2bitchuck [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Horseplay

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 21:47:58 UTC

Horseplay

by 2bitchuck

[Click to Play]

Is anyone else old enough to remember those little horse racing games where you just watch ASCII or pixel horses race and try to guess who would win, or the horse race games at the carnival with the water guns? I wanted to create something simple like that but I figured someone else already had. Lo and behold, I ran across a BBS cart that was just that kind of basic game. I loved the simple, colorful animated horse sprites in the cart and since it was CC4-BY-NC-SA licensed, I started thinking about how to turn it into a fully fleshed out horse racing game, and that's how Horseplay was born!

In Horseplay, you are a naive, fresh-faced kid heading to the track with $100 and a dream of hitting it big. Place your bets at the gambling window and see if you can take home some big winnings! Keep an eye out for a shifty looking guy at the track. Rumor has it he has some hot tips about the horses, but he seems more than a little unsavory . . .

The game goes on forever until you quit (and yes, if you somehow play long enough to get more than $32767, your account will go negative - the track bosses probably think you're cheating and work their connections to overdraw your account) or lose everything or get down to your last dollar (since the minimum bet is two bucks).

Controls

The betting window

Use the up and down arrows to change your bet. The betting starts with a minimum of $2 and a maximum of $5 per race, but as your bankroll grows, so do those minimums and maximums! Use the left and right arrows to change your bet type. There are 3 types of bets you can place:
- Win/Place/Show: Pick a horse to win, one to place and one to show. You can also pick one horse for all three or split the 3 across two horses. Picking a horse to win (obviously) means you think they're going to win. Picking a horse to place means you think the horse will come in first OR second. Picking a horse to show means you think the horse will finish in the top 3.
- Trifecta: Pick 3 separate horses in the exact order of finish. This bet is harder to win, but pays out bigger when you do!
- Exacta: Pick 2 separate horses in the exact order of finish. Easier than the trifecta, but harder than the win/place/show bet.
Once you have selected your bet type and amount, press X to see the betting sheet.

The betting sheet

Use the up and down arrows to select a horse. The numbers on the right are the odds on the horse, which are an indicator of how likely they are to win and tell you how much your payout will be.
- In a win/place/show bet, if you select a horse to win and it does, you win the odds x your bet (plus you get your bet back). So, for example, betting $5 on a horse with 5-1 odds returns $30 if the horse wins ($5 x 5/1 + $5). If you choose a horse to place and the horse finishes first or second, you win the odds/2 x your bet + your bet. If you choose a horse to show and it finishes in the top 3, you win the odds/4 x your bet + your bet.
- In a trifecta bet, you must select all three horses in exact 1-2-3 finish order to win anything. If you win a trifecta bet, you win the combined odds of all three horses x your bet + your bet. For example, if you bet $5 on a winning trifecta of horses with 5-1, 4-1, 7-1 odds, you win $85 ($5 * 16/1 + $5)
- The exacta bet works like the trifecta bet, but with only two horses.
To bet on a horse, press the right arrow. Your bets are placed in order, so the first horse you pick is to win, second to place/finish second and third (if applicable) to show/finish third. Win/place/show bets are indicated by a W, P, or S near the odds. Exacta/Trifecta bets are indicated by a 1, 2 or 3 near the odds. If you need to clear your betting sheet, press the circle (Z) button. Once you have picked all your horses, press the X button to start the race!

The race!

The race will begin and run on its own. Sit back and cheer on your horses! Once the first three horses have finished, the race ends. Press the X button to see the results

Results

You'll see the first, second and (for win/place/show and trifecta bets) third place horses. If you won any money, you'll see the amount won for each horse. Press X to collect your winnings and head back to the window to continue gambling!

Other

From time to time, you may be approached by a shifty man who has taken an interest in your gambling. He may offer to assist you with picking the horses . . . for a price. Use the left and right arrow keys to accept or decline his offer and press X to confirm your choice. Remember, just because he's expensive doesn't mean he's always helpful!

Tips

The horses' odds are calculated from their speed, acceleration, preferred track surface (grass or dirt), and other factors. They are accurate to a degree, so a reasonable way to decide which horses to bet on, but they're no guarantee of success or failure. Sometimes that 50-1 long shot has the race of its life, and sometimes the 2-1 favorite runs a lackluster race. The shifty man will sometimes tell you about each horse's preferred track, which can be a useful tiebreaker if deciding on two horses with the same odds.
The shifty man's not always helpful, but he often is. He gets more expensive as your bankroll grows and his prices may not be worth it if you've had a lot of success.
Remember that you can bet on a single horse to win, place AND show. If you have a good tip on a long shot, this can be a good strategy to really amp up your winnings!

Credits

The horse sprites and at least some part of the animation and horse coloring code comes from Horse_Race 0.2 by @Stal. I don't know if they're still around or not, but if so, thanks for the horses and the inspiration!

