people did it their own ways, but typically the fast solvers will immediately focus in on the concept being introduced and doing their thing in seconds. ...

Advent of Code 2022 is just around the corner, and with it comes new challenges, new technologies, and new ways to have fun programming. Plus, Tactics Ogre: Reborn is almost finished, and Cyberpunk 2077 is waiting for me to dive in. And don’t forget about the Gotham Knight Knews update, featuring Starro for four-player coop, and the new GPT-3 language model. And exclusive Guardians of the Galaxy Christmas Special spoilers!