Paul Knight [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Commercial work using Pico-8?

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 18:26:28 UTC

Hi,

I love tinkering around in Pico-8, but I'm certainly not a competent programmer and just hack things together using spaghetti code for my own amusement.

In my day job, I work as an innovation manager for a technology company, and we have an internal innovation programme where we fund good ideas from people within the business, which we think will either provide commmercial benefits to the organisation, or provide reputational benefit.

One idea submitted recently was for an app/game to demonstrate "sustainability" (can't really go into more detail here). To test the concept, I knocked up a very crude prototype in Pico-8, which resulted in funding being released to develop a more throrough proof of concept app, using an external developer on iOS.

This was delivered and we are now at the point of deciding upon next steps in its development. Various options have been suggested, ranging from developing the game/app as a full desktop app, continuing development on iPad for iOS, developing for an Android tablet, or producing a web based version. Its all up for grabs.

However, the more I think about it, the more I wonder if developing it using Pico-8 could be an ever better way to go. It would give us Mac OS, Windows and Linux versions, and also offer a web based version so almost anyone, anywhere, on any hardware could also access it. It would really open up the user base.

I have to say, that some of the games I've seen developed in Pico-8 recently really are excellent, and I'm blown away with what can be produced with it when in the hands of awesome developers! I also recall that when I showed my very early Pico-8 version to members of the teams who came up with the idea for the game/app, who had never heard of Pico-8 before, they were excited by the retro feel, pixilated graphics and frankly, seeing something totally different.

So my question is, does anyone know of any developers who specifically code Pico-8 games and apps on a commercial basis. I'd like to build up a case for the "Pico-8 development route", such that its thrown into the mix when next steps are decided. Links to web sites, example games etc... would help me show how this route could compete with outher more "safe and traditional" options for software development.

Hope this post is within the rules of the Forum.

Many thanks and all thoughts are much appreciated.

Paul :-)

Archery Score Calculator

Mon, 17 Oct 2022 19:57:52 UTC

Digital Archery Score Calculator

by Paul Knight

[Click to Play]

Hi,

This is a work in progress.

Its a little app that allows the user to enter arrow locations on a digital archery target to help keep track of your score. My 11 year old son Dylan is just starting out in archery and we have been using a paper score card to keep track of his efforts to date.

However, we thought that this current method of recording scores was ripe for a little app that we could run on our phone in the field (others may be available in the app stores, not checked but we wanted to make our own!), not only to score, but to also keep track of the approx. location of all 36 arrows shot during a scoring round. This is something the "traditional" recording method doesn't offer, it just captures the score achieved, not the location of the arrows.

The plan is to expand this app so it provides some insight into your performance (e.g. average score, total number of "gold" hits, any bias in arrow location e.g. most land in bottom left quadrant etc...

Plus, it was a good excuse to get Dylan into a bit of coding. He's done a bit of Scratch at school but likes "real" coding with commands etc.. and not just visual blocks! I also love it since it take me back to my days mucking about coding on the ZX Speccy and Atari ST :-)

Anyway, all comments welcomed.

Will keep you posted as we develop this.

Many thanks,
Paul and Dylan :-)

Archery Score Calculator

Mon, 17 Oct 2022 19:54:25 UTC

Hi,

This is a work in progress.

Anyway, all comments welcomed.

Will keep you posted as we develop this.

Many thanks,
Paul and Dylan :-)

New Release!

Mon, 29 Aug 2022 06:50:04 UTC

Yay!

Version 0.2.5 released!

Thanks Zep!:-)

3D interface

Tue, 07 Dec 2021 23:23:09 UTC

Hi,

I wondered if someone could point me to any good tutorials that will give me some pointers into how to code 3D interfaces please?

If anyone remembers the game Frontier (Elite2) (https://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/frontier-elite-ii/screenshots/gameShotId,310350/) then I want to re-create something like the 3D starmap in that game, where you could navigate around different stars in 3d, getting information about the selected stars.

Instead of stars, I want to use a similar interface to view and select different projects I am currently managing, where perhaps the size of the "star" or project represented the budget of the project. Its position in the Z axis, might represent the duration of the project etc... and it x and y position on the 3d grid could represent some other parameter.

Basically, I'm tired of showing customers information in the form of spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations and would love to "fly" around the projects in real-time! Time to ditch the boring business software we've become so used to!

Anyway,any pointers much appreciated. I am a novice coder, so back-to-basics would be good, if possible. I guess it all starts with the maths etc... but I'm keen to learn how to progress from this to something really visual.