Any code/art/music/sound effects not by Stal are by me. The music on the title screen is a kinda janky version (sorry, actual musicians of the community!) of Tennessee Stud by Johnny Cash, which would probably be the best horse song if Willie Nelson's Red-Headed Stranger didn't exist :).

Splore carts list doesn't seem up to date

Sat, 29 Jun 2024 11:42:50 UTC

Not sure if anyone else is seeing the same thing, but both of the devices (Linux laptop, RGB30) I use for PICO-8 0.2.6b, the "New" and "Work In Progress" lists in Splore don't seem to update to match the lists on the BBS. I happened to notice when trying to load my new game on my RGB30 via Splore, but there are a couple of other things I'm not seeing either. Just a rough estimate from looking at the timestamps, this seems to affect the previous 12 hours from the time of this post. My internet connection on both devices is fine and I'm not getting a "Could not connect to BBS" message, it just seems stuck in the past. Not sure if this affects any other parts of Splore. The Featured list does match the one here, but I'm not sure when that was last updated so it could be affecting that too.

Is anyone else seeing the same behavior? I don't think this is just me, but I don't have any way to confirm.

EDIT: Someone just posted a new cart, and that does show up, but the stuff that was missing is still missing, so I'm really not sure what's happening.

Word Zapper

Fri, 28 Jun 2024 22:29:34 UTC

Word Zapper

by 2bitchuck

[Click to Play]

Word Zapper for PICO-8 is a mostly faithful recreation of the Atari 2600 game Word Zapper. The original game was published in 1982 by U.S. Games, under their Vidtec label. Fun fact: U.S. Games was owned by Quaker Oats, who bought the company to compete with Parker Brothers, owned at the time by rival cereal company General Mills. Yes, the 80s were a crazy time when cereal companies owned video game companies! Word Zapper was and is one of my favorite games for the 2600 - I even have the actual cartridge. Sadly, Parker Brothers had Frogger and The Empire Strikes Back and won the cereal company video game wars. U.S. Games was shuttered by Quaker Oats in 1983, a year after it was acquired.

Gameplay video of the original in action

How to Play

The object of the game is to shoot down 3 words before time runs out, while avoiding and shooting the asteroids sent by the evil Scroll to stop you. Letters scroll from right to left and loop back around. To complete a word, you must shoot all the letters in order, then shoot the special Freebie token which appears between Z and A. However, the Freebie token only appears after you've shot 5 asteroids, so be sure to shoot them down while waiting for your next letter to scroll by! The words get increasingly longer each round. In addition to completing a word, the Freebie token can be shot to fill in the next missing letter of a word, but use this sparingly as you'll need to shoot down 5 more asteroids before the Freebie token reappears.

Your performance is ranked by how many words you shoot down in the allotted time:

0 words: Rookie
1 word: Champ
2 words: Ace
3 words: Zapper

The Asteroids

There are four varieties of asteroids, shown in this image. From top to bottom, they are:

Doomsday. The most dangerous asteroid! If Doomsday hits you, it's game over for you! You'll know he's around by his low growling rumble. Shoot him down or avoid him at all costs!
Scroller. If Scroller hits you, the letters in the Scroll are randomized for 5 seconds. This can be very bad if you're waiting on one last letter, but if your last letter is far away and time is short, letting Scroller hit you might be a shrewd gamble to get that letter sooner.
Zonker and Bonker. Harmless but annoying, these little asteroids bump your ship to the side. A knock from one of them might make your shot go awry and cause you to miss a crucial letter!

Controls

Arrow keys move your ship.
X fires the letter laser used to shoot letters from the Scroll. It is harmless to asteroids! The letter laser has a brief cooldown period and cannot be constantly fired.
Z + left/right arrow fires your side lasers, which are used to destroy asteroids.

Slow: the letters scroll slower than your ship's speed, making it easier to collect reverse alphabetical order letter combos, like TR or ED
Medium: the letters scroll at the same speed as your ship.
Fast: the letters scroll faster than your ship's speed. If you miss a letter, you'll just have to wait for it to come back around!

Credits

The original Word Zapper was programmed by Henry Will IV for U.S. Games. This recreation, including all graphics, sounds and code, was programmed by me, @2bitchuck, possibly the biggest fan of the original. I hope I did it justice & that Mr. Will and/or the Quaker Oats guy don't come after me for copyright infringement or ruining their legacy :).

Ludo

Thu, 20 Jun 2024 21:43:04 UTC

Ludo 1.2

by 2bitchuck

[Click to Play]

Ludo is a single player PICO-8 version of the classic board game. You may also know it by a number of other names and variations, like Sorry! or Parcheesi, and it may have led to a family fight or two way back when. Ah, memories!

