Today I’m releasing the XR2000: A programming challenge with extensive science fiction backstory. This is a project I’ve long wanted to make, and it has slowly come to life in the last few years.

I love a good puzzle or game that involves programming. Over the years I found a couple of these games that were particularly fun. These really inspired me to start the XR2000. Before explaining more about my new challenge, I want to mention (and recommend) these games.

TIS-100

This is one of the weirdest games ever. TIS-100 that lets you write assembly code for a fictional cpu. There is a complete manual documenting the CPU instructions and all peripherals. It really got me hooked on legacy computing and assembly programming.

Space Traders

In Space Traders you control a spaceship through a REST API. The game is mainly focused on trading (as the name suggests) and involves closely monitoring and analyzing market prices. It’s a great challenge for learning a new programming language or programming in general. The simulation has remarkable depth.

Protohackers

Protohackers is not a game but more a programming challenge like AoC but focussed on backend and protocols. It really makes you dive into the depths of tcp, udp and sockets.

And now something different

I decided to create a challenge that combines a science fiction story with a programming challenge. The programming challenge so far is mostly focussed on binary protocols, and some cryptography.

The story is far from finished. There are lots of ideas on continuing the story, expanding the fictional universe and including more low level / assembly techniques. So let’s call this chapter 1. More might follow depending on the success of this first part. So let’s get ready to…

Dive in!

To get started:

nc clearsky.dev 29438 

And don’t forget: this is supposed to be fun!

This challenge was fully developed from an iPhone