// Promo video by m7kenji with music by Kyohei Fujita
Shibuya Pixel Art 2020 is accepting submissions until the end of June, and this year there is a new category for 128x128 games! Lexaloffle is sponsoring the game category with a prize (a Picade Cabinet), and by offering a limited number of PICO-8 licenses to participants.
Similar to a game jam, entries should be based on one or more of the following themes: Shibuya, AI, Humanity, Game and/or Landscape. Unlike typical game jams, existing work can be adapted or reused, as long as it did not win a previous contest. You can find previous winning entries for 2018 and 2019.
To enter: simply post the image on twitter or instagram with the hashtag: #shibuyapixelart2020. It is possible to submit more than one entry. For game submissions, post an image of the titlescreen along with a link to the playable game (this BBS / itch.io etc). I suppose for images you'd also want to post a link to the original non-compressed version if needed. Also note that previous years' selections also included gifs/mp4s that also work as still images.
Apart from a Grand Prize (300k yen + a Wacom tablet), there are also 4 special category awards for: Limited Pixel Art, Analogue Pixel Art, Beyond Pixel Art and Pixel Art Game. Winning entries are announced in early August, with an exhibition and awards ceremony in September. But you don't need to be in Japan to enter!
For more information, and to read the full terms & conditions of entries, please visit the official contest homepage: https://pixel-art.jp/ (there is an automatic English translation button near the top of the main content).
UPDATE: I'm not sure if there are restrictions on team projects yet, but will update this thread with any news.
SHIBUYA GIRLS by @yacoyon 2019
生まれ変わる町 by @m7kenji 2019
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Back to 2016! This is a demo @castpixel (also on twitter ) and I made in the weeks leading up to Tokyo Demo Fest 2016, as newly formed group: POD. Because it was made in a hurry, I felt I should tidy up the code before posting it. But that's never going to happen, so here's an even messier post-compo version with a few extra details added instead! The rotating orbycube effect can now be found in /demos though if you'd like to see roughly how it works. Also, if you're curious you can find the compo version with: load #orbys_compo
Download 0.2.0i at lexaloffle or via Humble, or for PocketCHIP.
Alright, let's do this! PICO-8's core specification is complete, and it appears to do what it says on the tin. So I'm calling it:
PICO-8 is in Beta!
The main purpose of 0.2 is to finish freezing the core of PICO-8 -- the api, cpu counting, specs, cart format, memory layout, program behavior, backwards and future-compatibility should no longer change.
Earlier attempts at settling on a fixed core in 0.1.11 and 0.1.12 failed because of technical issues creeping in and also some design decisions that just didn't sit right. It has only been due to the ongoing process of users like @Felice, @electricgryphon, @jobe, @freds72, @Eniko, @samhocevar, and many others prodding at the boundary of what PICO-8 can do -- and what it should do -- that all of those nooks and corners finally took shape. I'm really happy with the way the last pieces of PICO-8 have snapped together, and I think it has reached a point where it feels not only like it should never need to change, but that it never could have been any other way.
To make this happen required some jolting changes and a string of patches to get right, and the last few weeks PICO-8 has been in an uncomfortably liquid state. My apologies to everyone who was riding that bumpy update train (but thanks so much for the bug reports!). There might be one or two emergency patches in the next weeks, but I think any left-over quirks and design flaws will simply become part of the machine.
New Features and Changes
Character Set
PICO-8 now has a full 8-bit character set that can be accessed with CHR() to get a character by index, and ORD() to get the index from a character.
> PRINT(ORD("A"))
97
> PRINT(CHR(97))
A
|
All characters from 0..255 (0..15 are control characters and are not visible)
All of the new characters 16..255 can now be typed directly into the code editor. There are 3 modes that can be toggled on and off:
- Katakana (ctrl-k) // type in romanji: ka ki ku ke ko
- Hiragana (ctrl-j) // ditto
- Puny Font (ctrl-p) // shift-letter gives you regular font
Additional characters can be accessed in the 2 kana modes with shift-0..9
SFX / Music Organiser
These can be accessed in the music editor, and give you a cart-wide view of all of the patterns or SFXes in a cart. They can be selected by shift-clicking, copied and pasted, or moved around (with ctrl-x, ctrl-v), and can also be used to visualize which SFXes are being used while music is playing.
Operators
Bitwise functions can now instead be expressed with operators. The function versions are still useful if you want nil arguments to default to 0, or just as as matter of style. But the operator versions are a little faster and often more token-efficient.
BAND(A,B) A & B BOR(A,B) A | B BXOR(A,B) A ^^ B SHL(A,B) A << B SHR(A,B) A >> B LSHR(A,B) A >>> B ROTL(A,B) A <<> B ROTR(A,B) A >>< B BNOT(A) ~A |
There's also a handy integer divide, and operators to peek (but not poke)
FLR(A/B) A \ B PEEK(A) @A PEEK2(A) %A PEEK4(A) $A |
Capacity Adjustments
CPU
Bitwise functions (BAND, BOR..) and PEEK functions are now a little more expensive. They can be replaced with operators counterparts to improve speed, but even they are not as fast as the 0.1.11 bitwise functions, especially when used in deeply nested expressions.
This change was necessary because I badly miscalculated how much real-world CPU load would be required to run the most bitwise-heavy carts. Lua functions cost a lot of (real) CPU compared to vm operators, and the result was carts that could completely obliterate a web-browser or real-world CPU on an older machine. This is a problem because a central goal of PICO-8 is to allow authors to forget about real-world CPUs across platforms, and just focus on the PICO-8 one.
Unfortunately, another central goal is to not mess with or break existing carts! So this was a hard choice to make. I've tried to balance this change somewhat with the introduction of native operators, tline(), and by adjusting the vm costs in a way that feels natural but also frees up some extra cycles. Along with bitwise and peek operators, the add and subtract vm instructions now also cost half as much as other vm instructions. So if you consider PICO-8 to be running at 8MHz, they cost 1 cycle per instruction, while most vm instructions cost 2.
CPU: Coroutines
Previous versions of PICO-8 handled CPU counting inside coroutines very badly. It was easy to accidentally (or intentionally) get 'free' cpu cycles when running a coroutine over a frame boundary, and in some versions the opposite could sometimes happen -- a coroutine or garbage collection would incorrectly yield the whole program causing unnecessary frame skipping. 0.2 contains a much cleaner implementation of cpu counting -- you can wrap anything in coresume(cocreate(function() ... end)), and get exactly the same result (minus the overhead of the wrapping). As a nice by-product, this has also made better STOP() / RESUME behaviour possible (see below).
Tokens and Code Compression
There is still a 8192 token limit (of course!), but negative numbers now count as a single token. This seemingly small fix, along with the new character set and bitwise operators, ultimately resulted in the code compression also improving. The result is that you can squeeze in around 10% more code.
If you want to peek behind the curtain, here's the story behind that:
Also, and this is a little embarrassing, I found some unused space in the 32k cartridge format that has been sitting dormant since its creation in 2014. It has been given to the code section, which is now 0x3d00 bytes instead of 0x3c00.
TLINE
The tline() function ("Textured Line") is a mixture of line(), sspr(), and map().
You can use it to draw a line of pixels (same as line()), where each colour is sampled linearly from an arbitrary line on the map. It's not much use out of the box, but can be used as a low-level primitive for many purposes including polygon rendering, DOOM-style floors and walls, sprite rotation, map scaling, drawing gradients, customized gradients and fill pattern schemes. I've only played with it a little bit so far, but it's really fun, and I'm looking forward to seeing what it winds up being used for.
API Changes
RND(TBL)
Give rnd() a table as an argument, and it will return a random item in that table.