Many thanks in advanced,

All the best,
Paul :-)

Calculating num of days between 2 dates

Sat, 20 Feb 2021 23:47:33 UTC

Hi,

Just wondered if anyone knows how I can calculate the number of days between a date assigned to a variable (or 3 variables actually) and the current date please?

I have googled around and now know that I can use the following to get the current date in Pico8:

year=stat(90)
month=stat(91)
day=stat(92)

And if I set up three variables to hold a date in the past e.g.

appyear=2018
appmonth=7
appday=13

How can I easily work out the number of days between the 2 dates please, or do I need to work up some code to acknowledge the different number of days in various months, and work it out like that? Sounds fiddly!!

Any help much appreciated :-)

Thank you!
Paul.

Ultra portable gaming!

Thu, 21 Jan 2021 12:31:23 UTC

Hi,

Just came across this!

https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/picosystem

Wonder if anyone could ever get PICO8 running on this little machine!

Ultimate portability :-)

Cheers,
Paul.

Electro chemical cell

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 01:13:02 UTC

Electro chemical cell

by Paul Knight

[Click to Play]

Noob code problem!

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 15:33:21 UTC

Hi,

I'm pulling together a simple animation that shows some electrochemical concepts.
I've managed to get an "ion" moving around a simple electrochemical cell (anticlockwise flow) using some random movements with some bias to help "push" the ion in the right direction to simulate flow. Its not perfect and there are no doubt much simpler ways to do this, but my coding skills aren't up to it so I've hacked this together - please excuse the mess!

Anyway, I am trying to get the white "ion" to turn green when it hits the electrode (aka grey box) and stay green. I'm doing this by checking if the "ion" is within the bounds of the electrode, and also that the electrode is powered up (variable pwr=1). As far as I can see, it should work, but after literally hours trying to figure out why its not working, I'm close to giving up, and thought I'd see if I was missing a really obvious thing - as I say, I'm not a good coder, just muddle by!

Any help would be very much appreciated.

All the best,
Paul.

PS: another problem that I've not fixed is the switching on/off of the power to the electrode. Should be done using a simple btn press, but for some reason this isn't working either. Again, any suggestions much appreciated. Thanks :-)

gunukuzibu

by Paul Knight

[Click to Play]

Running Carts from inside PowerPoint

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 21:09:41 UTC

Hi,

I am working on a small cart to demonstrate an engineering process for a colleague who wants to spice up a PowerPoint presentation he is giving.

Does anyone know if its possible to embed a Cart (in HTML format??) into a PowerPoint presentation so that he can run it from within his presentation?

Any help much appreciated.

All the best,
Paul :-)

PS: Am asking here since I can't test this as I use a Mac and don't have PowerPoint! Thanks :-)

Slow code - any ideas for speed up

Wed, 14 Oct 2020 06:57:11 UTC

Hi,

I'm a part time tinkering when it comes to coding - just dabbling now and again, and I wondered if anyone had any ideas on how to speed up the following code please?

I want to draw a screen full of random CHR$ characters, but this method is taking approx 13 seconds to run!

function _init()
cls(1)
b=1
i=1
end

function _update()
i=i+5
print(chr(rnd(128)),i,b,7)
if i>=120 then
b=b+8
i=0
if b>=125 then
stop()
end
end
end

Any help would be much appreciated :-)

Thank you

Crabdash

Wed, 28 Nov 2018 20:02:49 UTC

Crabdash

by Paul Knight

[Click to Play]

Very basic!

Avoid the crabs and collect the gold to get the highest score.

Simple :-)

Thanks for looking

Project Scheduler/Spend profile calculator

Wed, 21 Nov 2018 15:03:30 UTC

Project Scheduler/Spend profile calculator 1.0

by Paul Knight

[Click to Play]

This is very much a work in progress, and is really to try out a few ideas.

Basically, it allows you to see the impact on total spends of a project portfolio (fixed to 3 at the moment) at a particular time, if individual projects are moved within the overall scheduling of the projects.

To move projects along the timeline, use the up/down cursors to move the orange pointer to the project you want to move, then the left/right arrow keys to move it back and forwards on the timeline.

Once the projects have all been scheduled, move the orange pointer up to the "Timeline Zone" and the left/right arrow keys will move the red "timeline now" line along the project schedule. The total cost of the projects at that point will be show at the bottom of the screen, together with the total project cost when all projects have been completed.

A spend profile (the rate at which money is spent) is overlaid on the project timelines, and moves in real time as the individual projects are moved.

