codekitchen [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

"HI, Robot" programming puzzle game

Wed, 31 May 2017 15:47:32 UTC

HI, Robot 1.1

by codekitchen

[Click to Play]

Wire up your robot pals using sensors and logic gates to solve the puzzles and maybe even reunite with an old friend.

The original development thread is here.

lisp-8 with in-game editor

Tue, 18 Apr 2017 00:04:07 UTC

Here's a silly thing that came out of another thread where I was contemplating parsing game content out of strings, and just how far to take the idea. Eventually configuration/data formats always end up becoming programming languages (heck that's how Lua got its start), so why not just make it a full programming language from the start? Get a jump on Greenspun's 10th rule.

So, I implemented lisp-8, a small lisp dialect intended to be used in pico-8 carts. The core code is about 1400 tokens after some fairly aggressive (ugly) optimizations. I could cut it down by about 200 tokens if pico-8 ever exposed Lua's _G variable.

And of course, once you've got a scripting language embedded in your game, why not allow your players to type in code and make a full programming game out of it?

Of course, it might take a week to type in your program with the limited input available on pico-8. So if you don't want to type in code yourself, hit tab to cycle through some sample lisp statements.

lisp-8

by codekitchen

[Click to Play]

This editor cartridge is, of course, itself implemented in lisp-8. It's all in the first _init function at the top of the code, the rest of the file is the lisp-8 engine.

Ultimately I don't know if this has any practical use at all, and it sure is slow, but it's kind of fun. It gave me lots of good ideas about how I can better compile together my assets for my actual pico-8 programming puzzle game, at least.

logic gates/circuits game

Mon, 27 Mar 2017 18:59:28 UTC

hi, robot 1.0

by codekitchen

[Click to Play]

I loved these old "programming" puzzle games in the Apple II era, like Rocky's Boots and Robot Odyssey. I thought it seemed like a good fit to do something similar for pico-8, since unlike most programming games we don't need full keyboard input, we can get by with just two buttons.

Older versions:

blocking sleep on MacOS

Fri, 24 Mar 2017 11:28:07 UTC

I know this is a small thing, but I often forget to quit pico-8 and I leave it running in the background overnight, which prevents my Mac from sleeping. Maybe it could be tweaked so that pico-8 only blocks the display from turning off/computer from sleeping when it's in run mode?

I tracked it down to pico-8 by running pmset -g assertions which showed:

   pid 164(coreaudiod): [0x001a40d7000197e9] 11:05:27 PreventUserIdleSystemSleep named:
 "com.apple.audio.AppleHDAEngineOutput:1B,0,1,1:0.context.preventuseridlesleep"
    Created for PID: 93582.

PID 93582 is pico-8. So it appears it's because it's keeping the audio channel open.

Flying Fish

Fri, 17 Mar 2017 12:30:34 UTC

I was thinking the other day about how the remote lakes in the mountains near my house are stocked with fish by dropping them out of planes and helicopters. What a strange experience that must be for a fish! So I decided to make a little game about it.

So far there's no real goal, you just fly each fish into the lake and stock it up with happy, swimming fishes. I haven't decided yet whether I'll add a more concrete goal or keep it as is. Not totally happy with the helicopter sprite yet, either.

Flying Fish

by codekitchen

[Click to Play]

firework shaper

Wed, 04 Jan 2017 23:02:41 UTC

firework shaper 1.0

by codekitchen

[Click to Play]

My entry for the Weekly Hour Game Jam, week 1 2017. The theme was "Happy New Year", so I created a fireworks show. To add a bit of interactivity, you can move a cursor around and draw shapes with X or Y to create different firework effects.

I definitely still had a few things on my TODO list after an hour, so it's missing some polish, but overall I'm happy with what I finished in 60 minutes.

Asterion

Wed, 04 Jan 2017 16:29:31 UTC

Asterion (Pac-Man Battle Royale) 0.1

by codekitchen

[Click to Play]

For my first PICO-8 project I decided to make a game similar to Pac-Man Battle Royale, my favorite multiplayer arcade game of the decade. Right now you can play 1-player with an AI opponent, or 2-player battle.

The basic pac-man gameplay is there, but so far the only mechanic I've implemented is players bumping off each other on collision. I still need to add a lot more gameplay and flair, and hopefully find some ways to make it my own (besides the greek labyrinth theme). This is my first PICO-8 project, I'd welcome any feedback!