BTNP Custom Repeat Delays
From the manual:
Custom delays (in frames @ 30fps) can be set by poking the following memory addresses: POKE(0x5F5C, DELAY) -- set the initial delay before repeating. 255 means never repeat. POKE(0x5F5D, DELAY) -- set the repeating delay. In both cases, 0 can be used for the default behaviour (delays 15 and 4) |
Fill Patterns Constants
Use the glyphs (shift-a..z) with fillp() to get some pre-defined fill patterns.
fillp(★) circfill(64,64,16,0x7) -- transparent white |
They are defined with the transparency bit set. You can use flr(★) or ★\1 to get 2-colour patterns.
fillp(★\1) circfill(64,64,16,0x7c) -- white and blue |
Demo Carts
Most of the demos have been updated, including Jelpi which now has a few more monsters and tilesets to play with! Use INSTALL_DEMOS to get the new versions. 0.2 also features 2 extra pre-installed games: 8 Legs to Love by @bridgs, and Embrace by @TRASEVOL_DOG. You can install them with INSTALL_GAMES.
Tabs and Tabs
Tab characters are now optionally visible (but off by default). You can turn them on in config.txt
Press shift-enter to automatically add an END and indent.
Also, there are 8 more code tabs. Click the right or left-most visible tab to scroll.
Shape Drawing Tools
Both the map and sprite editors now have circle, line, and rectangle drawing tools. Click the tool button to cycle through those 3 modes, and hold ctrl to toggle filled vs. outline circles and rectangles.
Map Tile Moving
It's now a little easier to move sprites around that are referenced by the map. In the map editor, select the sprites you'd like to move, use ctrl-x and ctrl-v to move them, and the map cell data will also be updated to avoid broken references. This operation applies to the selected region on the map (ctrl-a to select half, and ctrl-a again to select the whole map including shared memory).
This operation is a little tricky, because it adds items to both the spritesheet undo stack and the map undo stack, so you need to manually undo both if desired. Back up first!
Splore
Every time you launch a BBS cartridge, PICO-8 will now ping the server to check for a newer version and prompt you to update if it exists. You can turn this off in config.txt
There's also a 'search thread' option in splore's cart menu, which will be useful for long jam-style threads in the future. And is already great for browsing the tweetjam thread! (You can go to the search tab in splore, and search for "thread:tweetjam")
Exporters
HTML
The HTML exports now run a lot smoother on older machines, and with more reliable page formatting and mobile controls.
.zip File Output
A common problem when exporting cross-platform binaries, is that the machine you're generating files from doesn't necessarily support the file attributes needed to run programs on other operating system. This was especially problematic for Mac and Linux binaries exported from Windows, which had no way to store the executable bit (and so end-users would have to manually fix that). To get around this problem, the EXPORT command now produces ready-to-distribute .zip files, that store the needed file attributes when unzipped on any other operating system. As a bonus, you also don't need to bother manually zipping up each platform folder! There's currently no way to add other files (e.g. documentation) though, so in that case you might need to zip the .zip along with any other desired files.
Options menu
Binary exports now come with an OPTIONS menu that shows up when a cart is paused, and includes the same settings available in HTML exports (sound, fullscreen, controls).
Activity Log
Have you ever wondered how much time you've spent in PICO-8 editors or carts? Or which carts you've played the most? 0.2 now logs your activity to activity_log.txt (in the same folder as config.txt) once every 3 seconds (unless the PICO-8 is left idle for 30 seconds). There aren't any tools to process this data yet, but it is human-readable. I should clarify: this information is not transmitted anywhere! You can turn this off in config.txt (record_activity_log 0)
Frame Advance
PICO-8 can now be resumed from exactly the point that code stopped running. For example, if you put a STOP() in your code, and then type RESUME from the commandline, the program will continue as if the STOP() had not occurred. It's possible to type in commands before resuming to modify the state of the program though, which is useful for debugging.
A common debugging tool is to slow a game down and advancing frame by frame. You can do this by stopping suspending a program with escape, and then typing . and pressing enter. This will run the program until the next flip() call and then stop again. You can get subsequent frames in the same way, or just keep pressing enter after the first one. To add additional debugging behaviour, you can use stat(110), which returns true when running in frame-by-frame mode.
That's all for now -- I hope you enjoy 0.2 and I'll catch you soon!
-- zep
Full Changelog: (scroll down to 0.2.0 for the main changes)
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone!
This is my cartridge for the 2019 Advent Calendar. It is a simple toy/game with no secret endings at all. Nope.
There are 26 (or more! wink wink) carts available now, and you can get the full experience by playing from @enargy's main cart. It is a truly joyful collection!
The BBS's media storage system has recently been updated, and image attachments are now sent to a cloud bucket. Let's stress-test it with some gifs!
Rules:
- No gif, no post!
- No explanation of the gif is required.
- No quality required.
To save these, I used "CONFIG GIF_SCALE 3" from the PICO-8 command prompt, but any size is ok.
Some of these are doodles, some are unfinished carts, some are abandoned projects that will only live on as gifs.
At the start of each level there is a shop. You can spend hearts on 3 things:
- Blocks: use these to build bridges, barriers, and to clobber monsters.
- Jetpack fuel: press and hold jump while in mid-air to use your jetpack.
- Gems: become your final score.
Life is replenished on completing each level.
Monsters also drop fuel and blocks sometimes.
You can modify your block placement with up+left/right etc.
Ludum Dare page: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/blocks-for-life
PX9 is a lightweight gfx & map compression library, intended to replace PX8. It uses the same ideas and interface as px8, but is smaller (297 292 274 tokens to decompress), and requires zero configuration.
To compress some data:
px9_comp(x,y,w,h, dest_addr, vget) returns the number of bytes written x,y,w,h is the source rectangle (e.g. on the spritesheet or map) dest_addr is where to write it in memory vget is a function for reading values (e.g. sget when compressing from spritesheet) |
To decompress it again:
px9_decomp(x,y,src_addr,vget,vset) x,y where to decompress to src_addr is a memory address where compressed data should be read from vget, vset are functions for reading and writing the decompressed data (e.g. pget and pset when decompressing to the screen) |
Unlike px8, the vget function does not need to return 0 when x,y are outside the destination rectangle
Workflow
You can use px9.p8 as a utility for compressing other carts' data by replacing _init() with something like this:
reload(0x0, 0x0, 0x2000, "mycart.p8") clen = px9_comp(0, 0, 128, 128, 0x2000, sget) cstore(0x0, 0x2000, clen, "mycart_c.p8") |
This would compress the spritesheet from mycart.p8 and store it in the spritesheet of mycart_c.p8, using memory from 0x2000.. as a temporary buffer. See the PICO-8 Manual for more information about reload() and cstore().
In the release cartridge, you only need the code from tab 1 (px9_decomp) in order to decompress, which should be 292 tokens.
The Algorithm
Slideshow Cart
I'd like to make a pixel art slideshow cart using PX9, with around 5~10 images -- if you have any 64x64 ~ 128x128 pico-8 palette images kicking around that you would like to include, or if you'd like to make one, please email them to me! (hey at lexaloffle dot com).
v3:
felice's getval() replacement
fixed px9_comp() return value (was returning one larger than needed when aligned to 8bit boundary)
v4: // More improvements by @Felice & @Catatafish
Fixed the bit-flushing bug at EOF
Perf should be better in 0.2.0
Down to 274 tokens
A thread for Ludum Dare 44 this weekend. Feel free to post any updates, WIPs or meet-ups here!
