Hi all,

I decided to create my own take on the PICO-8 Cheet Sheet. 👨‍💻🖼️

Inspired by @LightBWK's version - I wanted to try to make a 4K one using a clean, modern look.

Light Version

It was also important to me to have a matching "Dark Mode" variant, as that's my go-to style 🕶️

Dark Version

Main Features

• 🖥️ 4K (3840x2160) Resolution
• 🔠 Clear, Monospaced JetBrains Mono Font
• 🔷 PICO-8 API up to v0.2.5g
• 🎨 Full PICO-8 Palette (inc. "Secret" cols)
• 🦓 Matching "Light" and "Dark" variants
• ⌨️ All Major PICO-8 Keyboard Shortcuts
• 🖌 FILLP() Mask + Glyph Patterns
• 🔄 Turn-Based Angle + Trigonometry Primer
• 🈂️ Full Character Set
• 😺 Glyph List + Constant Values
• 🐛 System + Debugging
• +More!

Please let me know what you think (...especially if you spot any errors! 😬)

Below you will find links to high-res .PNG + .PDF exports of my cheat sheets, enjoy! 🤓

Downloads

• PICO-8 Cheat Sheet (4k).PNG
• PICO-8 Cheat Sheet (4k).PDF
• PICO-8 Cheat Sheet (4k - Dark).PNG
• PICO-8 Cheat Sheet (4k - Dark).PDF

Sources/Acknowledgements

• Enhanced PICO-8 cheat sheet by @LightBWK
• PICO-8 Manual
• Pico-8 API Cheatsheet (iiviigames)
• Pico-8 API Cheatsheet (neko250/Carlos Aguilar)
• Orig PICO-8 Cheatsheet PDF by @ztiromoritz
• Nerdy Teachers PICO-8 Guide
• PICO-8 Wiki
• JetBrains Mono (font)
• Canva (designed with)

Support

Change History

v1.5 - Fixed typos and incorrect glyph value (thx @kozm0naut)

v1.4 - Added SYSTEM FLAGS section
       Added STAT values
       Added Tracker Instruments
       Added Comments
       Added more Shortcuts
       Condensed SPRITES
       + other additions/tweaks (thx @pancelor)

v1.3 - Added MAP section (thx @eskil)
       Fixed inconsistent quotes("”) (thx @thomaswm)
       Added IPAIRS (thx @picoretro)
       Added BREAK

v1.2 - Fixed dupe `repeat..until` (Thx @Ulquiro) + added new "Debugging" section

v1.1 - Updated char map to include top-row of P8SCII chars.

v1.0 - Initial release.

Thank you for making this! We all needed it very much.

this looks very nice! dark mode and all the images are excellent additions. I have two personal reference images that look incredibly similar to the two font images in the bottom-right :D

I have some idea for changes, if these are helpful to you:

Thanks for the great (+thorough) feedback @pancelor - this is very helpful. 🙏
Will digest this and incorporate into the next update.

Alas, I'll probably have to compromise due to limited space (trace was cut prev for this very reason). But I'll be happy if I can find a good balance of including all the "essentials" (e.g. for 80% of the audience) - anything more I'll consider a bonus 😉

UPDATE: I ended up re-arranged things and actually squeezed lots more in! 😊

Thanks! Also....

2 typos I noticed:

• There is a forward slash after peek2(addr) in memory functions
• Also in memory functions, cstore and reload have and ending square bracket, without the beginning one.

@alanxoc3 Well spotted, thanks! 👍
(Just refreshed it with the typos removed 😉)

Hi!
I'm sure this has been asked millions of times: what are those constants in the bottom right corner of the image? (e.g. N = -25792.5)

Thank you!

Hi @Morusaka,
Basically, the glyphs (A..Z) along with having a symbol/picture when used in a string ALSO have a predefined numberic value.

So, if you do...

str="♪"
print(str)

...you'll just see the glyph/picture.

But if you use the glyph itself like a constant...

num=♪
print(num)

This means you can do things like...

if(btnp(❎)) print("fire!")

...which is the same as doing...

if(btnp(5)) print("fire!")

...because ❎ has a constant value of 5.

Hope this helps explain things a bit better 🤓

Thank you @Liquidream for your reply!
I'm fairly new to Pico8, but this makes a lot of sense, at least for LEFT, RIGHT, UP, DOWN and the other 2 buttons.
Even 0.5 (the letter A) has some meaning on its own (even if I would argue its is much less readable than 0.5), but where all the other constants come from? They don't seem to encode any kind of bit pattern, neither mathematical constants... maybe something that has to do with notes frequencies?

