Void Roller

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Void Roller

by zep

Cart #void_roller-0 | 2021-06-24 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

3

My entry for TweetTweetJam #6: a game in 2 tweets (at 558 characters)

Roll right without crashing for a high score (or left for a low score)
CTRL-R to restart
Hold X when landing to jump.

o=128x,y,u,v,h,p,s,d=o,0,0,0,0,32,sin,circfill::_::
?"\^1\^c"
for i=-o,384do
j,l,b=x\1+i,h,btn()h,a=s(j/o)+s(j/93),p+i/4
line(a,0,a,h*2.1+p)h=p+h*5*max(s(j/3^7))
if(i==0and y>h)then
if v>0then
u+=v*(h-l)v*=-.7else v+=u*(h-l)end y=h
if(b>9)v=-4
end for z=0,2,.2do
pset(p+i/z,67+h/z,12+(h-l)*4)end end
for i=-o+x&-p,x+o,p do
a=-t()/(4+i^2%29)m,n=o+i+cos(a)*p-x,s(i/999)*80+s(a)*p
d(m,n,8,7)end
v+=.2u*=.7x+=u y+=v
if pget(p,64+y)==7then::w::circ(p,64+y,v,v)v+=1
for i=24576,32767do
poke(i,@i/1.2)end 
?"\^1\^jef"..x\1
goto w end
d(p,64+y,2,7)u-=b&1u+=b&2goto _

diggleoid

by zep

Cart #diggleoid-2 | 2021-04-25 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

21

Dig to collect gems, and don't get squashed! A wee game made in a weekend for Ludum Dare #48. You can find the compo entry here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/48/diggleoid

PICO-8 0.2.2b 0.2.2c is now up on lexaloffle, Humble, itch.io, and for PocketCHIP.

This is a bug-fixing patch for 0.2.2 -- see that thread for a summary of recent features.

0.2.2b does have a few small features though. You can now use a .lua.png extension with the EXPORT command to get the source code (all tabs) of your cartridge printed out to an image with roughly A4 dimensions. This is intended mostly for visualisation purposes, and lines are cropped to 188 pixels (47 characters) wide. The jelpi demo source code is bigger than I imagined!

EXPORT JELPI.LUA.PNG

dots3d.p8 is much cuter

There are also some new extcmd() commands for setting screenshot output filenames, and the window title (intended for exported binaries).

I've also added a way to force the pause menu to come up, even if the cartridge is blocking it with poke() trickery. Simply hold the pause button for half a second, and the menu should come up no matter what (it's implemented at a low level). This might be useful when using SPLORE from a sofa, and a keyboard isn't available to terminate stubborn cartridges.

Full list of changes:

Hey All! PICO-8 0.2.2 is now up on lexaloffle, Humble, itch.io, and for PocketCHIP.

This release follows a pattern set by previous 0.2.* updates in that I set out to fix a bunch of bugs and resolve design details, but in doing so, went down some deep rabbit holes and came out the other end with brand new features. As a result, some of the new features are on the advanced side, and this post will be likewise be more technical than usual. But I hope everyone can find something fun to mess around with!

SFX Filters

At the bottom of the SFX editor, you can now find 5 switches that alter the characteristics of each instrument. You can get a much wider variety of sounds and textures now, but they're meant to feel like variations on the existing instruments rather than completely new ones. I settled on this scheme after working on Voxatron's sound system and found that I could boil the set of parameters I wanted down to just 7 bits of information -- which is fortunate because there were only 7 unused bits left in the SFX data!

The 5 switches are:

• NOIZ: Generate pure white noise (applies only to instrument 6)
• BUZZ: Various alterations to the waveform to make it sound more buzzy
• DETUNE-1: Detunes a second voice to create a flange-like effect
• DETUNE-2: Various second voice tunings, mostly up or down an octave
• REVERB: Apply an echo with a delay of 2 or 4 ticks
• DAMPEN: Low pass filter at 2 different levels

SFX instruments (the green ones) can also use these filters, so it is possible for example to have a detuned square wave in the same SFX as a dampened triangle. When both the parent SFX and the SFX instrument have the same switch set at 2 different levels, the greater of the two is used.

