I was mucking around in the sfx editor and came up with something that sounded really close to a helicopter effect. I thought, "I don't do helicopter games, but this might be useful to someone else. I should share it."

Then I realized anything I post will be visible for, like, two days before disappearing into obscurity. Not useful for others who might be able to use the sfx in the future.

Have you ever considered adding a searchable repository of resources? Maybe sprites, sfx, music. Whatever people want to share (license-free) for others to use or prototype with. If things are taggable and maybe previewable, it would potentially be a great resource for people with limited time budgets, or mediocre skills in some areas.

It's probably way too much work, but hey, I thought I'd throw it at the wall and see if it sticks. At least the exporting is easy now that we can copy/paste stuff as ascii.

A quick solution might be to start using a tag for 'free use asset' submissions like that?

True, but I kind of had in mind a specific destination someone would go to when they need something, e.g. an sfx. "Oh, I'll go to the Pico-8 Asset Splore!"

<cough> The Unity Asset Store reference is entirely coincidental, I assure you.

You could just use opengameart.org instead. Fantastic resource. You could just tag it with pico8 too.

Felice does have a point, even though this forum isn't exactly flourishing with activity, everything still disappears into obscurity as soon as it hits page 2.

Which is interesting, because this might imply that some feature, that most other forums have, might play a big role in keeping topics relevant for longer.

Or it could be entirely cultural.

If you wanted to put it on the forums or OpenGameArt or whatever, how would you do that?

Is there a way to export/import Pico-8 sound assets?

(I know they can be rendered to a .wav file, but that doesn't help other pico-8 developers.)

Hmm, I thought zep had the copy/paste-as-ascii stuff for audio as well, but I guess it's only for sprites right now. Still, he could probably add that without too too much pain. It's just another binary blob copy, same as a sprite.

(Like, sfx0 is just the contents of the memory range 0x3200..0x3243, same as sprite 0 is just the contents of 0x0000..0x001f.)

I just noticed there's a "music" section. "Music, SFX & discussion. Audio player is coming soon! But please post carts for now."

Also, a good addition to the site would be a notification box. Because now, you need to manually check all your threads.

Yeah, that'd be nice too.

I just had a thought. When I made the weak pun about the Pico-8 "Asset Splore", I think maybe I was onto something.

Imagine if the sprite, sfx, and music editors had mini-browsers in them that could 'splore' an asset repository on the site from within pico-8 itself, allowing the person writing software to directly search for tags (e.g. "helicopter", "wind", "laser") and then preview+import sample/free sprites into their project's sprite sheet, or sfx into the sfx editor, etc.

Yeah, I realize it's a little pipe-dreamy, but I like to dream. :) Aim high, expect little, hope for something in the middle.

My new favourite quote:

"Aim high, expect little, hope for something in the middle"

;o)