You're welcome, @Morusaka.

"...where all the other constants come from?"
TBH, that's one for @zep (PICO-8 creator) to confirm - as I'm afraid I don't know.

I believe they are linked to the fillp pattern presets,
but I'm not 100% sure (nor could I confidently explain it), sorry.

Perhaps someone else here can? (as I'd like to know also) 🤷‍♂️

that is the right answer!

just like ⬆️ or 🅾️ are assigned numbers with meaning related to btn/btnp, other variables defined with 1-character names like ▒, ▥, 🐱, ♥ are assigned numbers which work for the fillp function to create patterns looking similar to the characters themselves. in other words they are pre-defined shortcuts that are useful in tweetcarts for example.

about fill patterns
doc: https://www.lexaloffle.com/dl/docs/pico-8_manual.html#FILLP
pattern: catalogue https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=52986
bits and binary: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=38338

Thank you guys!
@Liquidream, @merwok

Thank you for this. Beautiful and wonderful layout!

Just FYI, I noticed Mute/Unmute is shown as "CTRL-M" instead of "CTRL+.." like everything else.

Thanks again @Liquidream

@kozm0naut Oh well spotted! What a silly typo 🤦
Will get sorted in next release (+thanks for the kind words!)

@Liquidream any reason why the pdf's link to v1.4 and the png's still to v1.3? :-)

I spotted that under Controls for P1 the arrow icons match the wrong colors.

apart from that: great work. immensely helpful.

@bernardo Doh! Missed that, thx!
(Have now updated the PNG links)

Thank you for this. As a beginner, this will be useful for reference. Every
detail is clearly illustrated.

Thank You. It is very usefull :)

@Liquidream spotted another (very minor) issue, the face character (shift+M) is shown as having a numeric value of 21845.5, but this is the value for the shift+Z character, the face has a value of -24351.5

Thanks again and Happy New Year!

Thx again @kozm0naut
Have pushed a new version with typo + glyph fixes.

I'm getting an error when attempting to download the latest version..
"Sorry, you have been blocked
You are unable to access lexaloffle.com"

I am also getting a error message when trying to download the png.
"Sorry, you have been blocked
You are unable to access lexaloffle.com"

@Liquidream
I think if you remove the parentheses from the file names, it wont look like an injection attack to cloudflare anymore which should in theory allow us to download it

Thanks all for bringing this to my attention.
I've flagged this up for @zep to be aware of (in case other ppl are affected).

In the meantime, I'll try to re-upload the content later (at work atm) with adjusted filenames - e.g. removing parentheses (thx johan.win), as it looks like this could be the culprit (unless Cloudflare rules get updated in the meantime).

It was indeed a cloudflare rule causing this -- well surmised! I added some extra filtering a few days ago to handle a high volume of malicious requests, but just now added an exception for user files until I can get some more reliable rules set up.

It should be accessible to everyone now // try ctrl+shift+r to force a cacheless reload if it doesn't work the first time.

Yup, looks like that's sorted it 🥳
Thx for the quick fix @zep, much appreciated 🙏

Another error: the circle depicting SIN/COS values assigns 0.25 to down, and 0.75 to up (i.e. clockwise) but this is wrong; it's the other way around. (i.e. counter-clockwise)

On the more minor side, the layout of the buttons has O to the left of X. While this is a common depiction of the PICO-8 controller, seeing as Z (AKA O) and X (as itself) are the most commonly used inputs on a keyboard, and Z is to the left of X, but despite this the KEYCONFIG command depicts the opposite, with X to the left of O.

Lastly, I think the comment in the line PALT(COL, T) -- TRANS(BOOL) doesn't really clear things up, and (at least to me anyway) makes things more confusing. At least in my mind, it takes a little bit of thinking before I realize TRANS is short for 'transparent' and not 'translate' or 'transgender' or something else that doesn't have anything to do with what the function actually does.

Putting all that aside, I'm glad the cheat sheet is getting an upgrade! The previous one was last updated in October 2018, for 0.1.11g... yikes :P. Plus the extra additions like the STAT(OH_GOD_WHICH_NUMBER_IS_IT_I_FORGOT) values are very much the kind of thing you would need a cheat sheet for, so I'm glad that they're in this one now.

@Kaius: Thanks for the suggestions.

I took the final reference for SIN/COS from the PICO-8 wiki, which is maintained by several well-respected people in the P8 community. So, unless I'm misrepresenting their reference (or they update their definition) - I'm happy with my depiction.