Here's @Gruber explaining filters, along with a newly added control over the length of each SFX (useful for implementing uneven time signatures):

And here's @tesselode putting them to good use:

[tweet ]

The BBS SFX player (copy a range of patterns and paste them as text) works with the new filters, but is still janky on mobile:

[sfx]

P8SCII

In previous versions of PICO-8 there were some characters in the range (0..15) that were sitting around doing nothing useful when you printed them. That's clearly no good, so 0.2.2 has introduced a new control codes that allow control over things like text formatting, cursor position and even sound generation. Along with some kana improvements, 0.2.2 now has complete set of 256 characters -- or P8SCII (PICO-8 Standard Code for Information Interchange).

An example: the "command" character (6) can be written as "\^" followed by a command character and sometimes a parameter:

cls()cursor(20,20)

?"\^iinvert\n"
?"\^ppinball"
?"\^wwide \^ttall\n"

?"\feset colour\n"
?"\#5solid background\n"

Character 7 ("\a") can be used to play audio using a compact description

?"\a" -- beep
?"\asfc3ccbdcbae2ee" -- play a wee ditty

This might be useful for squeezing extra sound effects into a cart (or tweetcart), or for simple sound effects in type-in zine listings.

For more details on the P8SCII control characters, see the manual: https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php?page=manual

Custom Fonts

A custom font can be enabled using control character 14 (or by setting bits 0x81 at address 0x5f58). A fixed character width and height can be specified at 0x5600,0x5602, followed by 8 bytes per character (8x8 bitmap) starting from 0x5608 (character 1). It can be a little fiddly setting the correct data up, so to get started, here's a wee tool that grabs font characters from the spritesheet and generates a snippet:

LOAD #FONT_SNIPPET

The output snippet is 7 tokens, and can be pasted into your cartridge. Here are some example fonts and their snippets:

The one on the right is from @thattomhall's SPRITEFONT cartridge: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=75073#p

Snippets: https://www.lexaloffle.com/dl/files/font_snippets.txt

(that reminds me, there needs to be a good way of posting long snippets like this on the bbs)

Sprite Fill Patterns

It is now possible to apply fill patterns to sprites, which includes spr(), sspr(), map() and tline(). A special bit (0b0.01) is set when calling fillp() to turn this feature on. Each sprite pixel is mapped to TWO colours using the (previously undocumented!) secondary palette, and these two colours are used to draw the pattern.

There are more technical details in the manual, but here's an example:

If you add the following fillp call to /demos/jelpi.p8 in init_level() (tab 5):

cls()reset()
fillp(♥\1|0b.011)

The result is:

There's a lot going on here!

• I've added the call to fillp() after reset(), as it sets fill pattern state to default values.
• ♥\1 is a fill pattern constant with \1 (integer divide) to remove the alpha bit (0.5)
• 0b.01 (0.25) is the bit that turns on fill patterns for sprites
• 0b.001 (0.125) is another bit that applies the secondary palette mapping to ALL drawing functions, including a rectangle that is drawn at the bottom of the mountains.
• the default secondary palette is being used, which consists of the original colour + a slightly darker counterpart. For example, 12 (0xc) maps to 0xdc. This could be changed with pal(12,0x78,2).

I think there there will be some interesting unexpected ways to use this feature, but a nice immediate example by @johanp is to add dithering to textured polygons drawn with tline:

[tweet ]

(as the truck turns around, you can see a few frames of checkerboard dithering without destroying the look of the texture)

MULTIPOKE

POKE, POKE2 and POKE4 can be given up to 2048 values to poke into memory in sequence, similar to the DATA statement found in early BASIC variants. Try this to write 6 pixels to video memory:

poke(0x7000,8,9,0xac)

This can be used with unpack() and split() to dump a bunch of values to ram.:

poke(0x7000,unpack(split"8,9,0xac"))

Values can be read out in a similar manner:

a,b,c=peek(0x7000,3)  --  8,9,0xac

There is a limit of 2048 values in both cases, which means you can copy up to 8k in one go using PEEK4/POKE4.