Theme voting: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/theme
For anyone in Tokyo, Pico Pico Cafe will be open both days for ludumdarers, 10am Saturday ~ late Sunday. If you'd like to join, there is an rsvp form. (Note there is an overlapping picotachi from 7pm~ on Saturday)
Update: Download 0.2.0i for CHIP and PocketCHIP here: pico-8_0.2.0i_chip.zip
Here's the main 0.1.12c release thread for more details.
You can just unzip it somewhere and run it, but if you want to install over the default location so that the launcher buttons still works, open Terminal and type the following:
wget www.lexaloffle.com/dl/chip/pico-8_0.2.0i_chip.zip sudo unzip pico-8_0.2.0i_chip.zip -d /usr/lib |
(the default password is: chip)
Update: I've seen instances of the launcher button pointing to both /usr/lib/pico-8 and /usr/lib/pico8. If you're still getting some older version when using the launcher button (check the boot screen), use:
sudo mv /usr/lib/pico-8 /usr/lib/pico8 |
This is the first time I've released a build for CHIP, as they were previously handled by the late Next Thing Co. In 2016 I spent a week at their workshop in Oakland, hacking out a proof of concept along with the first version of SPLORE, so that we could see how it would all fit together. It was not a large company, but everyone I met there were stand-up hackers driven to make something new and interesting. It's remarkable what they were able to achieve, and I'm glad to be able to contribute to the legacy a little by continuing support for these devices.
Unfortunately, it seems NTC fell into insolvency with a lot of paid-for but yet-to-be-shipped PocketCHIPs sitting in storage somewhere. I know as much as the next person about this, but for what it's worth, it certainly wasn't for lack of caring about customers. If you were one of the people that got caught out, feel free to mail me (hey at lexaloffle dot com) with a screenshot of your order (and 'PocketCHIP' somewhere in the subject), and I'll send you some virtual hardware instead.
-- zep
Hey PICO-8 people! Builds for 0.1.12 are now live on Lexaloffle and Humble. UPDATE: PocketCHIP users can get it here.
If you just want to see what's new, please scroll down a bit. But first of all, I should issue a..
Breakage Warning!
Future Compatibility: You'll need to update to 0.1.12 to play cartridges made in 0.1.12 or later. This update is another attempt at eternal future compatibility (can handle any future carts). There were a few bugs in 0.1.11g that needed a cart version bump to fix, and so I also took the chance to tweak the API (more on that below).
Backwards Compatibility: The time() function (also aliased as t() for tweetjammers) now always means time in seconds even at 60fps. This breaks a couple of 60fps carts that I know of (sorry @rez and @jobe!) but I think it's worth biting the bullet now to be more consistent and to match Voxatron's t() behaviour. With any luck this will also be the last backwards compatibility breakage.
A less disruptive change is in the music mixer: both the drop (3) and vibrato (2) effects are observed when playing an SFX-instrument. This only affects carts using SFX instruments, and which happen to have those (previously) dormant values sitting around, but I couldn't find any examples in the wild yet.
Unlimited Undo
The gfx, map and audio editors now have unlimited undo stack. Unlike the code editor which has one undo stack per tab, the other undo stacks are global to the cartridge. It also works during audio playback, so it's possible to make a bunch of changes to various SFX and/or song patterns, and then roll the changes back and forth while it is playing.
#INCLUDE
As well as diving code into tabs, it's now also possible to insert code from external text files each time a cartridge is run. This is particularly useful when using an external text editor (no need to modify the .p8 file directly), and also to share code across cartridges while still being able to modify it in one place. Note that this does not make a difference to size limits -- it is just a convenience when working with .p8 files. (When saving .p8.png, the external code is injected). From the manual:
Source code can be injected into a program at cartridge boot (but not during runtime),
using `#INCLUDE FILENAME`, where FILENAME is either a plaintext file (containing Lua code),
a tab from another cartridge, or all tabs from another cartridge:
#INCLUDE SOMECODE.LUA
#INCLUDE ONETAB.P8:1
#INCLUDE ALLTABS.P8
When the cartridge is run, the contents of each included file is treated as if it had been
pasted into the editor in place of that line. Normal character count and token limits apply.
|
SFX Snippets
Copying a range of SFXes or song patterns will now copy them into the text clipboard in a format that can pasted into other cartridges, or into a BBS post (similar to GFX snippets). To select a range of SFX or patterns, click the first one you want, and then shift click the last one before using CTRL-C. When pasted into a post, it will show up like this: (doesn't work on mobile yet)
You can copy the snippet back into a cartridge by pressing the [ sfx ] button, CTRL-C, click the destination sfx or song pattern, and then CTRL-V. Note that songs that use SFX instruments will probably not work if you paste into a cartridge that already has data in SFX 0..7.
Exporters
HTML Template
The default HTML template used for exporting now includes:
- Adaptive layout that also works on mobile
- Touch controls
- Gamepad support
- A controls help menu
- A start button with embedded preview image
- Fixed sound under iOS
- Integrated pause button / pause menu
The default shell and upload also works a bit smoother with itch.io now -- see the manual for uploading instructions.
WASM support
Instead of exporting a .js and .html pair, it is now possible to also generate a Web Assembly (.wasm) file which contains the main player code.
EXPORT -W FOO.HTML
Web assembly is supported by almost all browsers and servers now, and is more compact and in theory faster to load. CPU cost seems around the same for PICO-8, but the total exported filesize when zipped is around 300k instead of 400k. This hasn't been tested much yet though, so it's not the default and is marked experimental for now.
Raspberry Pi Binary
The binary exporter now generates a Raspberry Pi binary. It is the version with statically linked SDL2 and dynamically linked WiringPi, that I believe works for most Raspberry Pi users. But let me know if you need to generate the equivalent of pico8_dyn.
-export switch
To export cartridges from commandline, you can use the new -export switch, and operate on cartridges outside of PICO-8's filesystem. The parameters to the EXPORT command are passed as a single string:
pico8 jelpi.p8 -export "-i 48 jelpi.bin"
Raspberry Pi
SERIAL()
Serial() allows you to communicate with other devices via the Raspberry Pi's data pins (the things sticking out that various hats also connect to). There are 2 supported for now: raw GPIO accesss, and WiringPi's spi interface (not tested!). Accessing GPIO via SERIAL() is useful when higher precision timing is needed than manually POKE()ing the gpio memory addresses; transactions including delay instructions are added to a queue that is executed at the end of each frame.
Here's an example, controlling a string of 40 LEDs inside Pimoroni's plasma button kit for Picade:
#tweet#
Incidentally, 0.1.12 is also optimized to run well out of the box on a Picade, but more on that later!
Windowed Mode
You can now used Windows mode under Raspbian's desktop environment; Just hit alt-enter to toggle as usual. This only works in software blitting mode, so if you use "pico8 -pixel_perfect 0" it will force the the rpi driver to be used instead of x11. Running under the default driver (x11) now also resolves the issue of leaking keypresses and clicks to the desktop, but it is still present when using rpi.
Editors
Code Editor Shortcuts
CTRL-B to toggle commenting of a Block of lines
CTRL-W to jump to the start (the staWt?) of a line (CTRL-E for End of line)
CTRL-H for Hyper search -- search across tabs
Code Editor CPU
The code editor now uses less cpu by caching code highlighting information, so is noticeable when editing long files on older machines or devices with limited battery life. Napkin calculation: after 250k hours of combined use, this will save enough electricity to drive a Chevrolet EV around the circumference of the Earth once.
Blue Background
The default code editor background is now blue! If you'd like to (permanently) change it back, you can now alter it from inside PICO-8 (instead of using config.txt):
> CONFIG THEME CLASSIC
Themes only control the background of the code editor at present, but might do more in future.
Blue Dots
When cel values in the map editor have corresponding sprites with only black pixels, or when only black pixels are visible when zoomed out, there is no way to see which tiles have a non-zero value. So for these cases, PICO-8 0.1.12 now displays a single blue dot for that cel to indicate this.