The goal of the game is to get all 4 of your tokens around the board and safely into your home row before someone else beats you to it. There's danger around every corner though! If another player lands on one of your tokens, it gets sent back to the start circle. But you can also send your opponents back to their start circles by landing on their tokens. How rude! The player who gets all of their tokens into the last 4 slots of their home row is the winner.

Rules

There are a lot of variations of Ludo rules around when a piece can leave the start circle or move, so here are the rules this version plays by:

The starting player is chosen randomly.
During the first turn, a piece from each player's start circle is automatically moved onto their starting square.
If a player has either no pieces out or one or more pieces out that are all in their final positions in the home row, on their next turn, a piece from their start circle is automatically moved onto their starting square.
If a player has any pieces out that are not in their final positions in the home row and rolls a 6, the player may choose to move a piece from the start circle onto their starting square instead of moving a token 6 squares, provided none of their other pieces is already in the starting square.
If a player rolls a 6, they get an extra turn, even if unable to move any piece 6 squares or move a piece from the start circle to their starting square.
If a player rolls other than a 6 and cannot move any piece that many squares, their turn ends.

Controls

Title Screen

Press cross or circle to go to the settings once my name stops moving :).

Settings

Use the up/down arrows to select the CPU difficulty:

Easy: the CPU won't attack anyone or send a token out from the start circle unless no other moves are available.
Normal: the CPU will attack or send a token out if possible about half the time, but won't go out of its way to do those things.
Hard: the CPU hates you and the other CPU players and plays aggressively. It will always attack if it can. If not, it will always send a piece out from the start circle if it can. If it can't do either of those, it takes an available move at random.
Random: Each CPU opponent can be any of of the 3 versions above, and you won't know which. Chaos ensues!

Use the left/right arrows to select the color you want to play.

Press cross or circle to save your settings and start the game.

Game

The current player will be indicated by a flashing highlight around their start circle. CPU players will roll and move automatically. When it's your turn, press cross or circle to stop the rolling die.

If you only have one move available, the moveable token will move automatically.
If you have more than one available move, the moveable squares will be highlighted. Use the left and right arrows to highlight the move you want to make and press cross or circle to choose that move.
If you roll a 6 and are able to move a piece out of your start circle, the starting square will be highlighted rather than a piece.
If you have no moves available, you'll hear a buzzer and your turn will end.

Game Over

When a player wins the game, you can either start a new game with the same settings by pressing the cross button, or start over at the title screen by pressing the circle button.

Quality Disclaimer

The code is not optimized in any way! I definitely recommend studying the code from the games of better programmers instead of this - you will learn bad habits here :). There may be bugs. There were bugs up until about 30 minutes ago, but I think I caught them all. If you encounter a crash or game breaking bug, please let me know, and if you were about to win when that happened, I'm sorry! All code, sprites and sound effects are solely my fault.

Changelog

v1.2 2024-06-23: Fixed an infinite move bug reported on Itch.

BBS code examination is broken

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 16:01:22 UTC

When I click Code below any cart on the BBS, the block is just empty and contains no code. Not sure if this is related to the recent styling change. I can't say for sure when this started, but I just noticed it today for the first time.

In case it's browser specific, I'm on Firefox 124.0.1 on Linux.

Y'arrrrr! There be pirates!

Thu, 05 Oct 2023 11:58:41 UTC

UPDATE: Looks like either Itch or this person deleted the Itch account.

Remember that person from a couple days ago who was reposting the games of others, changing the author info but nothing else? Seems like their account here is gone, but it looks like that person also uploaded those games to itch.io. The usernames are different but they're mostly the same games, so I assume it's the same person. Probably worth reporting if one of these is your game! I know @RyanC and @krajzeg are among the targeted.

They even renamed Slipways to Symfowaves to throw people off the scent I guess?

Lucky Draw mode not loading

Sat, 16 Sep 2023 14:00:35 UTC

EDIT 09-22-2023: This morning, Lucky Draw worked briefly and then stopped working again, so I've changed this to a bug since it seems more like a glitch than an intentional change now.

A while back, Zep added a "Lucky Draw" sort to the BBS cart mode view that would pull in a not quite random assortment of cartridges based on a behind-the-scenes algorithm. You could get to it using this link: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?cat=7#sub=0&page=1&mode=carts&orderby=lucky or in SPLORE by switching to Lucky Draw.

I'm not sure how popular or even well-known it was, but it's been my go-to cart discovery method since it was created. I check it a few times a week to find interesting looking carts I haven't seen or played before. As of this morning though, it seems to be either gone or broken (it just returns a blank content area - if you change "lucky" to "ts" in the link above, you get cart view sorted by new as usual). It also doesn't work in SPLORE in PICO-8 0.2.5g, with an error saying "Could Not Connect To BBS" if you try to update the list.

