Help with making a menu with two sides?

Sun, 21 Sep 2025 04:41:48 UTC

Hello, I'm very new to pico-8 (and fairly inexperienced with coding in general) and I need a bit of help with some menu code. I'd like to have a menu that has two sections to it that you can move between with the left and right arrows. I'm working off of pixelcod's menu code example, here is what I have so far:

--menu system

function init_menu()
	menu={"menu1","menu2"}
		menu.y=12
			menu1 = {}
				menu1.x=25
				menu1.options={"𝘸𝘢𝘭𝘬","𝘵𝘢𝘭𝘬","𝘵𝘢𝘬𝘦","𝘨𝘪𝘷𝘦","𝘪𝘯𝘷."}

			menu2 = {}
				menu2.x=88
				menu2.options={"𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘱","𝘬𝘪𝘴𝘴","𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘴","𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘵","𝘴𝘵𝘯𝘺"}

	menu.amt=0
	menu.sel=1
	menu.swp=false

	for i in all(menu1.options,menu2.options) do
	  menu.amt+=1
	end

end

function update_menu()
 update_cursor()
end

function draw_menu()
	for i=1,menu.amt do
		oset=i*8
	end
 if menu.swp==true then
 	  if i==menu.sel then
	   spr(39,menu2.x,menu.y+oset,2,1)
			 print(menu2.options[i],menu2.x,menu.y+oset+1,10)	
			else
		 	spr(55,menu2.x,menu.y+oset,2,1)
				print(menu2.options[i],menu2.x,menu.y+oset+1,9)
			end
	else
			if i==menu.sel then
				spr(39,menu1.x,menu.y+oset,2,1)
				print(menu1.options[i],menu1.x,menu.y+oset+1,10)
			else
				spr(55,menu1.x,menu.y+oset,2,1)
				print(menu1.options[i],menu1.x,menu.y+oset+1,9)
		 end
		end
end

function update_cursor()
 if (btnp(⬆️)) menu.sel-=1 sfx(1)
 if (btnp(⬇️)) menu.sel+=1 sfx(1)
 if (btnp(⬅️)) menu.swp=false sfx(1)
 if (btnp(➡️)) menu.swp=true sfx(1)
 if (btnp(❎)) sfx(1)
 if (menu.sel>menu.amt) menu.sel=1
 if (menu.sel<=0) menu.sel=menu.amt
end

With this, it has the two menus that you can swap between left and right but the menu options don't show up/come up as [NIL]. At this point, I'm sure its something simple that I'm just not understanding! I'm also willing to more or less start over if it means I get the result I need (if you've ever played it, I am making a Princess Tomato in Salad Kingdom homage and want it to look like this: ). Any help I can get will be greatly appreciated!

Rolling Bones

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 19:48:58 UTC

Rolling Bones

by awesomonster

[Click to Play]

Hello, this is my first pico-8 game, Rolling Bones! In it, you are a skull who wants to go out on a date, but all your bones have been scattered to the winds! Roll around the field to find them but watch out for assorted junk! Sticks and stones can break your bone and other items can look like bones but will not fit anywhere in your skeleton (I promise, I've tried). Can you collect all 20 bones to get ready for your big date?

awesomonster [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Help with making a menu with two sides?

Rolling Bones