Locked Mouse Pointer

This is a feature in 'devkit' mode which is normally intended for making development tools and exported binaries, but of course you are welcome to use it for whatever you like :)
(but keep in mind that some players using the BBS don't have a mouse or keyboard)

POKE(0x5F2D, flags)  -- where flags are:

        0x1 Enable
        0x2 Mouse buttons trigger btn(4)..btn(6)
        0x4 Pointer lock (use stat 38..39 to read movements)

.. so you need to poke(0x5f2d,0x5) to enable mouse with lock. stat(38),stat(39) will then give the mouse movements in desktop pixels rather than PICO-8 ones, so that the window size is irrelevant; they can be thought of as abstract motion events with a comparitively high sensitivity. PICO-8 attempts to match mouse movement when entering and exiting locked mode, but this requires setting the mouse cursor at the operating system level, which is not supported in web. In any case, you might get more consistent results by setting mouse lock once at the start of your cartridge and leaving it there (other mouse events will still work as usual via stat 32,33,34).

You can see it in action in @freds72 and @paranoidcactus's POOM: https://freds72.itch.io/poom

Custom Menu Control

Menu item callbacks added with MENUITEM can now elect to keep the pause menu open by returning TRUE, and can also detect if the left and right buttons were pushed. The callback takes an integer parameter that is a bitfield of left and right button presses. Buttons 4..6 all map to each other (can't tell them apart).

For example:

function my_menu_item(b)
    if(b&1 > 0) menuitem(_,"left!")
    if(b&2 > 0) menuitem(_,"right!")
    if(b&32 > 0) menuitem(_,"selected!")
    return true -- stay open
end

menuitem(1, "select me", my_menu_item)
function _draw() 
    cls(5) print(t()) 
end

Another example:

LOAD #CUSTOM_MENU 

Web Gamepad Improvements

The default PICO-8 0.2.2 HTML exporter (and the BBS web player) now includes @weeble's improvements that allow the DPAD mapping, and better hotplugging / controller indexing behaviour.

Thread: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=41293

Optimisation / CPU Changes

PICO-8 0.2.2 underwent a fairly aggressive optimisation pass; heavier cartridges use around 20% or in extreme cases 30% less cpu / battery life. I did some further tweaks of CPU costs to keep the theoretical host cpu ceiling as low as possible, which helps a lot on devices like the Raspberry Pi 2 & 3. Let me know if you have a cart that's running too slow on 0.2.2 -- I don't think there are many affected, and I'd be happy to help optimise it by swapping in the new binary operators etc. See the changelog for other cpu cost changes.

The following are some notes for the curious -- this shouldn't affect performance considerations when making PICO-8 carts. There was/is a lot of potential to change cartridge behaviour in subtle ways however, so as always, please let me know if you see something weird that was working in previous versions, even if it seems like a small thing.

There were 5 areas that needed improvement:

Map Export

EXPORT FOO.MAP.PNG

.. to get a full-scale png of your map!

Changelog

Santa 1080

by zep

Cart #santa1080-4 | 2020-12-26 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

30

[O] (z/c): Run / Fly
[X] (x/v): Jump
Left / Right: Turn while in mid-air

v3 update: [X] also accelerates to make mobile controls easier

This is intended to be mostly a toy rather than a game, but you can get points for doing tricks!

Front / back flips (more points for 2x, 3x)
Early Santa: Santa lands early
Sneaky Weasel: Back flip close to the ground
Moon Grazer: Jump High
Glider: Jump Long
Fishtail: Do a bunch of wavey turns in mid-air
Firebird: Dangle Santa like he's the pod from the videogame Thrust
Santa Smash: Santa lands upside down. Don't do that trick.

This game is my contribution to the 2020 PICO-8 Advent Calendar. The calendar always surprises me with its sheer variety and depth of joyful creations, and this year is no exception! I encourage you to have a rummage around inside the advent calendar for the Full Experience (here's the menu cartridge), but to whet your appetite, here is also a partial gif dump:

A couple of carts for #tweettweetjam 5 that fit in 560 chars or less.