On the web, I'm on Firefox 117.0.1 on Linux. Not seeing any errors in the browser dev tools. Anyone else use this and notice it not working anymore? I'm hesitant to call this a bug since it feels more likely that it was removed on purpose. If it's gone, I'll miss it!

The Blocky Dead

Mon, 30 Jan 2023 01:22:17 UTC

The Blocky Dead 1.3

by 2bitchuck

[Click to Play]

Prologue

PIXBURGH, PIXELVANIA, 5/13/2023 - The city has fallen. The dead pixels have taken over. You can hear them growling all around you. They hide everywhere & pop out when you least expect it. They smell you, they get hungry. Hungry for pixel flesh. You can outrun 'em . . . for awhile. The longer you avoid them though, the faster & more determined they get. They got Spot, they got Dot, and now they're after me. I'm the last one left. Well, me & my buddy Point up in the tower. He's real good with fixin' stuff up, but parts & power are scarce. Every now & then he'll hit me on the radio with a new place to hide, or to let me know he's got a few seconds of juice for the lights & fences. Heck, sometimes he even rigs up a bomb for me to blast a few of the dead to oblivion! Just hoping it's enough. Hoping I can hold out long enough for them to give up & maybe take out a few along the way.

Gameplay

The Blocky Dead is a 64x64 timed survival game. Guide your pixel through the square, avoiding dead pixels for as long as you can. Use the helpers Point sends your way to hide from the dead pixels or take out as many as you can. Your initial goal is to survive for 10 minutes. Every game you survive the entire time bumps the time limit up by 5 minutes. See how long you can last and how many kills you can accumulate!

Controls

Arrow keys/dpad to move your pixel
X/Z/action buttons to use the currently active powerup
You can turn the growling noises on or off in the pause menu

There are 4 powerups to use. Point will rig up a new one every 20 seconds of game time, but you never know which one he'll get working at any given time. When you have a powerup, it will appear in the time box at the bottom of the screen. Point won't give you a new powerup while you're already holding one. Here is how the powerups work:

HIDER: Point has found you a hiding spot. Activating this powerup causes the dead pixels to wander away from you, but they will pick up your scent again after 3 seconds. You cannot move while hiding.
FLASH: Point powers up a powerful light on one part of the color spectrum. When the light is activated, any dead pixels the same color as the light are vaporized in 1.5 seconds. However, the light also stuns you and you can only move at half speed for that 1.5 seconds. Dead pixels of a different color than the light are not affected at all.
WALLS: Point has juice to turn on two lengths of electric fencing for 3 seconds. Any dead pixels who hit the fencing are fried to a crisp. You have insulated gear and are not affected, but the humming of the fence is disorienting and you only move at half speed for those 3 seconds. This one requires a lot of power, so Point doesn't get it working too often!
BOMB!: Point cobbles together a proximity bomb powered by your kinetic energy. Once you get the bomb, you can deploy it immediately, or you can hold it while you continue to run. For every 20 seconds you run around with the bomb, its blast radius increases. Hold out as long as you can for max carnage!

OK, But Why?

I've been super sick for several days now, and I decided I was going to spend this day in bed making a game in a single day. I also decided that I wanted the player character to just be a pixel. I don't know where the zombie idea came from, but I suspect how I'm feeling right now played into it. Anyway, today kinda turned into my own imaginary game jam, and this is the result! I will probably end up tweaking this a bit, but I told myself I was going to post the "jam version" regardless, so I did.

Credits & Thanks

All code and SFX by me. Music is also by me, but it's a riff on the theme from The Walking Dead by the excellent Bear McCreary. Cover art is a heavily edited version of the packaging picture from a kids' zombie Halloween costume. Pixels all pset by me :).

Thanks to everyone who played, the game just hit 1000 plays on the BBS as of 1/28/2024. Never expected my stupid little sick day game to end up being my most popular game :). Someone clued me in that a GIF of this was up on the PICO-8 Reddit (maybe I should join Reddit?), and another person did a Youtube playthrough, which is how I spotted the most recent bug :). Anyway, grateful to the PICO-8 community for giving my little time-wasters a shot.

Version history

1.3 - Fixed bug that let player button spam powers, but also caused player to lose the ability to move. Tradeoffs! (Also, thanks to everyone who's played for getting this to 1000 plays! Never expected that many)
1.2 - New power-up: proximity bomb. Also centered the game screen a bit better than it had been.
1.1 - Fixed bug where dead pixels could not kill player if player was hugging a wall
1.0 - Initial release

PopeyE.T.

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 20:12:21 UTC

PopeyE.T.

by 2bitchuck

[Click to Play]

Hello, this is a slapdash remake of the Atari 2600 classic "E.T. the Extraterrestrial", except instead of E.T., it's Popeye.