API Changes
API changes that required a cart version bump:
- divide and abs sign flipping for 0x8000.0000
- sqrt(0x0000.0001) freezes
- "-1"+0 evaluates to 0xffff.0001
I took the opportunity to make some final adjustments to the API and CPU counting:
- cursor(x,y,col) can set the draw state colour
- t() / time() always means seconds even at 60fps
- line(x1,y1) can be used to draw from the end of the last line
- next() can be used to write custom iterators // core Lua thing
- Raw metatable operations: rawset rawget rawlen rawequal
- peek2() poke2() for writing/reading 16-bit values
CPU Costs
all(), foreach() are now not much slower than pairs() or manually iterating with integer indexes. The CPU usage reporting is also slightly more accurate, but it will will never be very precise, because keeping track of virtual CPU cost can be expensive itself! And also the PICO-8 CPU costs are made up and essentially silly when looked at too closely.
Display Blitting
PICO-8 0.1.12 is now a bit better at managing scaling to different screen sizes. You probably don't need to know any of this, but here's how it works..
When possible, PICO-8 uses "pixel perfect" scaling, which means it chooses the highest possible scaling factor that is a whole number for which the PICO-8 display will fit on the screen. This means that PICO-8 pixels are a nice regular size and without blurry scaling artifacts, but for smaller screen resolutions it means you can get quite wide black boundaries.
0.1.12 addresses this by automatically choosing when to run in pixel perfect mode by default. If the size of the margins is more than 10% of the smallest screen axis, it will turn pixel perfect off. You can still force pixel perfect with "pico8 -pixel_perfect 0".
0.1.12 also introduces another setting: preblit_scale. Instead of doing a filtered scale from a 128x128 image (super-blurry), PICO-8 first performs a non-filtered scale up to something like 384x384, and then lets the platform-specific blitter stretch that instead. The default value of preblit_scale is set to automatic, which attempts to find the best trade-off between regular pixel size and pixel crispness.
On a related note, PICO-8 is now better at deciding when it is running in the foreground. There was a bug in 0.1.11g and earlier under Windows that caused PICO-8 to think it was in the background and so sleep() longer each frame. So some Windows users might notice improvement when running 60fps cartridges under 0.1.12 using a desktop-sized window (the default fullscreen method).
Search for Author
Search for carts by the same author. You can find this option under the per-cart menu (hit the menu button while the cartridge you want is selected). It will send you over to the search list, with a search phrase of "by:authorname". This also works in the BBS search bar.
Road Ahead
This will be the last major update for PICO-8's alpha, apart from some stray bug fixing. Later this year PICO-8 will go into beta with one last feature: online scores. It will take a while though, as I'm hoping to make the architecture scalable and flexible, and will take some time to get it right. The high score tables allow an extra small blob of data that can be abused to do interesting things that might not even be related to keeping track of scores :p
Until then, I hope you enjoy 0.1.12, and please post any bugs if you find them!
-- zep
Changelog
_
This is a replacement for print() that draws a customizable 5x6 font. It encodes each character as one number, and then loops through each pixel checking to see if that bit is set. So it's not very fast, but is handy if you just want a quick solution for some text larger than 3x5.
Cartridge for generating and testing font:
The spritesheet and the convert() function is not needed in the release version of a cart. Paste the following snippet into your code (and optionally replace fdat with your own data):
fdat = [[ 0000.0000! 739c.e038" 5280.0000# 02be.afa8$ 23e8.e2f8% 0674.45cc& 6414.c934' 2100.0000( 3318.c618) 618c.6330* 012a.ea90+ 0109.f210, 0000.0230- 0000.e000. 0000.0030/ 3198.cc600 fef7.bdfc1 f18c.637c2 f8ff.8c7c3 f8de.31fc4 defe.318c5 fe3e.31fc6 fe3f.bdfc7 f8cc.c6308 feff.bdfc9 fefe.31fc: 0300.0600; 0300.0660< 0199.8618= 001c.0700> 030c.3330? [email protected] 746f.783ca 76f7.fdecb f6fd.bdf8c 76f1.8db8d f6f7.bdf8e 7e3d.8c3cf 7e3d.8c60g 7e31.bdbch deff.bdeci f318.c678j f98c.6370k def9.bdecl c631.8c7cm dfff.bdecn f6f7.bdeco 76f7.bdb8p f6f7.ec60q 76f7.bf3cr f6f7.cdecs 7e1c.31f8t fb18.c630u def7.bdb8v def7.b710w def7.ffecx dec9.bdecy defe.31f8z f8cc.cc7c[ 7318.c638\ 630c.618c] 718c.6338^ 2280.0000_ 0000.007c``4100.0000`a001f.bdf4`bc63d.bdfc`c001f.8c3c`d18df.bdbc`e001d.be3c`f3b19.f630`g7ef6.f1fa`hc63d.bdec`i6018.c618`j318c.6372`kc6f5.cd6c`l6318.c618`m0015.fdec`n003d.bdec`o001f.bdf8`pf6f7.ec62`q7ef6.f18e`r001d.bc60`s001f.c3f8`t633c.c618`u0037.bdbc`v0037.b510`w0037.bfa8`x0036.edec`ydef6.f1ba`z003e.667c{ 0188.c218| 0108.4210} 0184.3118~ 02a8.0000`*013e.e500]] cmap={} for i=0,#fdat/11 do local p=1+i*11 cmap[sub(fdat,p,p+1)]= tonum("0x"..sub(fdat,p+2,p+10)) end function pr(str,sx,sy,col) local sx0=sx local p=1 while (p <= #str) do local c=sub(str,p,p) local v if (c=="\n") then -- linebreak sy+=9 sx=sx0 else -- single (a) v = cmap[c.." "] if not v then -- double (`a) v= cmap[sub(str,p,p+1)] p+=1 end --adjust height local sy1=sy if (band(v,0x0.0002)>0)sy1+=2 -- draw pixels for y=sy1,sy1+5 do for x=sx,sx+4 do if (band(v,0x8000)<0) pset(x,y,col) v=rotl(v,1) end end sx+=6 end p+=1 end end |
The fdat in that snippet has lower case letters and a star character mapped to `a..`z and `*
Unlike print(), you need to specify all 4 parameters (string,x,y,col):
pr("`*`* H`e`l`l`o W`o`r`l`d `*`*",10,60,11) |
Hey look, it's a Voxatron update!
Builds are live on lexaloffle and Humble. If you have trouble accessing your account, see this page. If you own only PICO-8, you can now update to the Voxatron + PICO-8 bundle for the difference of $5 here.
This update folds in a lot of fantasy console work, and is the first time you can see Voxatron in something similar to its final form. It has the usual trappings of a fantasy console: carts with labels (and matching .vx.png file format), a boot sequence, a SPLORE-like interface, virtual cpu limitations, and most notably, a Lua scripting API. The API is a superset of PICO-8's one and can be used to write PICO-8 style programs from scratch, or mixed with built-in engine features.
[A note for returning Voxatron users, including "Humble Voxatron Debut" customers: you can also download PICO-8 with the key that you originally purchased with. And if you don't know what PICO-8 is -- have a quick look here because it is very relevant for this update! PICO-8 started as a playground for Voxatron's scripting system, but grew into the fantasy console concept that this update is based on.]
