cardboard_box [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Stargazer: A 2D sandbox game for Picotron

Fri, 23 May 2025 00:24:17 UTC

I'm working on a 2D sandbox game for Picotron! Will be posting builds here occasionally. You can build stuff in it, with tiles!

Unsandboxed version for your convenience https://cardboardbox.tech/stargazer
Sandboxing currently kills some performance, till I figure non-blocking I/O out.

Stargazer: 2D Sandbox for Picotron (very WIP)

by cardboard_box

[Click to Play]

Featuring:

Dynamic map loading, with a custom memory allocator
Sky light, controllable with up/down for testing
Cellular automata based blocks. Blue [X] tile can be placed for simulated "water" for testing
Color table based shading
Simplex noise cavern generation
Temporary infinite map generation. Will later switch to generating ahead of time.

CHANGELOG

== Dev build 01/07/2025 ==

Day/night cycle test. Press up/down to control.
Cellular automata test. Block #10 (blue [X]) behaves like simplistic water.

== Dev build 24/05/2025 ==

Improved sandbox detection to work around an edge case in Picotron

== Dev build 23/05/2025 ==

Introduced a fallback mechanism for running while sandboxed
Help text is now only shown while holding H

Picotron bug: Mapping 2 userdatas to the same address leads to lots of bad stuff

Sun, 13 Apr 2025 16:12:25 UTC

This is after one write to the first mapped userdata:

The contents change after every reset, and even over time. Use after free?

Username change?

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 17:58:09 UTC

This old username is haunting me since 2015. Can I have it changed por favor? I've already emailed hey at lexaloffle, but nothing's ever come from it :(

Spider Cave Offensive

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 20:54:48 UTC

Spider Cave Offensive

by cardboard_box

[Click to Play]

	[32x8]

Ludum Dare 57 entry! https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/spider-cave-offensive

Dig! Fight! Escape the spider! Defeat the spider!

You are being attacked by a giant spider after opening a cursed treasure chest. Defeat it while dealing with dangers of the cavern!

HOW 2 PLAY:

Move with arrow keys, walk into walls to dig them
Use the cave’s magic to your advantage
- Press Z (circle on mobile) to fire emerald projectiles
- Press X (x on mobile, duh!) to fire a powerful beam after collecting 3 power crystals
- Blue crystals upgrade your pickaxe. Get 6 of them to dig twice as fast!
- Be sure to aim for the spider’s body!

	[8x16]

Pants trouble: A micro-adventure about pants

Sun, 23 Feb 2025 15:26:31 UTC

Pants trouble: a micro-adventure about pants

by cardboard_box

[Click to Play]

	[16x16]

Hello! This is our entry to Brackeys Game Jam 2025.1
A quirky Earthbound-inspired RPG about pants. (more like a tiny demo if you ask me...)

Featuring a custom scripting engine, a cute protagonist and a story all about pants.

We may or may not continue working on this game to make the story a bit less about pants. (no guarantees)

This isn't exactly a "complete" game, much of the story is left to be told.
But alas, here's a little story about pants.

	[16x16]

As for the scripting engine, I'm not joking. It was a lot of fun to write and use, feel free to poke around (tread carefully, this is jam-grade code!)

...wow this username is old, side-note can anyone change it for me please?

JBA: Oversequel

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 09:28:02 UTC

This was our entry for last Ludum Dare. Forgot to post it here, sorry i dumb!

Team Cardboard Box presents… JBA: Oversequel

You are a bounty hunter. Your target is a bounty hunter. Everyone around you is a bounty hunter.

Interrogate passersby of the whereabouts of your target, once you see them, grab their attention - a light tap on the shoulder, or a bullet to the knee - anything goes! From there, only you decide which one would reap the reward.

And be careful! Anyone around could recognize you as their target!

—– INSTRUCTIONS —–

Walk with the D-pad, shoot with Z, talk with X.. but that much is written on screen. Out of battle with your target, holding Z locks shooting direction to aid with fighting those who want your head

Look carefully at your target’s face. It could give you a clue about their abilities!

Now, go! Survive in this wasteland where anyone ought to get anyone! Will you be able to reach the 11th day?

JBA: Oversequel

by cardboard_box

[Click to Play]

hotfix: changed a string
update: forgot to make slow bullets actually slow, made final boss harder
hotfix: dumb idiot forgot to turn debug switch off

Trivia: The name dates back to a series of games we made at our local Ludum Dare gathering, Jonny's Bizarre Adventure. Just like that one manga, we were telling a story about a lineage of heroes, every one of which had literally the same name - Jonny Arkadievich. This game tells us the story of the "first" Jonny's great great great grandfather and is hopefully the last, unless we fail to come up with a fresh idea yet again.

Pentatoy - Experimental music grid thing

Sun, 12 Nov 2017 13:45:48 UTC

Pentatoy - Experimental music grid thing

by cardboard_box

[Click to Play]

! Devkit mouse is can be used but gamepad is still available

This is an experimental thing I've made in under an hour.
You can add notes by left clicking or Z key, remove with right click or X

Arrow keys can be used for cursor movement (spawns a second, more stylish cursor)

Picowriter

Thu, 23 Mar 2017 13:10:57 UTC

Picowriter 0.4 hotfix

by cardboard_box

[Click to Play]

This is a text editing program because everyone loves to write text with a gamepad!

Type using an amazing virtual keyboard!
Save and load up to ~4k of text!

Instructions :

Navigate the virtual keyboard with D-Pad and press (O) key to press the highlighted key.

The (BACK) virtual keyboard key works as Backspace, allowing you to erase a letter
The (UP) virtual keyboard key works as Caps Lock, enabling use of !@#$%^&*()_+
The (OO) virtual keyboard key works as Return. Nuff said.
The long virtual keyboard key is Spacebar.

Pressing (X) on your physical gamepad switches you to the sidebar. Pressing it again allows you to go back to the virtual keyboard.

Selecting SCROLL allows you to scroll the text vertically and horisontally until you press (X).
While highlighted but not enabled, SCROLL allows you to move the text cursor left and right by pressing D-Pad left and right.
Selecting RENAME allows you to set the name of current document.
Selecting LOAD will search for and load the cartridge with the name of the current documment. Crash if none found, //TODO
Selecting SAVE will create a cartrige with the name of the current documment.

HOW SAVING WORKS :

The saving works by overwriting the map data in the ram with ASCII-like-encoded text data and storing it with cstore.

Name entry screen test

Mon, 02 Jan 2017 12:08:38 UTC

Name entry screen test

by cardboard_box

[Click to Play]

First cartrige! Hey!

Made a name entry screen for exercise. Can type strings, can make beeps and blops. Nice sparkling like in Game Genie menu included!

Amount of letters per line and the charset can be customized, left arrow, dither and button o symbols are reserved for special buttons