For now, individual projects have a fixed duration (hard coded), and it is assumed that the total cost of each project is spend linearly. I want to add flexible cost rates so for example, a project spend rate can be set to relatively low at the beginning and end of a project, with a higher spend rate in the middle of a project, when the work is really in full swing.

Lots more to do including autoscaling of the project spend profile, individual project spend profiles (rather than assume linear spend), on-the-fly changes to individual project parameters e.g. total value, duration etc...

Anyway, this cart will likely have very limited appeal to most, but I thought I'd post it anyway!!

Thanks for looking,
Paul.

Radiation Sources

Sun, 18 Mar 2018 05:49:57 UTC

Radiation Sources 1.0

by Paul Knight

[Click to Play]

This is my first posted cartridge.

Its just a concept at the moment, to see if a fun game could even be made from it.

Basically, you need to collect the sample vials (much better collision detection needed) before you are irradiated by too much radiation.

As you move around, you build up a radiation map to help you avoid radiation "hot spots".

There are 3 radiation sources, and you can also mark them up by clicking on them using the mouse when you think you know where they are.

Pressing Z actually shows where they are (this would not be enabled if I made a game from it) and X hide the sources again.

Anyway, all comments much appreciated :-)

Thanks for looking!

Placed sprites

Fri, 21 Jul 2017 15:57:56 UTC

Placed sprites 1.0

by Paul Knight

[Click to Play]

Hi,

I was hoping someone might be able to help me with a 'newbie' question please.

I want to be able to move a mouse pointer around, and then when the mouse is clicked, record the x and y position and place a sprite in that position. The next time the mouse button is pressed, a second sprite is displayed at the new mouse position, and then finally, a third upon another mouse button click. Further mouse button clicks will then re-position the first sprite and so on......

This should leave 3 sprites on the screen, and record their positions.

The current code does this, and displays the x/y position of each sprite. The problem I have is that a single "mouse click" event is hard to make and the code loops round very quickly making discrete sprite positioning difficult.

Can anyone please suggest a way to remedy this?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Kind regards,
Paul :-)

Strange PGET results!

Sat, 20 May 2017 10:46:41 UTC

Hi all.

A newbie question!

I am using the PGET command to read the value of a pixel as you move a point around the screen.

The code I have written seems to work fine in the X axis, but the y-axis is offset for some reason.

If you move the point over the yellow square from left to right, the PGET command successfully reads the pixel colour value.

If you move the point over the yellow square from top to bottom, the PGET command is offset by approx 6 pixels.

Strange.

Am I missing something?

Any advice would be very much appreciated.

Many thanks

Paul :-)

PS:

Code pasted below.

x={}
y={}
x=50
y=50
cls()

function _update()
if btn(1) then x=x+1 end
if btn(0) then x=x-1 end
if btn(3) then y=y+1 end
if btn(2) then y=y-1 end
a=pget(x,y)
end

function _draw()
rectfill (0,0,124,124,0)
rectfill (50,50,70,70,10)
pset(x,y,7)
print(a)
end

Frustrated by coding problem!

Fri, 29 Jul 2016 09:05:13 UTC

Hi,

I've been dabbling in Pico-8 since yesterday and am loving it so far! However, I have come up against a really frustrating problem and have spent hours trying to figure out why my code doesnt work. I keep getting a
"then" expected near "=" error up, for the line highlighted in the code below. Any ideas of why this isn't working would be very much appreciated!!!

All the best,
Paul.

player = {}
player.x = 5
player.y = 5
player.sprite = 0
player.speed = 2
crab = {}
crab.x = 50
crab.y = 50
crab.sprite = 9
crab.ran = 1

function mover()
player.moving = true
player.sprite += 1
if player.sprite > 4 then
player.sprite = 0
end
end

function movel()
player.moving = true
player.sprite -= 1
if player.sprite <4 then
player.sprite = 8
end
end

function crabmov()
crab.ran = flr(rnd(2))
if crab.ran = 0 then <------------------
crab.x -= 1
end
if crab.ran = 1 then
crab.x += 1
end
end

function _update()
player.moving = false

if btn(0) then
player.x -= player.speed
movel()
end
if btn(1) then
player.x += player.speed
mover()
end
if btn(2) then
player.y -= player.speed
movel()
end
if btn(3) then
player.y += player.speed
mover()
end
if not player.moving then
player.sprite = 0
end

-- decide if the crab moves left or right
crabmov()

end

function _draw()
--cls()
rectfill (0,0,128,128,13)
spr(player.sprite, player.x, player.y)
spr(crab.sprite, crab.x, crab.y)

end