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Hey,guys! I recently discovered Pico with a friend and we've started toward building games together.
I noticed VSCode had no support for Pico-8, so built an extension I'd like to share.

PICO-8 Enhanced for VS Code

PICO-8
VS Code
License

> 🎮 Complete PICO-8 development support for Visual Studio Code

Turn VS Code into a powerful PICO-8 IDE with comprehensive API documentation, intelligent code completion, beautiful syntax highlighting, and more!

Perfect for fantasy console game development with PICO-8.

🌟 Why This Extension?

  • 📚 850+ lines of comprehensive PICO-8 API documentation
  • 💡 Smart IntelliSense for all PICO-8 functions
  • 🎨 Beautiful syntax highlighting tailored for .p8 files
  • ⚡ Instant hover help with examples and tips
  • 🔧 Zero configuration - works out of the box
  • 🎯 Made specifically for PICO-8 (not generic Lua)

✨ Features

🎨 Syntax Highlighting

  • Full syntax highlighting for .p8 files
  • PICO-8-specific keywords and functions highlighted
  • Support for PICO-8 number formats (hex, binary)
  • Comment and string highlighting

📚 Rich API Documentation

  • 850+ lines of detailed PICO-8 API documentation
  • Hover over any PICO-8 function to see:
    • Function signature
    • Parameter descriptions
    • Return values
    • Code examples
    • Usage tips

💡 IntelliSense & Auto-completion

  • Auto-complete for all PICO-8 functions
  • Code snippets for common patterns
  • Parameter hints as you type
  • Function signatures

🎯 Language Support

  • .p8 file association with Lua
  • Proper indentation for PICO-8 code (single space)
  • Auto-closing brackets and quotes
  • Comment toggling support

📖 Documented Functions

The extension provides comprehensive documentation for all PICO-8 API functions:

Program Callbacks

  • _init(), _update(), _update60(), _draw()

Graphics

  • Primitives: pset, pget, cls, circfill, circ, rectfill, rect, line, print
  • Sprites: spr, sspr, sget, sset, fget, fset
  • State: camera, pal, palt, color, clip, fillp

Input

  • btn(), btnp()

Map

  • mget(), mset(), map(), tline()

Audio

  • sfx(), music()

Tables

  • add(), del(), deli(), count(), all(), foreach(), pairs()

Math

  • rnd(), flr(), ceil(), cos(), sin(), atan2(), sqrt(), abs(), sgn()
  • max(), min(), mid()
  • Bitwise: band(), bor(), bxor(), bnot(), shl(), shr(), etc.

Memory

  • peek(), poke(), peek2/4(), poke2/4(), memcpy(), memset(), reload(), cstore()

Strings

  • tostr(), tonum(), chr(), ord(), sub()

System

  • time(), t(), stat(), printh(), reset(), flip(), extcmd(), menuitem()
  • cartdata(), dget(), dset()

🚀 Quick Start

Installation

Option 1: From GitHub Release

  1. Download pico8-enhanced-1.0.0.vsix from Releases
  2. Open VS Code
  3. Press Cmd+Shift+P (Mac) or Ctrl+Shift+P (Windows/Linux)
  4. Type: Extensions: Install from VSIX...
  5. Select the downloaded .vsix file

Option 2: Build from Source

 
git clone https://github.com/jaycb3/pico-8-vscode-extension.git
cd pico-8-vscode-extension
npm install -g vsce
vsce package
code --install-extension pico8-enhanced-1.0.0.vsix

Get Started

  1. Open or create a .p8 file
  2. Start coding! - Syntax highlighting activates automatically
  3. Use Ctrl+Space for IntelliSense suggestions
  4. Hover over functions to see documentation

📸 Screenshots

Hover Documentation

Hover over any PICO-8 function to see rich documentation:

 
-- Hover over 'btn' to see full documentation with examples!
if btn(0) then x -= 1 end

IntelliSense in Action

Type mid and get instant suggestions:

 
mid(x, y, z) - Returns the middle value of three numbers
Perfect for clamping values to a range!

Code Snippets

Type _update and press Tab:

 
function _update()
  -- Your update code here
end

⚙️ Configuration

The extension automatically configures .p8 files with:

  • Tab size: 1 space (PICO-8 standard)
  • Insert spaces: true
  • Detect indentation: false

You can override these in your workspace settings if needed.

📝 PICO-8 Quick Reference

Display

  • Resolution: 128x128 pixels
  • Colors: 16 fixed palette

Code

  • Max tokens: 8,192
  • Language: P8 Lua (not standard Lua!)

Key Differences from Standard Lua

  • Fixed-point numbers: -32768 to 32767.99999
  • COS/SIN use 0..1 range (not radians)
  • SIN() is inverted for screen coordinates
  • Arrays are 1-based
  • SGN(0) returns 1 (not 0!)

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Whether it's:

  • 🐛 Bug reports
  • 💡 Feature suggestions
  • 📝 Documentation improvements
  • 🔧 Code contributions

Please open an issue or submit a pull request!

📜 License

MIT License - feel free to use, modify, and distribute!

🎮 PICO-8 Resources

⭐ Support This Project

If this extension helps your PICO-8 development:

  • ⭐ Star this repository
  • 🐦 Share it with the PICO-8 community
  • 🎮 Show us what you're building!

🙏 Acknowledgments

  • Built with ❤️ for the PICO-8 community
  • Thanks to Lexaloffle for creating PICO-8
  • Inspired by the amazing PICO-8 developer community

Happy coding! 🚀🎮

📌 Keywords

pico-8 pico8 fantasy-console gamedev game-development vscode-extension lua pixel-art retro-gaming indie-gamedev




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