Cosmic Painter

L/R to rotate
O to accelereate
X to paint

cosmic_painter

by zep

Cart #cosmic_painter-0 | 2020-11-10 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

11

Comets

Just avoid the comets for as long as you can! My best is 49
Crashing into the score kills you.

comets

by zep

Cart #comets-0 | 2020-11-06 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

11

Wobblepaint 1.6

by zep

Cart #wobblepaint-6 | 2020-11-04 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

116

Wobblepaint started as a secret cartridge in my 2019 Advent Calendar entry, but I think it's time for a proper release! This version has some extra controls and nicer, less crinkly wobble.

Instructions

Your brush has a size, colour, pattern and shape that can be adjusted separately. There are 4 presets you can select and modify using keyboard shortcuts, or by clicking and dragging the top menu bar down to reveal a palette of attributes.

Instructions

CTRL-Z, CTRL-Y (or S,F) to undo/redo
CTRL-C, CTRL-V to copy and paste between doodles
W,R to switch between doodles (or use the menu buttons)
TAB to toggle menu
Mouse wheel (or e,d) to change brush size
RMB to pick up a colour
RMB in menu colour palette to select secondary colour (used for patterns)
LMB+RMB in menu colour palette to set the background colour

To save all doodles, use the cartridge icon button in the pull-down menu.

Wobblepaint saves data to itself. To start a new wobble cart, type LOAD #WOBBLEPAINT from inside PICO-8 and then save it as something. The data storage is reasonably efficient so you can get around 20~100 doodles to a cart depending on complexity.

To save a gif to desktop, use the gif button to record a second of looping wobble. If you want to record multiple doodles (e.g. for an animation or story), press tab to hide menu, CTRL-8 to start a gif, W,R to flip through the doodles, and then CTRL-9 to save the gif.

Gamepad controls

Turn off the devkit input in the options menu ("turn off mouse") and use a gamepad:

LRUD to move the cursor
[X] to paint
[O] + L/R to undo/redo
[O] + U/D to adjust brush size
In the menu, [X] and [O] behave the same as LMB,RMB

Using Wobblepaint doodles in your cartridges

CTRL-C copies doodles in a text format that can be pasted into code (or bbs posts)

Paste the code from tab 5 into your cartridge to load and draw them:

wobdat="1f00514302d06ee1179c8d34a74033b359e834319ba6504fa4690ade340000"
str_to_mem(wobdat, 0x4300)
mywob = wob_load(0x4300)
function _draw()
 cls(mywob.back_col)
 wob_draw(mywob)
end

Or alternatively, copy the binary data straight out of the spritesheet and use load_library (tab 2) to load all of the doodles into a table.

Changes

v1.5: fixed uneven frame times when recording gif and increased length to 2 seconds (was 1)

Hi All! PICO-8 0.2.1b is now up on lexaloffle, Humble, itch.io, and for PocketCHIP. This update started as a continuation of 0.2.0 bug-fixing work, but I also relaxed my position on API minimalism just enough to add some new features :D

UPDATE: 0.2.1b is now live and fixes the print() bug, and a few other things. See the changelog below for details.

Ovals

You can draw ovals (technically, ellipses) both when running a cartridge, and when using the shape tools in the graphics/map editors. Ovals are specified by their boundary rectangle, and follow the usual draw state rules.

pattern={[0]=
…,∧,░,⧗,▤,✽,★,✽,
ˇ,░,▤,♪,░,✽,★,☉,
░,▤,♪,░,✽,★,☉,…,
∧,░,⧗,▤,✽,★,✽,★
}

function _draw()
 cls(1)
 for i=0,31/32,1/32 do
  local x=64+cos(i+t()/8)*48
  local y=64+sin(i+t()/8)*44
  local w=8+cos(i*2+t()/2)*6
  local h=8+sin(i*3+t()/2)*6

  fillp(pattern[i*32])
  ovalfill(x-w,y-h,x+w,y+h,
   (i*32)%8+8)

 end
 print("pico-8 0.2.1",40,62,13)
end

Serial I/O

To make it easier to set up workflows for getting data in and out of carts during development, some new serial() channels are available. You can turn a file on your host machine into a binary stream, or drag and drop it into the running cartridge to do the same. From the manual:

Additional channels are available for bytestreams to and from the host operating system.
These are intended to be most useful for UNIX-like environments while developing toolchains,
and are not available while running a BBS or exported cart. Maximum transfer rate in all 
cases is 64k/sec (blocks cpu).

