Log In  

Noting that pico-8 carts encode the lua, graphics and sound data in the gray pixels of a pico 8 png, I was wondering if it would be possible to print but then re-scan a pico 8 cartridge. It would probably decay too much. But a QR code wouldn't---however a usual QR code does not have enough data.

What if pico-8 could produce a larger image of a pico-8 cart which would use black and white dots instead of the low bits of the rgb gray pixels to encode the data, so it would be printable and scannable, able to be read in by pico 8?

Then one could have physical copies of pico 8 programs.

Maybe overkill, since the raw text of a pico 8 program is already printable.

P#56186 2018-09-04 19:22 ( Edited 2018-09-06 18:46)

QR Code would only be needed for the actual card ID. A currently 5-digit identification #.

Send that through QR and it might work.

Assuming there is some Online code to generate the QR and respond to it being scanned.

If you are not aware, inside PICO you can type:

LOAD #55974
RUN

To load up that particular cart and run it.

P#56187 2018-09-04 19:28 ( Edited 2018-09-04 23:28)

after using petitcomputer on the dsi for years i can personally attest that scanning qr codes to share programs is a real pain, especially when it involves more than 10 qr's

trek

edit: more relevant link

P#56190 2018-09-04 19:59 ( Edited 2018-09-05 00:03)

VgBlade. I was following your link. Any chance of you making a Star Trek game for PICO like your video ?

P#56196 2018-09-04 21:16 ( Edited 2018-09-05 01:16)

oh sorry thats not my work, but that is the star trek game i mentioned in your hunt the blank post, if you want to read more about it here

P#56203 2018-09-04 22:47 ( Edited 2018-09-05 02:47)

Yep, I know about it. I had it on the T.R.S. 80, Apple ][, IBM-pc DOS, QBasic, Turbo Pascal, Commodore Amiga 1000.

I remember the TRS 80 was wicked weird, complete with an "Experimental Ray" that would glitch the game until your ship blew up.

https://youtu.be/qaLSX8_Q7aE

And you can play the original text version Online now.

http://nerici.org/bloggo/p/trek/code/trek.html

I just hadn't seen a PICO example. I want to do it, but I've got my mind set on a Sci-Fi type of Battleship first, along with other projects before that - so I didn't know if someone had already written out this classic STAR TREK game for Pico yet.

Thanks for the info, VgBlade !

P#56205 2018-09-04 23:02 ( Edited 2018-09-05 03:05)

I hear what you're sayin gradual and honestly it seems perfectly doable, especially since you could get some heckin-good compression going as well!

P#56208 2018-09-04 23:26 ( Edited 2018-09-05 03:26)

There are only 3 "Trek" carts I found:

https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?cat=7#search=trek

But, back on trek, I mean track. :) Yes, I think it's entirely possible to have a QCode for Pico carts.

If you really wanted to advertise your game or something, I guess you could print out a picture of your cart (.png) on a business card and include a QCode either below or on the other side of the printed card that was either the cart # or a URL address to find it.

If PICO was massive, that is, unlimited audio, graphics, tiles, mapper, etc. Then yes it should be entirely possible to sell your "cards" to a video game store, like Game Stop or Game X-Change or something.

As it is, it's just for small coding projects so I can't see any grand commercial opportunities that whole actual video game stores would be interested in.

In other words, QCodes would just be for fun.

Here is one I made from me to you, with something I think others would like:

P#56209 2018-09-04 23:46 ( Edited 2018-09-05 03:46)

If you're only using the QR code to reference the cart online, then you might as well just make it the URL of the cart, since that's already a standardized use for QR codes. Most anything that reads a QR code will either launch or offer to launch the page upon reading a valid URL.

If it's meant to provide the user with a one-off license, then you could just encode your vendor's URL with the activation key passed in arguments.


As for putting the whole cart on a printed item, well, you're usually at the mercy of printing technology tolerances, scanner hardware accuracy, along with wear and tear, which all severely limit how small you can safely make pixels and how many color levels you can use.

I once fiddled around with the idea of using a rotating palette of 9 colors (C,M,Y at 0%, 50%, 100% each) to encode one octal digit per "pixel" on a code/tag. If you combine three octal digits (three pixels) for a 9-bit value, that gives you storage for a byte plus a parity bit for error correction, though I'm not sure parity is sufficient for a printed item that can be scuffed. It was something like that, anyway. Actually, I think I needed 10 colors, so maybe I also used the K channel.

However, even with all that, a PICO-8 cart would need in excess of 384x256 pixels, plus overhead for anchors & calibration areas, plus data headers and possibly more-involved error correction. With pixels big enough for safe printing & scanning, I think it'd be about half a page. Not to mention that it's not my field and there are probably other limiting factors I don't know about. :( Sigh.

P#56247 2018-09-05 22:00 ( Edited 2018-09-06 02:09)

Reminds me of a program I used for the Apple ][ years ago, named =Whoo!= "The Stripper."

Actually it's much more exciting than mere licentiousness. Instead it takes a chunk of memory and converts it to a printable and scannable version on paper.

At the time I was very impressed with it. You could store a whopping 32k per page !

http://www.apple2scans.net/?ddownload=4415

P#56249 2018-09-05 23:09 ( Edited 2018-09-06 03:09)

do you know of any magazines that might have distributed games using that method?

P#56255 2018-09-06 01:30 ( Edited 2018-09-06 05:30)

Yes I do, VGBlade. I believe it was Call A.P.P.L.E, Nibble, and Creative Computing.

I definitely remember Dad buying the device and when it reached the peak of popularity, we were scanning strips in Call A.P.P.L.E. especially instead of having to manually type out the programs.

http://www.callapple.org/Members/magazine/1986/CallAppleMag%201986-09.pdf

You know ? Any one of us could easily make a "Stripper" program for PICO today. The problem is, with B&W strips you wouldn't be able to encode more than 2048-bytes. :)

P#56269 2018-09-06 12:15 ( Edited 2018-09-06 16:16)

nice, a little disappointing that the rest of those magazines are behind a paywall unless i feel like brute forcing the end of the url lol

P#56272 2018-09-06 12:36 ( Edited 2018-09-06 16:36)

Now what =I= would like is an easy layout and code showing how to make a custom QR code.

That could link to a user's homepage and then some. To my knowledge current PICO has no way of bringing up a custom HTML webpage.

A shame as in all the code I've written in the past of any appreciable degree, you could click on AUTHOR's Website and it would go straight to my homepage.

With a cellphone scanned QR code, that might be one to get around it.

P#56291 2018-09-06 14:46 ( Edited 2018-09-06 18:46)

[Please log in to post a comment]

Follow Lexaloffle:          
Generated 2024-03-28 11:31:18 | 0.010s | Q:27