Help Popeye call his ship and return to his home planet by collecting the 3 pieces of the space phone found in pits scattered throughout the forest then making your way back to the landing zone in the woods. But beware! Bluto will come try to steal your phone pieces, and Olive Oyl will try to find Popeye and lead her sweetie by the hand back home to Washington, DC. Popeye can collect cans of spinach which just happen to be lying around for some reason, and he can trade nine of these to his pal Elliot, who will give him a piece of the phone in return. Popeye can use his alien neck extension powers to levitate out of pits he falls into or activate power zones that let him locate phone pieces in pits (? symbol), call his ship (cat symbol), call Elliot for a spinach-for-phone deal (smiley symbol), or send any unwanted humans back to Washington, DC where they belong (III symbol).

The game has most of the features of the Atari 2600 original, aside from these few:

Elliot can't bring Popeye back to life - that only works on E.T. That means there's also no flower in any of the pits.
There are no teleport arrows.
Popeye can't eat the spinach. Earth spinach gives Popeye cramps, unlike spinach from his home world.
Popeye can't run. Sea (space?) legs mean he can only walk.
The game is the same every time, but who would play this more than once anyway?

Nothing aside from Popeye's neck is animated, and the game is probably buggy in a few ways, but then again, so was the Atari 2600 game! Think of the bugs as loving homages. The code is very much in a "make it work, don't make it good" style. There won't be updates/changes to this, so I encourage you to love it as it is :).

CONTROLS:

Arrow keys/d-pad buttons to move.
Primary/secondary action buttons to activate Popeye's neck. When in a pit, hold the button to levitate out of the pit.

FAQ:

Why?

This was made in roughly 3 days as a Christmas gift for my awesome brother-in-law, the only one for whom this game is likely to make any sense. It got multiple delightful laughs at the family Christmas gathering, which is all I ever really wanted.

No, seriously, WHY?!?!

Sorry, no more questions.

0.2.5e not working under EmuELEC on Gameforce Chi

Wed, 14 Dec 2022 16:18:10 UTC

Revising my previous post and reopening as this now does seem like some kind of bug introduced in 0.2.5d/e.

On PICO-8 0.2.5e Raspberry Pi build running on EmuELEC 4.6 on the Gameforce Chi, select any local PICO-8 game from the game collection. You hear the PICO-8 startup sound and can even control the games (verified by pressing X to start a game and hearing the game music/sounds), but the screen on the Gameforce just shows "Loading..." even though everything is clearly loaded.

Originally I had marked this as not a PICO-8 bug, but it does now seem to be a bug introduced in the latest version. I first rolled back to 0.2.4c, which was the version I had been running previously, and it worked fine. Then I updated to 0.2.5c, and that also didn't exhibit this behavior. Updating once again to 0.2.5e reintroduces this behavior - games load, startup sounds play, game controls work, pause menu works, but PICO-8 is not drawn to the screen.

I'm not sure whether this is specific to EmuELEC with the Raspberry Pi build or if it's also an issue running on a Raspberry Pi (my Pi is currently in storage so I can't test it). Happy to try & dig anything out of the EmuELEC log files that might be helpful for debugging!

Spooooooooky season

Tue, 04 Oct 2022 02:07:27 UTC

I Woke Up Here

by 2bitchuck

[Click to Play]

I found this spoooooooooooky thing I made a few Halloweens ago.

Just like the videotape in The Ring, if you don't make someone else play this within 7 days, bad stuff is gonna come for you! Don't try to avoid your responsibility to pass this on, I'll know (because I have access to the play count stats).

The exit is on the left. Arrow keys/d-pad to move . . . while you can.

Yacht Rocks

Sun, 17 Jul 2022 14:02:14 UTC

Yacht Rocks 1.1

by 2bitchuck

[Click to Play]

Revision History

1.1 (2023-04-29)

Fixed bug that caused 1-3-3-4-6 and 1-3-4-4-6 to resolve as small sraight.
1.0 (2022-07-17)

Initial release

Synopsis

Yacht Rocks is a single player 64x64 PICO-8 version of the dice game Yacht (not the brand name game, please don't come at me, Hasbro!). You roll 5 dice (up to 3 rolls per turn) and try to score the most points possible in all the categories. Surely everyone's played this game in some form, right? It's a classic!

I wrote this because it's a favorite activity of my sister & I when we're together. We get very competitive about it! I only see her every few years or so & I miss her a lot between those times. I thought this would be fun for her to play & screenshot for me while we're apart so we could compete between visits :).

Controls

Game Screen

Z: roll the dice
X: lock a die (locked dice are not rolled)
Left/Right arrow: move lock selector between individual dice
Up arrow: view the score sheet (press again to return to the game screen)
Down arrow: score the current set of rolled dice immediately

Score Screen

Z: score the currently selected category
X: view the dice being scored (press again to return to the score sheet)
Left/Right arrow: switch between top and bottom score sheet sections
Up/Down arrow: move category selector

Strategy!