Re: controller layout - by your own admission, there are already differing views on this (gamepad vs. keyboard). However, PICO-8's built-in menu also maps to O to the left - and as that's available in every PICO-8 game, inc. exports (not just in keyconfig, which I agree is somewhat contradicting), So I happily settled on that, and will likely keep it that way until Zep says/updates it otherwise).

Re: the PALT(COL, T) -- TRANS(BOOL) - I have no idea why you brought any topic other than transparency into this conversation, but I agree it's inconsistent (tried to convey too much in too little space). After reviewing again, I'm pretty happy with it - as it says what the function does, and what options are, in a tiny space.

Thanks for checking it out - hope you find it useful someday (warts and all) 🤓

@Liquidream On the sin() diagram...
Tl;dr: The wiki is either wrong or misleading. (From what I can tell, a little bit of both, but what it's wrong on is irrelevant, and only the part it's merely misleading on is actually relevant.) 0.25 is up, that is how it works in math where a bigger Y value goes up, PICO-8 has both an inverted sin() function and has bigger Y values go down, creating a double-negative that cancels itself out, so in PICO-8 0.25 is still up, but the diagram is based only on the inverted sin() function while still having bigger Y values go up, creating a diagram that can very easily be taken out of context. Click HERE for a P8-edu cart showing that 0.25 is indeed up.

Long answer (and I mean LOOOOOOOOOONG, sorry, there are a few quotes I needed to analyze and a couple of images I needed to post):

From the wiki page for sin():

[Now quoting]
"Important: PICO-8 measures the angle in a clockwise direction on the Cartesian plane, with 0.0 to the right, 0.25 downward, and so on. This is inverted from the convention used in traditional geometry, though the inversion only affects sin(), not cos()."

[The afore-mentioned down=0.25 illustration is given]

"The inversion is useful because PICO-8's screen (like most graphics engines) uses inverted y coordinates: an increase in y goes downward. Many uses of sin() would need to be inverted anyway, so PICO-8 does it by convention.

(The clockwise direction of the angle is equivalent to going counterclockwise and negating sin(). This is how it is described in the official documentation.)"
[End of quote]

This is a lot more words to say 'the output of sin() is flipped compared to your typical mathematical functions' than is really necessary, but the really bad part is that last paragraph; that is NOT how it's described in the official documentation! (Or at least, not in any official documentation I could find.)

The manual says:

[Now quoting]
"COS(X)
SIN(X)
Returns the cosine or sine of x, where 1.0 means a full turn. For example, to animate a dial that turns once every second:

FUNCTION _DRAW() CLS() CIRC(64, 64, 20, 7) X = 64 + COS(T()) * 20 Y = 64 + SIN(T()) * 20 LINE(64, 64, X, Y) END

PICO-8's SIN() returns an inverted result to suit screenspace (where Y means "DOWN", as opposed to mathematical diagrams where Y typically means "UP").

> SIN(0.25) -- RETURNS -1

To get conventional radian-based trig functions without the y inversion, paste the following snippet near the start of your program:

P8COS = COS FUNCTION COS(ANGLE) RETURN P8COS(ANGLE/(3.1415*2)) END P8SIN = SIN FUNCTION SIN(ANGLE) RETURN -P8SIN(ANGLE/(3.1415*2)) END

"
[End of quote]

As you can see, no mention of the angles running clockwise is to be found; instead, it describes it as just the output of the sin() function being reversed, so the wiki is definitely wrong about how it is described. Notably, another page gets this right!

From the wiki page for atan2():

[Now quoting]
"The Wikia articles on sin() and cos() establish a convention where the angle runs clockwise and sine values maintain the traditional orientation, e.g. sin(0.125) is -0.7071 (negative goes down):"

[The afore-mentioned down=0.25 illustration is shown again]

"Using this convention, you must invert the sign of dy to understand the result of atan2().

The official PICO-8 documentation use[sic] the alternative convention, where angles run counterclockwise and sin() is simply understood to return the negative of the traditional result. This convention allows the arguments to atan2() to be understood as changes in screen coordinates (increasing y values go down). The two conventions are mathematically equivalent."
[End of quote]

Nothing said on this page is inaccurate: It's true that the other pages describe PICO-8's angles as running clockwise, It's true that the documentation describes it as just the sin() function being inverted, and it's true that both interpretations are effectively the same. And even the diagram is true... from a certain point of view.