Lua Scripting
Here's an example script to get you started. From the main menu, press escape and then select DESIGNER to start editing a new cartridge. To add a script that runs in the default room, select the "New Object" pull-down menu inside one of the Objects tabs and click "New Script". Paste the following:
function draw()
for i=0,48,0.5 do
local x = 64 + cos(i/16+t()/4)*40
local y = 64 + sin(i/16+t()/4)*40
local z = 10+i + cos(i/7+t())*3
sphere(x,y,z, 3, 8+i%8)
end
end |
You can now jump back to the room (the button at bottom left with the arrow on it), select the new script, and then place it in the room. Hit CTRL-R to run and then ESCAPE to get back to the editor.
You can build whole games from scratch in Lua (PICO-8 style), or add scripts as actor components to customize their behaviour or appearance (see Molly in the default Players folder).
Warning: Experimental!
Future versions of Voxatron will load and run earlier carts the best they can, but you should consider scripted carts made with this update to be experimental. In particular: the virtual cpu costs, sphere(), and the palette are going to change over the next few updates.
Also, there's currently no limit on allocating Lua RAM while I sort out stability issues with forcing garbage collection when the limit is reached. But this will likely end up being 4MB or 8MB, depending on what kind of carts show up. Use stat(0) to check memory usage, and feel free to ping me if you're working on a cart that needs a lot of memory so that I can take care not to break it :) (joseph @ lexaloffle)
Limitations
There is currently no way to manually store data (like dset / dget), but this will arrive during 0.3.* updates along with directly managing the savegame states. In 0.3.5, data created in Lua is automatically stored with a savegame by walking the global table and writing values and tables that aren't prefixed with a single underscore. References to functions are also stored if they existed at boot.
There's also no binary exporter yet. Exporting stand-alone carts is planned for future updates, but I don't have an eta yet.
PICO-8 Cart Support
In one of the Objects tabs, you can import .p8 files using the "Load Item Into Folder" button, and it becomes an object you can place in the room. Because the API, palette and display dimensions are all super-sets of PICO-8's, most cartridges will run with little or no modification. You can use set_draw_slice(z) to indicate which 128x128 slice should be drawn to. By drawing layers multiple times, and using the PICO-8 camera mode (in the room properties top right), you can make thick 2D games. Here's a quick test with Celeste:
Even though Voxatron and PICO-8 now share a lot more in common, I don't expect them to compete with each other. Voxatron is much more complex, and better suited to different kinds of projects. But it is still fun to fool around with PICO-8 adaptations and view old code in a new light.
Cartridge Format
Cartridges are now called .vx.png and encode data in the low 4 bits of each RGBA channel. They are stored in a staggered order to reduce visible artifacts.
The size limits are lot more relaxed than PICO-8. It is possible to have cartridges up to 1MB compressed, which is around twice the size of the current largest carts. Carts under 256k compressed appear in the png as a single cartridge like the one below, and then extra data >256k is added underneath if needed. The empty label space at the bottom will be for Title and Author in future.
Note that Voxatron cartridges have two labels -- there's the preview screenshot that shows up in the BBS player that you can grab with F7. But also an optional (but recommended!) 60x32 image that shows up in splore that can be edited in the Metadata tab. Perhaps in future we should just let anyone jump in and draw missing labels for any cartridges.
Looking Glass Support
Voxatron now runs on the Looking Glass: a real holographic display! Each frame, the virtual Voxatron display is rendered from 64 different angles, and then weaved into special format that, when viewed on the Looking Glass, gives the appearance of a solid object floating in space. You'll notice that footage of the display often has the camera moving left and right so that you can see the parallax, but in person you can keep your head still and get perfect binocular agreement without any glasses or head tracking.
The Looking Glass is now available and comes with a Voxatron license key, along with an Application Browser that includes a special edition of the new SPLORE for easy access to your favourite carts. For more videos and information, have a look at the Looking Glass website.
I'm also working on support for the Voxon VX1, but more on that later!
Microscripting and Actor Properties
The microscripting and actor editing tools have been completely reworked to be cleaner and more consistent. Microscripting events are also more predictable. For example, there is always exactly one frame that many event conditions are true in order for scripts to react to them via a single update() call: being killed, collected or entering or exiting room. This works regardless of the order that actors are defined, spawned, or are processed.
The Manual is still a little sparse on details, but I'll be rolling out some more demo carts and documentation in January.
Here's a changelist:
Have fun, and I hope you have a great new year!
-zep
22 
|
Ring all of the bells in each level to progress -- but be careful not to stand too close!
This cart is my contribution to the Advent Calendar 2018. I think it turned out well as a wee concept game, but it's really the equivalent of a hastily wrapped box of chocolates purchased at 3am on Christmas morning from the closest gas station, compared with the amazing work that can be found in the calendar. Try out the other 24 games here if you haven't already:
(or browse them in the main Advent Calendar Thread)
Thanks to everyone for the chance to join, and in particular @Bigaston for putting the whole thing together, and @2darray for making the rad menu cart and updating with work-arounds for the janky BBS. Making PICO-8 carts myself often gets pushed aside by more urgent things, and I really enjoyed the chance to make something for kicks again. I'm looking forward to more carts and collaborations next year!
I never imagined I'd be excited about releasing a website update, but here it is! This update addresses many ancient bugs and issues, but also aims to support the PICO-8 / Voxatron fantasy console ecosystem. There are new features to make collaboration, sharing, teaching and exploring carts a little easier.
lexaloffle.com is now also running on a new server, on top of a leaner stack that should be much more responsive. Along with a lot of new code running underneath it all, there will still be some new bugs to deal with (apologies to those who were around earlier this week for the bumpy migration process!) -- feel free to report any issues in the comments here, or in the PICO-8 bugs sub-forum.
New Features
Superblog
View a feed of everything going on using the Superblog. You can also follow other users to create a tailored feed.
Featured Carts
The list of featured carts (same as in SPLORE) is now sorted by the time each cart was added to the list, so that it's possible to come back periodically and see what's new without digging too much for notable releases. Selection will be based on a combination of user interaction, manual curation, and the phase of the moon. To kick things off, the first few pages of the old featured lists will be fed through a few carts per day.
Featured cartridges also now show up on the main PICO-8 product page. I went with a whirlpool format, where newly featured carts start out big on the left and then get sucked down.
(this screenshot is from my test server -- you can see the live version here)
Custom Cart IDs and Versioning
When submitting a cartridge, you can now choose an alphanumeric id, for example: "spooky_forest". A revision number is automatically appended to the id: "spooky_forest-0". To refer to the most recent version of a cart, you can optionally use the id without the revision number: LOAD("#SPOOKY_FOREST") will download the most recent version.
Unlisted Cartridges
Unlisted carts can now be played online by anyone who knows the id: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/cart_info.php?cid=silly_tree
This can be useful if you want to send someone (or yourself) a cartridge in a semi-private way. The id defaults to a relatively non-guessable string for this reason.
Cart Menu
The cart player now has an extra pull-out menu (top right) that displays more cartridges by the same author, along with some featured carts and a random cart for good luck. This selection is not currently aware of context (e.g. which carts you already visited), so it's not a great way to surf around more than a handful of carts, but I'm hoping it will draw at least a few hapless visitors into the rabbit hole.
Embedding
If you'd like your cartridge to be embeddable on other websites, there is now an option on the submission page, or enable it on existing carts by pressing the 'edit' link under the cart player.
Notifications
Each thread has a little notification button that can be toggled: 
Any new replies to a thread you are subscribed to, or any @ mention of your username (e.g. @zep) will trigger an email notification. These can be muted with a global option under Settings if they become annoying.
Drafts and Unlisted Threads
New posts can be saved as a draft, and then retrived from your profile page under the 'Posts' section.
If you would like to create a thread that can be viewed via a secret url, you can also create an unlisted thread. Mentioning another user in an unlisted thread will only notify them if they have already posted there. Unlisted threads are handy for things like allowing other people to comment on drafts, semi-open invitations to collaborate or test ideas, and class / workshop threads where participants can share their work without having to make a more visible BBS thread.