There's a 35 point bonus for scoring 63 or higher on the top section. I recommend always targeting that bonus for max scoring. For example, if you roll four 6s, it's tempting to score that on Quad, but I would always choose to score that on 6s if available.
Every Yacht after the first scores a 100 point bonus. If you've gotten & scored a Yacht and then roll another, you can score that anywhere on the bottom section (including the two straights!) or on the top section for the matching number.
Use the up arrow to check the score sheet often! I tend to forget sometimes that I've already scored something and then end up going for things I don't need, which leaves me with nowhere to put them.

Credits

All code, sounds & graphics by yours truly
Title screen font is the 5x6 font by our very own @zep, found here: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=32877
Opening theme is a riff on "Sailing" by Christopher Cross, the platonic ideal song of the yacht rock genre.

Unibomber

Sun, 03 Jul 2022 16:04:54 UTC

Unibomber

by 2bitchuck

[Click to Play]

Update 07-14-2022

The only thing I regretted not adding in the first version was a high score tracker, so that's in there now. You'll see your high score on the title screen and if you get a new high score, you'll see that on the game over screen. Happy unicycling!

Synopsis

Ted is a simple high wire unicycle daredevil stuntman. For some reason, the government wants him dead. Good thing he has a large sack full of bombs to fend them off! (wait, you don't think that's why they're after him, do you?)

Controls

Left/Right Arrows: Move Ted along the high wire.
Z: Drop a bomb. You can only drop one bomb at a time, because you are riding a unicycle on a high wire and it's hard to multitask.

About

I wanted to do something small scale to get myself to actually finish a thing, so I gave myself a time limit of 24 hours to build a complete game. I finished in roughly 20 hours, so mission accomplished! As my goal was to finish and move on, this will probably be the only version (imperfect though it may be) of this game I upload unless some game-breaking bug surfaces. Why this particular concept? I dunno, the whole idea of the army sending tanks after a unicyclist struck me as funny. Why black & white? I just love good one bit art. Mine is not what I'd call good, but I think it's charming at least.

Credit

The explosion particle system is something I've been using since @Krystman's Breakout Hero tutorial and tweaking along the way depending how complex/simple I need it to be. The particle code here is actually really similar to the code used in the current shmup tutorial it turns out, but it came from Breakout Hero originally and has lived in my snippets folder ever since.
The opening song is my rough attempt at a simple translation of "The Entertainer", a piano tune from 1902 by Scott Joplin. I think this song is great at letting you know that what you're about to play is very silly.

High Score

My current high score is 43. I'd love to see how you all do. Thank you for playing!

Unsafe on 10/31

Tue, 26 Oct 2021 18:12:38 UTC

uah_hween

by 2bitchuck

[Click to Play]

Hey, here's that thing you didn't know you needed - a stupid Halloween reskin of my already stupid game, Unsafe at Home! This quality reskin features Halloween colors and sprites, and a very slow, minor/off key rendition of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame". Why would I do this? Honestly, your guess is as good as mine as to what my brain decides is important at any given time. But 'tis the season, right? Both Halloween and the World Series are happening this weekend, so why the heck not?

Controls

Up arrow: move forward around the bases
Down arrow: move backward around the bases
X/Z: hit a homer! (once you've got a bat)

See the original game post for the full rules.

That's it. Now get out there and knock a few punkins over the wall, kid!

Unsafe at Home

Sat, 10 Jul 2021 22:37:19 UTC

unsafeathome

by 2bitchuck

[Click to Play]

Unsafe at Home: A 64x64 baseball bullet hell time wasting experience!

In the distant future, Blaseball is the only remaining sport, as foretold by prophecy. One day, two friends run across an ancient document: the official Major League Baseball rulebook. However, it is badly damaged and the two are left to interpret the rules for themselves. Here is what these two friends from the future think baseball used to be.

One player, the pitcher, attempts to hit the other player, the hitter, with baseballs. The book clearly says hitter, not hittee, which would make more sense, but these were ancient humans, so . . .
The hitter attempts to circle the bases counterclockwise as many times as he can without getting hit. Each time he does this, he scores a run. He must stay in the baseline at all times. He can circle the bases clockwise, but will not score runs in that direction, and in fact must recircle ALL the bases he circled clockwise in the correct direction before he is awarded a run for crossing "home", which is what people called fourth base in those days.
When the hitter scores 5 runs without having a bat, he gets a bat. The bat is used to hit home runs (maybe tihs is why he's called "hitter" and not "hittee"? The text is ambiguous). A home run clears all the balls from the field, but is obviously not worth any runs - that would be nonsense.
If the hitter chooses NOT to use the bat, he gets an extra run for every run he accumulates after getting the bat until he chooses to use the bat.
When the pitcher hits the hitter, that is called an inning (because the ball runs INto the hitter). The baseballs they found with the rulebook are all very old and immediately disintegrate when they run into the hitter. The game ends after 9 innings.
The pitcher throws a ball at the hitter once at the start of the game, once for every run the hitter scores, once after a home run, and once when he scores an inning. Every 5 runs the hitter scores, the pitcher starts throwing a little harder.

