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Cart #18551 | 2016-01-31 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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Hello guys,

I'm new to Pico-8, but not new to programming in general. Before, I used Codea, Love2D, Corona, Gideros, Polycode and tried some other frameworks. I managed to code some, more or less, simple apps (mostly for drawing/animating stuff) but no games at all. I want to change that, because I love games and the good ol' days! Pico seems to be quite accessible. - With all its constraints it might be even the right tool and should be able to hold me back from overestimate myself. It might also help me to understand the hardware side of things a little better. (Which is very important to me.)

As of right now, I have a hard time to wrap my head around everything, since I was used to have a handful of helpful little functions, like tweens, meshes, etc. Also the lack of math knowledge seems to fight me also, as I now have to write all these function myself. But I think I get there slowly...

Since ever I dreamed to make a small rpg. Something like Pokemon or a some sort of a survival game. Yesterday I booted Pico-8 the first time and my journey began! :)

I've drawn a few crappy animation frames and managed to play them during movement. I also added a cursor to the 'game', to be able to interact with objects later on. Now I want to design my open world level. Not an easy task as it seems! I don't plan to make it overambitious, but the map should be bigger than Pico's limits of 256x64 (even when counting the shared space).

How do people make big maps with Pico-8? Is there any particular trick to this?
My only idea would be, to store the map in a table. However, this would steal a lot of tokens and I should run out of space pretty quick. Any suggestions?

I would also be super nice, if someone could look over my code and give me some tips on how to improve it. Programming techniques, which work better in Pico-8, are also warmly welcome! ;)

P#18552 2016-01-31 12:54 ( Edited 2016-02-02 14:10)

Pico8 is very limited by intention, so basically, you're stuck to the limited abilities of the 8 bit area. 256x128 (If you use the shared space) is pretty much if you stick to the 8x8 pixel tile size. If you go bigger, you run out tiles pretty fast and the map dimensions shrink. Sure, you can do some tricks, like storing data in strings, but that gets limited by the compressed cartridge size pretty fast as well. The idea for Pico8 is to limit your ideas to the limits of the virtual hardware.

P#18553 2016-01-31 13:03 ( Edited 2016-01-31 18:03)

I understand, thank you. I'll try to cut my idea a little to fit it in there :)

P#18554 2016-01-31 13:08 ( Edited 2016-01-31 18:08)

Hi jack! Very nice walking guy, I love his look!
Pico8 is pretty great for building your system with your own base functions and all the stuff that is generally provided before you even start. Because of that it is possible to do things such as having a map bigger than 256x64 or even 256x128. You could make a pattern system for example or you could generate your map procedurally.
But, I actually think you should make a sample of what you want to make with a fairly small map and post that here. Then we'll be able to tell you what's wrong in your design and you'll be able to fix early problems... early.
Hope to see what you'll make soon!

P#18557 2016-01-31 15:03 ( Edited 2016-01-31 20:03)

@TRASEVOL_DOG thank you ^.^
I'll try my best and will post as soon as I have build something

P#18597 2016-02-02 09:10 ( Edited 2016-02-02 14:10)

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