Community Tags
Community tags can be added to any post by any user. There are just two tags for the moment:
-
Posts tagged with Mature Content will not be visible in SPLORE when the content_filter is set to 2 in config.txt (this will be easier to set up in future!).
- Post tagged as spam will go under review to be removed. If your account is older than the posts account when you flag it as spam, the post contents are instantly hidden (plus a few minutes for caching to catch up) until it is reviewed. This is to limit the potential for shenanigans from relatively new users.
User Profiles
If you look under your Settings page, you'll find a place to put a homepage link, plus any social media account names. These show up as little buttons under your name, and at the top of your profile page. There are also options to make your likes and/or favourites lists public from your profile > Carts page.
In the pull-down menu next to each post you can also find an option to pin up to 3 posts to the top of your profile. Alternatively, whole playable cartridges can be included in the "About" field using [# followed by the cart id, followed by #].
Puffin CAPTCHA
Unfortunately there seems to still be a bunch of sleeper spam accounts to be weeded out over time, but it now a little harder for spammers to join up:
To be honest, this is not a very difficult CAPTCHA to defeat, but I'm counting on it not being worth any potential spammer's time to solve it just for one website. And if it came to it, I think we could make new carts faster than spammers can automate their solutions. (SPAMJAM?)
New Cart Players
Both the Voxatron 0.3.5 and PICO-8 0.1.12 players are live! There isn't much to see yet except for a new boot screen in Voxatron, but both players are needed before the binary updates are available to handle newer BBS features. But updates for both are also around the corner.
Missing features
Some things didn't survive the migration (yet), or are unfinished:
-
The 'Code' and 'Copy' buttons on the cart players are missing. I don't think we need copy anymore, because it is easier just to LOAD("#FOO") from inside PICO-8. I miss the Code button, which will return at some point, but possibly in a different form.
- The GFX, SFX snippets and Tutorial sub-forums are empty because they're new. I've re-organised the way sub-forums are presented (now under 4 broad categories: Carts, Community, Snippets and Support), and the old Graphics and Music subs didn't fit very well. They only had a couple of pages of posts each, so I've bumped them into their respective authors' blogs for now.
Hey Everyone! PICO-8 0.1.11d builds are now live on Lexaloffle and Humble! We are still working on CHIP / Pocket CHIP builds -- I'll update this thread when they are live. [Edit: they're live now with 0.1.11g]
Welcome to the Core
Despite the unassuming version number of 0.1.11, this update marks something of a milestone: The core of PICO-8 is now feature-complete, with API and specifications that are likely to remain fixed. Before it becomes entombed as a read-only blob of C code however, there is still some time before beta to address any issues that crop up. Let's see how 0.1.11 works out and what points of friction emerge.
One of the goals of PICO-8 is to create a stable, familiar medium in contrast to the shifting sands of modern software development. Instead of growing by changing the core of PICO-8 over time, I'm aiming to settle on a minimal, eternal component that can be built on top of (improved tools and bbs integration), extended sideways (extra ports / host platform support), built out from the inside (making useful snippets and carts!), and around (nicer BBS, cartverse, documentation, resources and community events).
v0.1.11 is also the point after which PICO-8 and Voxatron co-development start to part ways -- Voxatron's API and specification is a superset of PICO-8 v0.1.11's. The upcoming Voxatron update looks basically like a 3D PICO-8, with its own version of splore, png cart format, labels, and bbs integration. I messed up the Voxatron release plan partly because of committing to this -- but more on this later in a separate post. o(_ _)o
Many thanks to the numerous PICO-8 users who helped iron out bugs in the 0.1.11 release candidates. I snuck 0.1.11 out via twitter thinking it was pretty solid, but it took 3 more builds to get right. If you find any old carts that don't run or behave strangely, please ping me on twitter, or better still, post a bug report in the support forum. There will be another follow-up (0.1.12) to catch any left-over issues. After that it will be onwards to beta (0.2.0) \o/
Also special thanks to Gruber for help with the SFX editor, rez for helping shape fill patterns & cpu changes, and everyone who posted thoughts and suggestions on the BBS -- many of which I folded into this update. I haven't posted much this year due to going into blinkers-on just-make-the-thing mode, but I do read and appreciate every piece of feedback. I'll be re-visiting some older posts to update how things have turned out, and I'm also looking forward to joining the party and making some more carts too :D
New Features
Binary Exporters
PICO-8 can now generate stand-alone, distributable binary versions of carts and multicarts for Windows, MacOS and 64-bit Linux (dynamically linked with SDL2). Use the export command with a .BIN target, with the -I switch to choose an icon (or skip to use the cart label by default):
> EXPORT JELPI.BIN -I 48 JELPI.BIN JELPI.BIN/WINDOWS JELPI.BIN/LINUX JELPI.BIN/JELPI.APP |
Multicarts can be created the same way as exporting HTML -- just add up to 15 .p8 or .p8.png filenames at the end of the EXPORT command. Bundled carts behave just the same as local files -- they can be RELOAD()ed, CSTORE()ed to, and chain loaded with LOAD(), using the new breadcrumb and parameter features explained below.
SFX Instruments
Until 0.1.10, each of the 32 notes in a SFX were internally described with 15 bits: 6 for pitch, 3 each for instrument, volume and effect. 0.1.11 adds one extra bit to round out the 2 bytes: "SFX instrument mode" that can be set by toggling the button to the right of the instruments list.
When it is set, the instrument buttons turn into indexes 0..7, and when placing notes you'll see the instrument index appear green instead of pink. Instead of playing the built-in instrument, these notes will trigger the SFX of that index. In other words, SFX 0..7 are acting as instrument definitions. Each note will advance at the same speed as the definition, with the pitch shifted (relative to C-2), the volume multiplied, and the effects layered on top of each other. This can be used to reach a greater range of pitches, create per-note changes in texture and tone, and set up detailed volume envelopes.
Here's a rundown of other new SFX editing features, and a quick introduction to SFX instruments by Gruber (check out the other tutorials too!):
Fill Patterns
Along with SFX instruments, fill patterns are a late addition to the PICO-8 spec. In both cases I was planning to keep them as secret features, but they turned out to be too much fun and I couldn't wait! From the manual:
fillp p
The PICO-8 fill pattern is a 4x4 2-colour tiled pattern observed by:
circ() circfill() rect() rectfill() pset() line()
p is a bitfield in reading order starting from the highest bit. To calculate the value
of p for a desired pattern, add the bit values together:
.-----------------------.
|32768|16384| 8192| 4096|
|-----|-----|-----|-----|
| 2048| 1024| 512 | 256 |
|-----|-----|-----|-----|
| 128 | 64 | 32 | 16 |
|-----|-----|-----|-----|
| 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
'-----------------------'
For example, FILLP(4+8+64+128+ 256+512+4096+8192) would create a checkerboard pattern.
This can be more neatly expressed in binary: FILLP(0b0011001111001100)
The default fill pattern is 0, which means a single solid colour is drawn.
To specify a second colour for the pattern, use the high bits of any colour parameter:
FILLP(0b0011010101101000)
CIRCFILL(64,64,20, 0x4E) -- brown and pink
An additional bit 0b0.1 can be set to indicate that the second colour is not drawn.
FILLP(0b0011010101101000.1) -- checkboard with transparent squares
|
#tweet#
Code Tabs
You can now organise your code into numbered tabs. They are not separate files, but rather the same block of code chopped up with special markers (internally: "-->8"). Hovering over a tab number displays the first line of code if is commented, which can be used as a makeshift method of naming tabs. To remove the right-most tab, just delete all of the text in the tab and then move off it.