GOAL

Score as many runs as you can before the end of the 9th inning. My personal best is 21, I'd love to see how you do!

CONTROLS

Any key to start the game from the title screen.
Up arrow to run counterclockwise, down arrow to run clockwise. You only score runs running the bases in the correct (counterclockwise) direction, but running backwards is key to avoid getting hit sometimes!
X or Z to hit a home run when you have the bat!
X or Z to restart when the game ends.

CREDITS

I'm responsible for all the code, music arrangement & mediocre pixel art, such as it is. The concept came to me when I was watching an actual baseball game and saw the baserunner get hit during a rundown. It's 64x64 because it's harder and more chaotic that way :).

The music for "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" was composed in 1908 by Albert Von Tilzer, 20 years before he ever saw a baseball game. I think I took a few liberties with some notes here and there, but it's mostly faithful to the original.

Seven Bucks and a Dream

Tue, 01 Jun 2021 00:43:22 UTC

sevenbucks

by 2bitchuck

[Click to Play]

Seven Bucks and a Dream - a WIP slot machine.

Granny arrives in Vegas with 3 things: $7 in her purse, a dream of hitting it big, and an unhealthy love of the devilish one-armed bandit. Help Granny realize her dream of hitting it big by pulling this lever seven times. No, seriously, that's pretty much it. Once Granny's played 7 rounds, her back starts acting up on account of those real uncomfortable stools mixed with skipping her pain meds so she could enjoy the comp drinks. She's not gonna be able to move, and it'll be up to you at that point to choose "Reset Cart" from the menu or navigate away from this page to play a better game (or, you know, a game at all since, again, this is just you pulling the lever for Granny seven times).

I started this to help me work through some mental blockage - you may have seen other games I'm allegedly working on from my Twitter feed that I'm struggling to get over the hump with. This is me trying to create something super small scale so that I can cross the finish line. Much like Granny, I could use a win!

CONTROLS

X/Z to pull the lever!
Hold up arrow to view the payout table!

THINGS LEFT TO ADD:

A better looking machine!
Cleaner UI overall
Over the top Vegas lights/sounds!
Title/End screens
The Big Bet (tm), where you randomly get chances to bet it all!
More Granny sass!
Comp drinks mini-game (this is definitely feature creep and likely to be cut!)
Probably other crap I'm forgetting!

Enjoy!

Recent web player update weirdness

Sun, 24 Jan 2021 22:34:50 UTC

On the scale of important problems, I understand that this probably rates super low, but with the recent web player update, part of the start screen of one of my games has vanished. I'll show you what I mean. Here is the title screen of my cart as seen in the cover image:

And here is what you see in the current web player (0.2.1c.21):

The road that the cars are on is gone. This happens on both mobile and desktop.

I haven't updated the cart for about 3 months, and obviously I don't have this version to test with locally to see if it's something I need to change in my code to account for a feature change. I'm pretty sure that I'm the only one that plays my games, so not a huge deal for me personally, but I wanted to flag it in case this is happening to anyone else with a bigger audience.

Apparitional Abode

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 01:42:44 UTC

appabode

by 2bitchuck

[Click to Play]

This is a PICO-8 remake of the Atari 2600 game Haunted House! Can you collect the 3 pieces of treasure and escape the house before losing all your lives or running out of matches? How quickly can you do it?

Use X/Z to light a match - be warned, it won't stay lit for long! You can't see treasure or keys without light, and you can't pick up what you can't see. The monsters in the house will pursue you and will blow out your match if they get close. If they catch you, they'll steal your key and treasure to hide them in the house again.

Use left & right arrows on the title screen to toggle match flicker on and off. If you are a player for whom flashing lights/colors can trigger seizures, you'll want to turn the flicker off.

This game was made for Toy Box Jam 2020! All of the sprite and sound assets were created by others and everyone in the jam uses the same assets to make their games. Info on the jam and credits for all the assets provided to the participants can be found on the jam's itch.io page.

A huge thank you to the following folks for some of the code used in the game that they generously released under Creative Commons licensing!

A* pathfinding code by @richy486
Fade code from Breakout Hero by @Krystman
Circle map from this Lighting Functions example by @cubee

There are probably bugs, but I've played a fair bit without a crash, so that's something at least :). So let me know in the comments how you did - time, matches & deaths!

