First Post

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First Post

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BBS

PICO-8 Work in Progress

I've made a few attempts with Pico-8 over the years but never got beyond the most rudimentary principles.

I blew the virtual dust off it recently to show my 8 year old, and I've been delighted by how much it's engaged him. I assumed that a kid used to playing Breath of the Wild on the Switch would turn his nose up at the simpler graphics and relatively punishing difficulty, but he seems to take it on its own merits and will splore away for hours if I let him.

In an attempt to spin that screen time into something educational, we're taking our first steps into making our own projects, and I need to stay ahead of the curve so I can at least try to implement the kinds of things he's likely to want to do.

So I've been watching a bunch of youtube videos and have got over some of the big initial humps. This approach to sprite animation was the first one that really landed with me in terms of

1) integrating movement and idle animations
2) being completely explicable to me
3) looking like a pretty manageable, extensible way of doing things

The other thing I was really keen to understand was how the SFX and music editors worked, and it's this part that's really prompted me to sign up and make this post. I watched 3 or 4 videos about Pico-8 music and they all seemed to assume a prior knowledge of sequencers or synthesizers or musical theory that severely limited their helpfulness to me.

THEN IF FOUND THIS 2 YEAR OLD VIDEO from Gruber which explained everything I needed from first principles. You couldn't ask for better documentation.

He was even kind enough to reply to my Youtube comment suggesting I share my initial efforts on the forum, so I'm obliged to do so.

So here's a snapshot of my first ever (meaningful) game project. There's nothing beyond basic player sprite movement yet and not a whole lot to the music TBH, but considering it went from absolute zero to this in a couple of hours I'm super pleased with it!