Editing operations like undo, search and selections apply per-tab. It isn't currently possible to search across tabs -- this will be added later along with improved error messages that span multiple tabs.
Commandline Scripts
The new -x parameter to PICO-8 can be used to run carts as part of commandline tool chains. For example, if you have a long-winded process for copying data around and generating large multicarts, you could automate the process by creating a single cart that does the job:
-- BUILD.P8
CD("MYPROJ")
LOAD("TITLE.P8")
EXPORT("MYGAME.BIN -I 1 LEVEL1.P8 LEVEL2.P8 LEVEL3.P8") |
And then run PICO-8 from commandline:
$ pico8 -x build.p8 EXPORT /home/zep/pico8/carts/myproj/mygame.bin -i 1 level1.p8 level2.p8 level3.p8 |
This will execute each line of build.p8 as if it had been typed in from a fresh boot of PICO-8, but without ever opening a window. It isn't truely headless yet because it still requires SDL2 (along with the video/audio driver) -- e.g. you can still play sound from it. I'll look at improving this in the future for people who want to make twitter bots and whatnot.
HTML Templates / Plates
This is still a work in progress as I don't have any sample plates to offer yet! But the basic concept works: you can put html files in {app_data}/pico-8/plates, and use them as templates for the html exporter. The template should include a magic string ("##js_file##") in place of the accompany javascript file's name:
<script async type="text/javascript" src="##js_file##"></script> |
The template (in this example, one_button.html) can then be used when exporting like so:
>EXPORT FOO.HTML -P ONE_BUTTON |
The P is for 'Plate'. I use this more general term because they can act both as templates (custom control schemes like single-button, or to add technical javascript features) and also as faceplates (custom graphics around the PICO-8 screen e.g. based on the theme of the game). When doing the next round of website updates, I'll look at creating a way to submit plates as a community resource.
It is also possible in 0.1.11 to export the .js file separately (EXPORT FOO.JS) so that it is easier to work on the accompanying .html in the same folder as the exported cart.
Splore Menu
An extra per-cart menu can be accessed from splore by pressing the menu button (X and O still immediately launch the cart as before). This menu allows you to open the cart's BBS thread, remove it from favourites, and open a minimal options menu. The options menu includes SHUTDOWN which allows PICO-8 to be used from start to finish with only a controller (in -splore mode).
Extra splore tip that I forgot to mention in the docs: instead of typing SPLORE, you can use just S.
API Changes
- add() returns the value that was added
- assert() can take an optional error message parameter
- coresume() returns an error, making it useful to wrap with assert: assert(coresume(foo))
- getmetatable()
- sfx() takes a 4th parameter: number of notes to play
Time and Date
You can now grab the current local and GM time with stat():
80..85 UTC time: year, month, day, hour, minute, second
90..95 Local time |
Check out the ClockJam!
CPU Costs
There are many adjustments to the cost of calling api functions in 0.1.11. Some of them are due to fixing bugs including the ability to trick PICO-8 into giving back unlimited CPU cycles (!), some are to make costs feel more consistent with each other, to more accurately reflect the real world cost of the host machine (pffft -- like that matters), and finally to give a small bump to graphically intensive carts now that making 60fps carts is becoming more common.
I've tried to tread lightly on the heavy optimisation work done by cartridge authors. For example, kragzeg's technical articles on Dank Tomb rendering are still true. The general rule is that existing carts will run around the same speed as before, or a little faster depending on the operations they use. In a few rare cases they run slightly slower, and I am humbly offering low-cost pattern filling as compensation :P
- Horizontal scan fills are now super-fast (rectfill, circfill)
- sspr() is now the same speed as spr() per-pixel
- line() is faster -- but better to use rectfill() if axis-aligned
- bnot() and peek() cost 1 lua vm instruction more
- Fixed cost calculation of clipped gfx operations
Cartverse Preparation
The PICO-8 cartverse is a collection of interconnected webs of PICO-8 cartridges that can (optionally) exist independently of the BBS, and in the future the BBS will provide entry points to the cartverse rather than being a container for it. This update includes some of of the features needed to achieve this, and the are also useful separately:
BBS Cart Loading
Use LOAD("#45481") to load a cartridge directly from the BBS. The number can (and normally should be) the containing post id, (not the id of the cart itself), in which case the most recent version of the cart is fetched. This can be called from a running cartridge, in which case the cartridge is immediately launched.
Breadcrumbs
Breadcrumbs allows the user to return to previous carts, much like the back button on a web browser. When LOAD()ing a cart, a second parameter can be used to request that the launched cart inserts an option in the pause menu to get back. The value of the parameter is the label of that button:
LOAD("#45481","BACK TO LAUNCHER")
Parameter Strings
The third parameter to LOAD() is an arbitrary string up to 1024 chars long that can be read by the receiving cart with STAT(6). When using a breadcrumb to get back to a cartridge, the parameter that cartridge was initially run with is restored.
The parameter string can also be set with RUN from the commandline: RUN BLAH DE BLAH
Custom BBS Functionality
This isn't a feature by itself but can implemented using these new features. Because the cartverse sits alongside the BBS, it will be (and maybe already is) a viable way to extend the functionality of the BBS. For example: when hosting a jam, instead of having customized web-based theme selection, cart listings and voting, we can do it all with carts. An invite cart could have a countdown clock + a link to a separate theme voting cart when it becomes available, and then afterwards a voting cart could link to all the entries and store results voting on itself. There isn't yet a tidy way to send data back to the jam host, but there will be later! I will try this out for P8JAM3
:D
Changelog:
A heads up for Voxatron users -- the first version of the Lua api will be out next week in 0.3.5!
Pictured above is the result of drawing voxels directly into a room's map. The 0.3.5 api also provides access to actor attributes and state, spawning, camera control, and direct access to the display. The entire PICO-8 api is in there with some 3D counterparts (line3d, box, sphere), and it's possible to import a pico-8 cart into the resource tree, place it in a room, and run the cart on a single slice of the display. The .p8 cart shows up in the resource navigator, and is placeable in the room like this:
The code can also be edited to make slight adjustments for the 3d display:
In other news, I've updated the website with mobile-friendly cart listings and touch controls for the carts. It's still a work in progress -- the sound in particular is very choppy or missing altogether. But apart from that it is quite useable. If you have a modern phone or touch device please try it out!
Hey All -- PICO-8 0.1.10 builds are now live on Lexaloffle and Humble!
Update: 0.1.10b is up with bugfixes for the html exporter. (Changes)
Update2: 0.1.10c is up with fixed atan2()
Multicart Exporter
The EXPORT command can now be used to create a single .js (and .html) file that contains more than one cart. All of the carts can read, write, and run each other as if they were local files loaded from PICO-8. To do this, add the names of up to 15 extra cartridges you'd like to include in the export: (.p8 format only in 0.1.10)
> LOAD MENU.P8 > EXPORT MEGACART.HTML JELPI.P8 DRIPPY.P8 CAST.P8 |
Inside the program, you can then use RELOAD() to grab data from other carts:
-- GRAB JELPI'S SPRITESHEET RELOAD(0,0,0x2000,"JELPI.P8") |
Or load and run other carts:
-- THIS WILL AUTOMATICALLY RUN THE CART
LOAD("JELPI.P8")
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CSTORE() also works in this context, either for a cart to save over itself or to write data to other carts. Each time a different cartridge is accessed, you'll see the spinny cart animation to show that a swap is taking place.
Multicart exports offer a way to package and distribute what you can already do with local files (e.g. zipping up a group of carts), but isn't supported on the BBS and probably never will be. I think feeling invited to design for single 32k carts is an important aspect of PICO-8, so separating multicarts to the exporter is a way to preserve that to some degree while still broadening the scope of what can be made with PICO-8. Future binary exporters (Windows, Mac, Linux) will also support multicart in the same way.