Music only plays one SFX per pattern

Wed, 30 Dec 2020 19:36:18 UTC

I have a weird thing going on that I'm 100% sure is because of something I'm doing wrong, but I can't quite figure it out. Hoping one of you will have some insight!

When I run my cart, I have a title screen music track that plays using music(X), then fades out using music(-1,500) when the user presses X/Z to start the game. There's an intro cut scene where a different track plays using music(Y) then fades out when that cut scene ends, also using music(-1,500). The user plays, there's no music during the game but there are a variety of SFX that play from time to time. When the user wins or loses, there's another cut scene that plays music(Y) - however, for whatever reason, it only plays one of the 2 SFX in the pattern this time around. When that cut scene is done, the user gets the score screen, which plays either music(X) or music(Z) depending on whether the user wins or loses, but again only one SFX in the pattern plays. The user can then press X or Z to go back to the title screen, and music(X) only plays one of the 3 SFX in that pattern.

I suspect that somewhere, something's not getting cleared from a channel and that's preventing the rest of the SFX from playing, but I am not sure how to figure out what I'm doing wrong or how to fix it. Is there any guidance anyone can offer from this vague description? This is for my Toy Box Jam game, so if I can't figure it out before the deadline, I may end up posting it with "broken" music and maybe somebody can help me figure it out from my specific messy code so I can fix it post-release :).

For TL;DR - the flow that leads to this condition is basically:

music(X) --title screen, plays all 3 SFX, player presses X/Z
music(-1,500) --fades
music(Y) --plays both SFX, fade starts when scene ends
music(-1,500) --fades

gameplay with various SFX but no music playing until lose condition

music(Y) --plays only leftmost SFX in pattern, fade starts when scene ends
music(-1,500) --fades
music(Z) --plays only leftmost SFX in pattern, player presses X/Z
music(X) --title screen, plays only middle SFX in pattern

Token optimization tutorial?

Mon, 26 Oct 2020 15:04:14 UTC

Does anyone know if there are any good token optimization tutorials out there? Something like a collection of tips that show a suboptimal way of doing something and then demonstrate an optimized equivalent?

I'm about 25% through my latest game but about 60% through my token count already. Ordinarily I am much more inclined to finish functionality first and optimize/polish later, but in this case there is no way I will be able to finish if I don't clean up because I'll run out of tokens well before everything is in.

I suspect most of my problem is that I have a lot of tables and nested tables, like this:

-- this is 76 tokens total and I have a total of about 608 tokens worth of just these
ryl = (yl + (flr(yl/10)*1.5))*7.84
rec={rec1={x=ryl,ogx=ryl,y=32,ogy=32,sx=0,sy=32,speed=rnd(1.25),f=false},rec2={x=ryl,ogx=ryl,y=111,ogy=111,sx=0,sy=32,speed=rnd(1.25),f=false}}

which I then refer to values of like this (adding another 26 tokens): sspr(oteam.rec.rec1.sx,oteam.rec.rec1.sy,sprw,sprh,oteam.rec.rec1.x,oteam.rec.rec1.y,sprw,sprh,oteam.rec.rec1.f)

There are obvious things I could do here, like shoving "oteam.red.rec1" into something more compact so it's a single token instead of 3 every time, but I'm hoping there are more "best practices" sorts of things folks could point me to for general token savings and more proper ways to deal with data structures like this.

2bitchuck [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Horseplay

Controls

The betting window

The betting sheet

The race!

Results

Other

Tips

Credits

Splore carts list doesn't seem up to date

Word Zapper

How to Play

The Asteroids

Controls

Menu

Credits

Ludo

Rules

Controls

Title Screen

Settings

Game

Game Over

Quality Disclaimer

Changelog

BBS code examination is broken

Y'arrrrr! There be pirates!

Lucky Draw mode not loading

The Blocky Dead

Prologue

Gameplay

Controls

OK, But Why?

Credits & Thanks

Version history

PopeyE.T.

Hello, this is a slapdash remake of the Atari 2600 classic "E.T. the Extraterrestrial", except instead of E.T., it's Popeye.

CONTROLS:

FAQ:

0.2.5e not working under EmuELEC on Gameforce Chi

Spooooooooky season

Yacht Rocks

Revision History

1.1 (2023-04-29)

1.0 (2022-07-17)

Synopsis

Controls

Game Screen

Score Screen

Strategy!

Credits

Unibomber

Update 07-14-2022

Synopsis

Controls

About

Credit

High Score

Unsafe on 10/31

Controls

Unsafe at Home

Unsafe at Home: A 64x64 baseball bullet hell time wasting experience!

GOAL

CONTROLS

CREDITS

Seven Bucks and a Dream

Recent web player update weirdness

Apparitional Abode

Music only plays one SFX per pattern

Token optimization tutorial?