Zachary Barth

Zachary Barth is an indie game developer who creates

games under the banner Zachtronics Industries. Barth
is known for building engineering puzzle games[1] and for
the creation of the Block World genre of procedurally
generated block-based mining/world deformation and
building mechanics[2] used by games such as Minecraft,
FortressCraft, Total Miner, CastleMiner, CraftWorld, Ace
of Spades, Guncraft, 7 Days to Die, and Block Fortress.

Inniminer

Biography

In interviews with indie games websites, Barth said that

he started creating games early in his life, but only learned
Inniminer screenshot
the required skills at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
[3][4]
(RPI), where he joined the game development club.
Inniminer is an open source multi-player block-based
Barth studied computer systems engineering and com- sandbox building and digging game, in which the player is
puter science at RPI. He was one of three students leading a miner searching for minerals by carving tunnels through
the interdisciplinary team of the CapAbility Games Re- procedurally generated maps and building structures. Acsearch Project, a collaboration of RPI with the Center for cording to the author Barth, it was based on the earDisability Services in Albany, New York. In 2008, the lier games Innifrag, Team Fortress, and Motherload by
team produced Capable Shopper, a shopping simulation XGen Studios.[1][7]
game for players with various degrees of disability.[5][6]
Barth wrote Inniminer in his spare time, with the help of
a friend, and released it in steps of incremental updates
during AprilMay 2009. It quickly garnered a following
on message boards around the Internet.

Barth has a programming position with a large software company and runs the one-man operation Zachtronics Industries in his spare time. For SpaceChem, his
rst commercial production, he took in a number of
collaborators.[3]

Inniminer was originally intended to be played as a teambased competitive game, where the goal is to locate and
excavate precious metals, and bring the ndings to the
surface to earn points for the players team.[8] However,
as the game gained popularity, players gravitated towards
the emergent gameplay functionality of building in-world
objects, instead of the stated design goal of competition.

His earlier, non-commercial, games included twenty that

were published on his old website and ve good ones
which he transferred over to the new site. Four of these
use Flash to make them cross-platform, in spite of Flashs
terrible development environment. The other one is
based on .NET for greater programming convenience.
SpaceChem also used .NET, as Barth considers C# to be
the best language ever invented. For marketing reasons,
Barth decided against XNA with its capability to crosspublish to Xbox 360, and switched to OpenGL, which allowed him to target the three operating systems required
for inclusion in the Humble Indie Bundle.[3]

Zachtronics discontinued development of the game less

than a month after its rst release as the result of its
source code leak. As Barth had not obfuscated the C#
.NET source code of the game, it was decompiled and
extracted from the binaries. Hackers modied the code
to make mods, but also started making clients that would
target vulnerabilities in the game as well as build incompatible game forks that fragmented its user base. Barth,
who was making the game for free, then lost interest and
dropped the project, as development of the game had become too dicult.[3] The source code of Inniminer is
now available under the MIT License.[9] Building Inn-

Before SpaceChem came out, Zachtronics was known for

creating the game genre set by Inniminer, the blockbuilding precursor game of Minecraft by Mojang.[2] The
gameplay mechanics and visuals that Barth conceptualized have subsequently become popular in many games.
1

iminer requires Visual Studio 2008 and XNA Game Studio 3.0.[10]
Inniminer is the game that Minecraft is based upon
(and subsequently FortressCraft, CraftWorld and Ace of
Spades). The visuals and mechanics of procedural
generation and terrain deformation of Minecraft were
drawn from Inniminer.[11] According to Minecraft author Markus Persson, after he discovered Inniminer, he
decided it was the game he wanted to do.[12]
As Minecraft became popular, Inniminer was overshadowed and faded into obscurity. Barths feelings about
Minecraft are complicated. As Minecraft became hugely
successful, he stated that he nds it attering, cool
and awesome, because it was based on something he
made.[3]

SpaceChem

Main article: SpaceChem

Zachtronics Industries is also known for its puzzle game
SpaceChem in which the player creates Rube Goldberg
chemical pathways similar in style to visual programming.
SpaceChem has garnered praise with the gaming community and is currently one of three games on the recommendation page of Team Fortress creator Robin Walker
(the others being Hotline Miami and FTL: Faster Than
Light), with him declaring it as Pretty much the greatest
game ever made.[13][14]
As of March 8, 2011, Barth stated the possibility of making expansion packs to SpaceChem and adding a free update and editor which would allow users to create their
own levels which could then be shared to other users,
with the best ones being picked out by Zachtronics to
be published and these were released on April 29 as the
Shareholders Update.[15] Barth hinted at the prospect of
a sequel and also stated that it would be fantastic to have
SpaceChem on a future Humble Bundle.[3] The game was
included in the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle charitable sale in early October 2011.[16] The following year,
on September 30, 2012, SpaceChem was the featured
game on IndieGameStand, a site which features indie
games with a pay-what-you-want model with a portion
of the proceeds going to charity. Barth chose the Against
Malaria Foundation as the charity to which 10% of the
proceeds were donated.[17]