As I mentioned in the tl;dr above, The diagram is based on applying PICO-8's inverted sin() function to a mathematical depiction of the unit circle, and in those diagrams, a greater Y value causes the position to rise. A more accurate version/less misleading of the diagram would be:

But PICO-8 doesn't exist in the world of perfect math! PICO-8 exists in a world where (30000 * 10) == (-27680) (thanks to overflow), a world where (0.2 * 5) != 1 (thanks to rounding errors), and most importantly, a world where when Y increases, the position goes down (I believe that's thanks to how CRTs operate, but I'm not 100% sure.) So, the inverted sin() function and the flipped Y direction both cancel out, which is why in both ideal math and in PICO-8 0.25 is an upward angle. But (again) the wiki image only applies the inverted sin() function, so it clashes with PICO-8's screenspace:

And, lastly, a thrown-together sanity-check cart proves that, indeed, 0.25 is up: PICO-8-edu cart (Check the code for yourself if you're still not sure.)

Again, I apologize for the length. I did have a couple of other counter-arguments with regards to the controller diagram and transparency comment, but this post is getting long enough that I'm worried I'll run into a character limit if I keep this up, and those points were quite minor anyway so I don't feel the need to fight so hard on those.

I'll agree that I have always found this confusing and counter-intuitive about the wiki page. @Kaius I believe you are free to edit the wiki if you feel it could use clarification.

Also, I wasn't going to mention this but if another change is in the works, it's worth noting that the P1 directions are still shown in the wrong color (and order if going by l,r,u,d which I think is worth following all things considered).

Thanks for the ongoing updates @Liquidream! I have this printed out at my desk and use it just about daily.

@Kaius: Thanks for taking the time to explain your point.
I would echo @kozm0naut's suggestion of submitting an edit to wiki - as it does sound like there's room for greater clarifity on this.
Either way, I'd be very happy to update the cheat sheet with whatever gets decided as the best visual representation going forward.

@kozm0naut: You are very welcome, glad to hear it! ☺️

As previously mentioned the P1 controls are in the wrong order, for some reason they're shown as UDLR instead of LRUD. The color is correct for the 4 positions, but the direction shown in each position is wrong.

Thx Admiral Coconut, I've already got that fixed in the next "draft" version (along with a couple of other tidy-ups).

Just waiting on confirmation of the SIN() discussion above before doing another release.
(cc @Felice / @dddaaannn)

I should have started off by saying off by saying thank you for this incredibly helpful resource, and for continuing to improve it. It's the single most useful reference tool I'm aware of, and these very minor imperfections don't detract from that at all. I really appreciate your work on it.

@Liquidream @Kaius is correct about the intent of the diagram in the wiki: the f(x) axis in the diagram is up-positive. The diagram does not represent the Y pixel coordinate plane, and is not supposed to. It explains the results of the function, not subsequent use of those results in graphics applications.

It's important to know that sin() uses both unconventional input (angle percentage of the unit circle) and unconventional output (sin() negated). In the specific case where you then use sin() as a factor of a Y coordinate, you also need to know that the Y pixel coordinate plane grows downward, which is why it's convenient that polar-to-Cartesian conversions in PICO-8 are inverted vertically.

When I wrote the wiki explanation, I did not want to conflate these two concepts in a single diagram, and felt that the official documentation at the time was doing readers a disservice by hand-waving the double-negative part. (The official docs have since been improved.) I agree that the wiki explanation could be improved by adding a labeled f(x) axis to the diagram, moving example results closer to the diagram (Fandom appears to have added an advertisement above the Examples section, making it harder to see), and perhaps adding a new section explaining how this applies to using sin(x) as a factor of a Y coordinate. The atan2() page could be similarly improved, and the inverted-Y stuff maybe explained on a dedicated page that they both link to.

You'll have to make your own call for what's right for the quick reference. You could add an up arrow head and "+"/"-" to the top and bottom ends of the vertical axis, and maybe nudge or relocate the input values. IMO, given that the diagram is presented in the abstract and not in terms of screen coordinates, it should maintain its current orientation.

Thanks @dddaaannn for the prompt (+detailed) response and confirmation of the Wiki's explanation, much appreciated. 👍

Will give it some further thought before updating the Cheat Sheet. 🤓

Dude thank you so freaking much, I've been using the light mode one, the dark mode one is an eye saver!

good

Super helpful tool. Thanks!

this is great. Have u one with black background and white font?

Thanks all for the kind words 😊

@andykenobi: I'm afraid not. I decided to make my "Dark" mode with less contrast out of personal taste. Sadly, maintaining two styles is already quite time consuming, so I won't be able to add a third.
(You are welcome to tweak a copy to your own tastes tho)

Might be a nitpick, but I think the top-left and bottom-right pixels on the screen should be marked as squares where the actual are. These circles in the top-left and bottom-right of the respective pixels seem confusing to my mind.

This looks great on my monitor! Thank you for sharing.