Glitchy Reset
Resetting via the pause menu (press enter) now corrupts the ram in a semi-realistic way for a moment, just like some old hardware might. Carts glitch out in different ways depending on how they use the RAM! Here's Mistigri:
New Demo Carts
Use INSTALL_DEMOS to add BOUNCE.P8 and SORT.P8. These are intended to be useful for teaching basic programming and computer science concepts. Eventually PICO-8 will come with a bunch of printable lessons that refer to the built-in demos.
Code Editor
You can select and then tab / shift-tab to control indentation the selected lines of code. Also double-click to select a word, and ctrl-left/right skips across words.EXTCMD
This is function can be used to control taking screenshots and videos at precise times from within the code. From the manual:
extcmd x
Special system command, only works when running a local cart.
Where x is a string:
"label" set cart label
"screen" save a screenshot
"rec" set video start point
"video" save a .gif
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Raspberry Pi Improvements
0.1.10 now includes wiringPi statically linked (for gpio), so you shouldn't need to install anything else in most cases. The dynamically linked binary is back too.I couldn't get the X11 driver to work with gles, so it defaults to rpi without windowed support. If anyone is keen to try building their own SDL2 with working X11 support, you can run pico8 with:
env SDL_VIDEODRIVER="x11" ./pico8_dyn |
The mapped keyboard events for text input (SDL_TEXTINPUT) also seems to be broken for some raspis (so far observed on 2nd generation units), so 0.1.10 now detects if this is happening and uses a hard-coded US layout based on keydown events instead.
Full changelog:
PICO-8 0.1.9b builds are now live on Lexaloffle and Humble.
This is a bug-fixing update, mostly for crashes related to switching between widowed mode, full-screen and minimized windows. I've also included the dynamically linked pico8_dyn versions in the linux archives, that were missing from 0.1.9.
The Windows installer & .zip file include a more recent sdl2.dll, although there weren't any known issues relating to that.
I've switched back to shift-a..z for glyph entry in the code editor, as alt-a..z is sometimes reserved by the host operating system. If you find yourself accidentally entering the extended characters by accident, you can turn this off in config.txt (near the bottom). To enter glyphs without shift-a..z, press ctrl-k to toggle glyph mode.
Changelog:
v0.1.9b
Added: Alternative function key mapping: ctrl-6..9 for F6..F9
Added: Alternative glyph entry method: (ctrl-k) to toggle glyph mode
Changed: Enter glyphs with shift a..z, but can be disabled in config.txt
Changed: Increased emscripten ram to 128MB (some carts at risk of running out)
Fixed: Crash when window size is tiny or minified
Fixed: Crash on toggling fullscreen mode
Fixed: printh can write files outside filetree (security issue)
Fixed: show_fps (can also now be toggled with ctrl-1)
Fixed: Shorthand if/then syntax error when using the form: (functionname)(param)
Fixed: log.txt not saved in path specified by -home switch
Fixed: Default application data folder created even when -home specified
Fixed: Missing dynamic builds (pico8_dyn) from linux archives
Fixed: Removed unneeded RPATH from linux binaries
Fixed: export foo%d.wav fails to write multiple files
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Hey All -- PICO-8 0.1.9 builds are now live on Lexaloffle and Humble!
Posting Carts via Clipboard
The handiest new feature is being able to post cartridges to the bbs via the clipboard, without ever saving it as a png. Use "SAVE @CLIP" to copy to the clipboard as text, and then paste it into a post (hit Preview to make sure it worked and to get rid of the wall of text). You can also copy carts from the BBS (look for 'Copy' under each cart) and paste it back into PICO-8 with "LOAD @CLIP")Posting GFX via Clipboard
You can also do the same thing with sprites. Using CTRL-C in the sprite editor also stores a copy of the sprites as text in the clipboard, and can be pasted back and forth to BBS posts. Here's an example: (click the 40x8 and then CTRL-C the text to copy&paste it back into a cart)
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[40x8] |
Jam
There's a new category in the BBS called Jam, which shows up in SPLORE. The Jam sub-forum (along with clipboard cart&gfx pasting) will be useful for things like the Tweetjam thread and for having a natural place to discuss / post ideas for external jams like Ludumdare.
I originally envisaged Jam-related stuff going in Collaboration, but I think Jam can grow into something quite worthwhile and separate. Collaboration will also be extended at some point to include a 'snippet library' of re-useable pieces of code/gfx/audio, which feels quite different from jamming.
Raspberry Pi GPIO
If you have a Raspberry Pi and an LED, try jamming one end into GPIO1, and the other one into GND, and you can make it blink on and off with POKE(0x5f81,255) and POKE(0x5f81,0). Note that you'll need to run PICO-8 as root: sudo pico860FPS HTML5
Exported html can now run at 60fps. To improve performance, the web player now always runs on a 128x128 rather than performing the scaling in software. If you are writing your own html shell for the exported .js, you'll need to do an unfiltered scale of the canvas to the desired size. (See the default exported 0.1.9 html shell for an example).Pixel-Perfect Scaling
When changing the window size of PICO-8, or swapping from a window to fullscreen, PICO-8 now chooses the largest integer scaling factor that will fit inside the window to avoid blurry filtered pixels. For example, on a 1920x1080 real-world display, the largest scale is 8 which gives a 1024x1024 PICO-8 display.PocketCHIP Update
We're working on it! I still can't give an eta on the PocketCHIP update, but the latest build is in testing and looks good across kernel versions, including GPIO access (so will likely skip to 0.1.9). It still needs to be coordinated with other things happening at Next Thing Co. though, so I'll keep you updated here.Coming Up
There are still a bunch of small issues with the editors I'd like to improve, but PICO-8 is starting to look pretty close to beta! Next up will be website improvements to complement the clipboard & Jam category additions, and also long overdue support for touch devices. The main feature missing for beta is being able to login and submit scores from carts using SCORESUB(LEVEL, SCORE).The next Voxatron update also has some new PICO-8 stuff -- the first version of the Voxatron API is a superset of PICO-8's and allows mapping one slice of Voxatron's display to PICO-8 video memory. (The display is basically a stack of 64 PICO-8 screen). So you'll be able to load PICO-8 cartridges into a Voxatron cartridge and make wee arcades and weird 3d ports and whatnot. It's fantasy consoles all the way down!
changelog:
Here's a 7500 word dictionary cart for making word games and whatnot. It contains the most common 3-6 letter words according to wiktionary.com, including proper names. The loader is 264 tokens, and the data is 11317, stored over the full map (including shared gfx), plus the last 44 SFX. So there are just 128 sprites and 20 SFX spare. The 5 most common and 10 least common words on the list are:
THE AND THAT WAS HIS RADIUM BAWL LINTEL WAFER WELTER AUNTY OPTICS SIKH LIL BARB |
Technical details..
The data is generated using a convoluted toolchain process, that I'll post later on if I find time to organize it into something useful.
The compression works by enumerating every possible word in order of word size first, and then alphabetical order. So, A is 0, B is 1, AA is 26, and so on. This means that to store the whole dictionary, only the distances between each word's index is needed. There are many clusters of close words (e.g the distance between CAN and CAP is only 2), so the distances are sorted into range categories depending on how many bits are needed to store each range. Repeated categories are common and so can be encoded with a single bit -- otherwise a 3-bit value is used to store the category for each distance. The encoding utility greedy-searches sets of 5 category bit-lengths and a roman cypher to try to optimize the encoded size, which saved around 1k compared with hand-optimizing the parameter set.
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