Other games
The Codex Alchemical Engineering
Magnum Opus Challenge
Ruckingenur II

REFERENCES

Bureau of Steam Engineering

KOHCTPYKTOP
Ironclad Tactics
Innifactory
TIS-100

5 Older projects
Ruckingenur CE
Ruckingenur Editor
Tex Mechs
HWND Hunter
Silicon Foundry
Pulse
Ruckingenur
Manufactoid
Flight of the Atropos
Intelligent Destruction
Innitron
Innifrag, Version 1.1
Wikipedia Quest
Notepad Weekend
Gregor Mendels Pro-Botanist

6 See also
SpaceChem
Team Fortress Classic
Minecraft

7 References
[1] Smith, Quintin (January 20, 2011). My Chemical Romance: Zach Barth Interview. Rock, Paper, Shotgun.
[2] Reliquary Game Reviews: Inniminer.
Game Reviews. 2009-05-29.

Reliquary

[3] Rose, Michael (March 8, 2011). Podcast 17 Zach Barth

on SpaceChem and Inniminer. Indie Games Podcast.
[4] Zach Barth nds a ne formula with SpaceChem,
Featured Indie Dev, Indie pub games.

[5] Gaining Independence For People With Disabilities

Through Video Games, ScienceDaily (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute), 15 May 2008, retrieved 2011-08-24.
[6] Original news release, RPI.
[7] Motherload, XGen studios.
[8] Mur, James. Freeware Friday: Inniminer.
Download. Retrieved May 15, 2009.

Big

[9] Zachtronics Industries. Inniminer Google Code Project

Page. Google.
[10] https://github.com/krispykrem/Infiniminer/tree/master
[11] Persson, Markus. Credits due. The Word of Notch.
Retrieved May 26, 2009.
[12] Persson, Markus. The Origins of Minecraft. The Word
of Notch. Retrieved October 30, 2009.
[13] Robin Walker (March 4, 2011). Robin Walkers Steam
recommendation page. Valve Software. Retrieved April
29, 2011.
[14] Team Fortress Development Team (April 28, 2011).
Mounts and Blades and Hats and Fires and Hats and
Swords. Valve Software.
[15] SpaceChem Team (April 29, 2011). Shareholders Report. Zachtronics Industries.
[16] Zacny, Rob (2011-10-05). SpaceChem joins the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle. PC Gamer. Retrieved 201110-05.
[17] Phillips, Tom (2012-10-03). Pay-what-you-want indie
games site launches, spotlights SpaceChem. Eurogamer.
Retrieved 2012-10-06.

External links
Zachtronics Industries Ocial Website
Zachtronics Industries Old Website

9 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

9.1

Text

Zachary Barth Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zachary_Barth?oldid=687252763 Contributors: Xanzzibar, TiMike, WikiPediaAid,

Danski14, Versageek, FeanorStar7, Mandarax, Czar, SmackBot, Frap, Masem, X201, MER-C, Waacstats, Phasma Felis, Burpen, DarthBotto, Hans Adler, LobStoR, InternetMeme, 84user, MuZemike, Aax5, Yobot, Pikachu~enwiki, AnomieBOT, Object404, Bwisey, FrescoBot, I dream of horses, Hellknowz, RjwilmsiBot, VernoWhitney, Hazard-SJ, Wagner, Wingman4l7, Palosirkka, JenniBee, ClueBot
NG, Cntras, JohnChrysostom, Shozanmario93, The Illusive Man, Dat guy212, Snazzy-chloe, Jaydeek, SkrillexZero, MinecraftModder,
Lambda Fairy, Rupert loup, Lgfcd, TheFozam, Fragdevil, JackIsANerd, Amir1205, Xblaster112, Ssaz 12, Maplestrip, Gamingforfun365
and Anonymous: 35

9.2

Images

File:Infiniminer.png Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/13/Infiniminer.png License: Fair use Contributors: http:

//minecraft.gamepedia.com/Infiniminer Original artist: Zachtronics Industries
File:Splitsection.svg Source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Splitsection.svg License: Public domain Contributors: Tracing of File:Splitsection.gif, performed by Anomie Original artist: Original GIF: David Levy

9.3

Content license

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0