A little rally driving game for the PICO-1K jam.
Race the clock down a windy country road. Reach the checkpoints to extend your time.
How far can you get before the time runs out?
2 comments
A little procedural map generation experiment.
Run it for a few minutes and it will (unless it gets stuck) generate a 64x64 tileable tile map that you can scroll around.
It works by scanning the initial map which has an example of different map elements.
It uses it to build a set of rules on which tiles are allowed to fit together, which it uses to randomly generate the map.
You can click on a tile to see the connectivity rules (which other tiles are allowed to connect to each side).
6 comments
I've been tidying up a BSP model and rasterisation library that has evolved over some previous projects, and fixing up the texture-mapping code. The result has started to turn into some sort of space sim prototype.
So far there's a space station and a small fleet of ships nearby that you can shoot at (but not destroy).
There's no real gameplay yet.
Some notes about the content pipeline:
- Models are created in Blender 3D, then exported in Wavefront obj format.
- A utility cart reads the obj file and builds a BSP tree for the model. It encodes the result in a compact format that can be serialized to a string, or written into cart data.
6 comments
Welcome to Combat Chopper, an 80s helicopter combat flight simulator for Picotron!
Pilot your P8 64k Apachi armored attack helicopter on a series of missions destroying key targets in enemy territory.
This is a Picotron port of the original Pico-8 Combat Chopper.
Some Picotron differences:
- Sfx sounds slightly different.
- Analogue stick input is supported - if you have a capable controller.
- You can swap the sticks in the pause menu.
- Right bumper can be used to fire the current weapon.
- Left bumper can be used to drop a countermeasure.
Otherwise it's exactly the same game, using 95% of the same code.
3 comments
This is an in-progress Picotron conversion of Combat Chopper.
It has no sfx yet, but should otherwise be functionally equivalent to the original. See the Pico-8 version for instructions.
Also saving your progression doesn't seem to be working.
0 comments
Fly around the Whiplash Taxi Co city in a helicopter.
(Use the player 2 controls to go up/down.)
I'm not sure what I'm planning to do with this...
1 comment
UPDATE: Now with mouse support. Enable from the pause menu.
A cozy flight sim lite for PICO-8.
Become a pilot for Pico Air, a small air company operating between the islands of Pico Isles.
Perform deliveries, charter flights, crop dusting and other jobs to unlock new planes.
Features:
- A 16km x 16km map to explore
- 3 different planes
- External camera views
- Photo mode
Controls
- Arrows - Ailerons and elevator (roll and pitch)
- O + Up/Down - Throttle
- O + Left/Right - Rudder
- X + Up/Down - Adjust elevator trim
- X + Left/Right - Flaps
Or use player 2 controls for throttle and rudder.
32 comments
Just a little snippet I use when looking sfx that haven't been used in the pattern editor.
p,s={},"" for a=0x3100,0x31ff do p[@a]=true end for i=0,63 do if not p[i] then s..=i.." " end end print(s) |
Paste into the terminal and hit enter.
WARNING: This only shows sfx that are unused in any pattern. You are responsible for checking whether they are:
- Used as sfx in the program
- Used as instruments by another sfx (i.e. for sfx 0 to 7)
- Used in some other way I haven't thought of
0 comments
This is a work-in-progress flight simulator I've been working on.
The flight model is mostly implemented, but may need some tweaking. And I'm still to implement crashing into buildings and some sort of map or navigation aid.
I've never flown a plane, and only dabbled in flight sims, so I would really appreciate some feedback from anyone with more experience than me, so I can try to tweak the flight model parameters to be a bit more realistic.
The plane is based on the Cessna 172.
Controls
- Arrows - ailerons/elevators
- Player 2 up/down (E,D) - throttle
- Player 2 left/right (S,F) - rudder
While holding down X
- Up/down - adjust trim
- Left/right - adjust flaps
11 comments
This is an update of Combat Chopper to improve the resolution of the ground, at least close to the camera, using an enhanced version of the Whiplash Taxi Co ground drawing code.
See the original game for instructions on how to play.
I had to sacrifice a few things in order to squeeze the ground drawing code in, particularly the heads-up artificial horizon, and the targeting camera effects, and the menu is now in a separate cart. Also it drops down to 15 fps a bit more than I'd like, but it feels pretty playable regardless.
0 comments
Update: Bug fixes
Here's a little line drawing routine I've used for Whiplash Taxi and some other work-in-progress carts.
I wanted to package it up like a drop in tline replacement.
It's equivalent to regular tline, but instead of drawing each tile it uses it to lookup a higher resolution 8x8 tile region and draws that instead. The result is a map with 8 times the detail (or 8 times the size, depending on how you look at it).
The demo is a simple go-cart example. You can press X to toggle between the new routine and the regular tline function.
The actual routine is in tab 1 and consumes 547 tokens.
To use it, you first create some 8x8 "textures" at the top left of your map region:
2 comments
Here's a medieval procedural world generator I'm working on. It has a few different biomes, buildings and roads.
I'm thinking of turning it into some sort of Trial of the Sorcerer sequel.
Instructions
Give it a minute to generate the world, then open the pause menu and choose "explore world" to explore it in ray cast 3D.
There's no gameplay yet, just walk around and explore.
In the generator you can also use the direction pad to scroll around, and zoom in/out with X and O.
