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Internet capability. It's not something you hear much of when talking about Pico-8, even if it's looked down upon for the ridiculousness of a 80's themed console could do such a thing. But there is one common term that does crop op alot, BBS. BBS is the name of Pico-8's Cart Library (Bulletin Board System, for those unaware) and the thing I wish Pico-8 users could freely control. Now Pico-8 already has one of these and indeed it does, but Imagine running your own.
Pico-8 has started many people on there careers as game developers, why not web developers? I'd like to mention some points.

  1. Private Sites
    Pico-8 isn't a very private thing, which is a good thing, but imagine a small Pico-8 games company. hosting there own BBS for chatting with there members on a custom designed web-page, keyboard controlled. Having your mini-software logo featured at the top of the screen in glories 16 colors, it sounds like a dream come true.

2.New Challenges
The struggles of dealing with the web development are more than a minor nuisance, an while I believe It would be simplified for Pico-8 users, Dealing with the people logged in, Members who are allowed and not, maybe even dealing with a White-list. Valuable skill for anybody

3.Many Possibility's
With a take to the internet many Pico-8 Developers will find new things to do with that. And who knows a BBS game could be rather interesting. Wouldn't you like to play a game across the web with your favorite Pico-8 pals?

4.New Cart Sharing Methods
A Custom BBS could be one's hub to there favorite Carts, or a way for them sharing Carts. Some people use a raspberry
PI for Pico-8, and having the only description for a game be available from the Users browsers, makes it difficult
for those users to learn about there favorite games.

As for limitations. Well there are several Ideas. One making it text based only, Two limiting colors or a few select
colors per page. I think there would be several benefits to adding a User Controlled BBS System.

Those are just my thoughts, opinions, and ideas. Thank You for reading!

P#59988 2018-12-14 17:10 ( Edited 2018-12-14 17:13)

I Hope that someday User BBS's will be a part of Pico-8, as for now only a idea.

P#60007 2018-12-14 21:10

hey man, nintendo and sega both had modem peripherals and internet-supporting software in the 80's :P

as i mentioned in the discord, having a DNS field or something like that for Splore rerouting might be quick and neat, but something like being able to post and make threads from within Pico-8 would require a bunch of work (currently afaik the networking only really downloads pngs and simple statistics for the carts - you'd have to add a way to log in, have an additional text editor to write posts in, stuff like that). that said, i don't know what all Zep is up to in regards to pico-8, especially when taking into account the recent reworking of the website.

P#60008 2018-12-14 23:16

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