        0x800    dropped file   //  stat(120) returns TRUE when data available
        0x802    dropped image  //  stat(121) returns TRUE when data available
        0x804    stdin
        0x805    stdout
        0x806    file specifed with: pico8 -i filename
        0x807    file specifed with: pico8 -o filename

Image files dropped into PICO-8 show up on channel 0x802 as a bytestream:
The first 4 bytes are the image's width and height (2 bytes each little-endian, like PEEK2),
followed by the image in reading order, one byte per pixel, colour-fitted to the display 
palette at the time the file was dropped.

Drag and Drop

On a related note, you can also now drop .p8.png cartridges into PICO-8 to open them. If there is a cartridge with unsaved changes, it will prompt before continuing. You can also drop .png files into the spritesheet, by first selecting the sprite that should be the top-left corner location.

API Changes

add() now comes with an optional 3rd parameter: an integer that specifies the location in the table that the new value should be inserted at. Similarly, a new variation of del() is available: deli(tbl, index) ("delete by index") allows deleting from a given location in the table rather than by value.

split() is also new. It complements the common strategy of storing data as strings. From the manual:

split str [separator] [convert_numbers] 

Split a string into a table of elements delimited by the given separator (defaults to ",").
When convert_numbers is true, numerical tokens are stored as numbers (defaults to true).
Empty elements are stored as empty strings.

split("1,2,3")               -- returns {1,2,3}
split("one:two:3",":",false) -- returns {"one","two","3"}
split("1,,2,")               -- returns {1,"",2,""}

Binary Storage

It is now also more efficient to store 8-bit binary data in the source code section, by encoding it as a binary string. The .p8.png format stores uncompressable sequences as a raw block of data, effectively allowing cart authors to choose how much of the code section to trade for raw binary storage.

Binary strings can be encoded by escaping characters that can't appear in the source code. For example:
0 should become "\000" (or "\0" when not followed by another number), etc. To make this easier, previously invisible characters C1..C15 have font entries, and also unicode replacements when copying and pasting. I'm working on a snippet for converting between data strings and raw binary data, to make this process easier. UPDATE: here's the snippet.

HTML Touch Support under iOS

Touch controls for HTML exports is now a little smoother, and works when running from inside an iFrame (including itch.io game pages). I removed the mobile buttons menu by default (the buttons along the top: fullscreen, sound, close) as they aren't very useful and are messy, but they can be turned back on in the options near the top of the exported html.

Changelog // added 0.2.1b

There are many other bug fixes in this update, but I haven't gotten around to replying to the BBS threads yet. For now, please check the complete changelog:

// 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

Orbys

by zep

Cart #orbys-0 | 2019-05-18 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License

51

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)

A Perfect Snowflake

by zep

Cart #aps-6 | 2019-12-28 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

12

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.

Blocks for Life

by zep

Cart #blocks_for_life-0 | 2019-04-30 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

30

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 Data Compression v.7b

by zep

Cart #px9-8 | 2021-02-01 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

37

PX9 is a lightweight gfx & map compression library, intended to replace PX8. It uses the same ideas and interface as px8, but is smaller (297 292 274 262 258 254 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

v5:
Fixed: output is skewed when x != 0
Down to 262 tokens for px9_decomp

v6:
smaller vlist_val() by @p01
-> 258 tokens

v7b:
smaller vlist_val() by @Felice
-> 254 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 0.2.2c for CHIP and PocketCHIP here: pico-8_0.2.2c_chip.zip

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_0.2.2c_chip.zip
sudo unzip pico-8_0.2.2c_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

PICO-8 0.1.12

by zep

Cart #pico8_0112-0 | 2019-04-16 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

33

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)

[sfx]

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:

5x6 Font

by zep

Cart #font_5x6-4 | 2019-01-13 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA

22

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? f0[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

Manual

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