13 comments
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A quick port of my pico-8 variable inspector, I find useful for debugging.
It has a few more colours for readability, and can display userdata.
To use, hit Esc to break out of your program and enter:
dbg(v) |
Where v is the value to inspect.
You can drill into values by clicking the "+" (or collapse them again by clicking "-").
Mouse wheel to scroll up and down.
Press Esc when done.
-- debug inspector
-- lines to display and scroll offset
local dbg_lines,dbg_s={},0,false
-- add item to display
function dadd(n,v,i,p)
-- insertion sort in name order
while p>1
and dbg_lines[p-1].i==i
and type(dbg_lines[p-1].n)==type(n)
and dbg_lines[p-1].n>n do
p-=1
end
add(dbg_lines,{n=n,v=v,x=(type(v)=="table" or type(v)=="userdata") and "+" or " ",i=i},p)
[ [size=16][color=#ffaabb] [ Continue Reading.. ] [/color][/size] ](/bbs/?pid=156711#p) |
2 comments
I've noticed the min and max functions have a surprisingly high CPU cost.
For example
a=stat(1) for i=1,1000 do b=min(1,2) end print(stat(1)-a) |
Outputs:0.103
Which is almost twice the CPU cost for sqrt()
a=stat(1) for i=1,1000 do b=sqrt(2) end print(stat(1)-a) |
Outputs:0.054
And even if I define my own "min" function in lua, it's still a lot faster.
function mymin(a,b) return a<b and a or b end a=stat(1) for i=1,1000 do b=mymin(1,2) end print(stat(1)-a) |
Outputs:0.057
Is this a mistake?
2 comments
Here's a basic CSV parser I use to save tokens in my games. It uses split for the heavy lifting.
Basic version
The most basic version is 66 tokens.
function data(str)
local lines=split(str,"\n")
local props,d=split(deli(lines,1)),{}
for l in all(lines) do
local o,v={},split(l)
for i=1,#v do
o[props[i]]=v[i]
end
if(o.name)d[o.name]=o
add(d,o)
end
return d
end |
It can be used like this (4 tokens):
spritetypes=data [[name,sx,sy,sw,sh alien,0,0,2,2 boss,4,0,4,4 player,0,2,4,2 bomb1,3,0,1,1 bomb2,2,1,1,1 bullet,2,0,1,1]] |
The data function returns an array of objects, with properties that map to the CSV columns.
If objects have a name property, then they will be added as a property to the main object with that name.
Which means we can reference the "player" sprite type as:
print(spritetypes.player.sx) |
References
This version allows you to reference objects defined in other CSV tables. It's 117 tokens.
glob={
["true"]=true,
[ [size=16][color=#ffaabb] [ Continue Reading.. ] [/color][/size] ](/bbs/?pid=155181#p) |
0 comments
I thought I'd upload this because I doubt I'll be able to finish it - at least as a Pico-8 game. Basically it was too ambitious and I ran out of space. Maybe I'll port it to Picotron someday, but for now it's basically a tech demo.
You wake up in an android body in a factory in a mining town on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. You have to solve the mystery of who you are and what happened, and maybe how you can put things right.
Or at least you would if the game was finished. For now there's a little puzzle about exiting the factory, and some dialog sequences. After that there's a car to drive, a slightly glitchy plane to fly and some empty buildings you can look inside.
It's intended to be a game about exploration and dialog.
7 comments
ChatGPT 4o seems pretty good at writing Pico-8 code. (At least for simple games).
I asked it:
"Can we try something different? Like a simple Space Invaders or Galaxians style game?
I have 4 sprites in slots 1,2,3,4 with a player ship, alien invader, player bullet and enemy bullet respectively. Could you make a simple game where the aliens move left and right in formation, and the player moves left to right along the bottom of the screen?"
I got this.
I pasted the gif into the chat window, and it said:
"Awesome! It looks like the basic mechanics are working. Let's add a few more features to make the game more interesting:
Enemy Bullets: Add bullets fired by the aliens.
Player Lives: Track the player's lives and end the game when they run out.
Score: Add a scoring system for each alien destroyed."
Then gave me an updated version that looks like this:
Then I got worried that AI is doing all the work and I'm going to turn into the spaceship inhabitants in WAL-E. So I asked it to quiz me on the code and check my answers.
4 comments
Here's a little profiler you can drop into an existing program - if you have 313 tokens to spare.
It instruments the global functions to count the number of calls and measure the CPU time spent inside them. Then it dumps it to a CSV file you can open in a spreadsheet viewer, and hopefully get some insight into where your program is spending the most time.
Instructions are in the comments at the top.
EDIT:
- Count fn calls in a single 32bit integer (thanks @freds72).
- Use "..." arguments syntax to support more than 9 arguments (thanks @Siapran)
- Save uninstrumented fns to avoid calling the instrumented ones when dumping stats.
-->8 -- profiler -- usage: -- run your program -- press esc to break -- > _prof.begin() -- > resume -- run your program some more (to gather data) -- press esc to break -- > _prof.dump() -- this will dump a profile.csv file to the cart's folder -- notes: -- profiling for more than 2-3 minutes could cause cpu measurements [ [size=16][color=#ffaabb] [ Continue Reading.. ] [/color][/size] ](/bbs/?pid=142589#p) |
5 comments
