I'm glad to announce that Virtual Circuit Board is going to be released in Early Access in 2 weeks from now, on the 20th. This announcement may have come sooner than you were anticipating, but in the last two weeks of beta testing (the first was unannounced) I had the opportunity to read the first impressions of the community and to keep working on improving VCB based on the feedback that I've gathered so far. And now Virtual Circuit Board has reached a point where it is ready for the entire community to start having fun with it while I keep developing the game based on your feedback and suggestions! If you signed up to playtest VCB there might still be a chance of you being selected in the next days. After this last round of invites the beta will continue up until the launch week. Virtual Circuit Board will be priced within the range of the other games in the circuit simulation genre currently available on Steam, and it will have a launch discount. I can't wait to see the circuits that you all are going to build when the game becomes available!

[ 2022-05-05 21:37:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Virtual Circuit Board, or VCB, is a minimalist sandbox drawing-based logic simulator featuring an assembler and a powerful simulation algorithm. All of it designed to allow you to be free to build and experiment with logic circuits to your heart’s content.

A Sandbox Experience

Being exclusively a sandbox game, in VCB you will set your own goals of what and how you want to build, this comes with the assumption that you already have some basic knowledge about logic gates. Knowing programming concepts will also help you to build advanced computers using the assembler, although it is by no means mandatory, designing by drawing is just as fun! It is up to you to decide how you want to create things in VCB.

Powerful Simulation

High-performant deterministic simulation with adjustable speed and the ability to pause and advance by steps. Simulate with a frequency of up to millions of updates per second.

Assembler

Assembly editor where you can define your own instructions to create a program that will be assembled to a Virtual Memory that can be accessed by the circuit.

Editing and Simulating

Working in VCB is divided in two modes, while editing you can use the drawing tools to modify your circuit, and the assembly editor to write any programs, and during simulation you can see your circuit running and visualize the instructions being executed in the assembler.

Drawing-based Interface

Build circuits by drawing color-coded entities like logic gates and traces, and use the specialized tools such as the Array to optimize your workflow by drawing multiple traces simultaneously. Both the electronic components and the traces support multiple input and output connections.

Decoration

Customize the appearance of circuits by drawing in the Paint Layers that override the component's default colors. This allows you to create things such as buttons and labels that change appearance depending on the component's state.