A little help with tables

Fri, 06 Mar 2020 21:40:02 UTC

Hello there!

I have been exploring Pico8 for over 2 years now trying to understand coding with let's say "some" progress.

But I'm stuck with Tables. I mean, I get the concept but there's something I haven't got to fully understand therefore I get mixed results.

So I created actors (player, enemy) as tables but I can't make them spawn several instances on screen. So far I have got to draw 5 enemies on stage (at random position) but they keep appearing all the time (where they should appear once), any light about what I'm doing wrong? here's the code:

--init
function _init()
--globals
wave=5
w=112
h=112

--player
pyr={
spt=1,
x=w/3,
y=h/3,
life=10,
spd=2,
flp=false,
idle=true,
}
enms={} --enemies

enm={ --single enemy

spt=10,
life=5,
spd=1,
flp=false,
idle=true,
draw=function()
spr(enm.spt,flr(rnd(w)),flr(rnd(h)))
end,
}

for a=1,wave do
add(enms,enm)
end

end

--draw
function _draw()
cls()
print(#enms,20,20,7) --checking created instances from enms table
foreach(enm,enm:draw())
end

I have read tutorials, videos and everything available but still I haven't figured it out yet :( Any help is much appreciated.

Learn code vs. game design: Overcoming frustration

Wed, 14 Mar 2018 14:42:40 UTC

So I'm just another old school gaming enthusiast who loves to make games for fun. I stumbled upon Pico-8 and I got so amazed by the concept that I decided to learn programming. I have made some mobile games before but I used Construct 2, which provides a set of widgets and tools to create a game with just a little knowledge of coding.

However, after 2-3 weeks with P8 I got into to this situation where I'm wondering myself if I want to learn coding by making a tiny game or just want to have fun while making a tiny game.

I'd love to say both but for me, it depends of how "intuitive" is to communicate with the hardware through a programming language (that's the reason why languages exist) but at this time it is not. There are a few things that should be easy but for some reason I just can't get to understand, like:

Rotate a sprite by 90 degrees in order to recycle sprites on top view games instead of having 4 different animations for each direction
Simple stuff like understanding how to handle arguments within functions or tables

It's Worth to recall that I'm an absolute Noob on this matter and sometimes I feel that my brain is just not compatible with programming logic :(

And yes, I have spent days trying to understand the amazing pieces of code from the community and I have learned a lot, but there are some little things that I havent't found anywhere on the web that could help me and other newbies like me to find a balance between designing a game through graphics and music, and making it work through coding. I have created this topic to share these "silly and basic questions" by non-programmers :)

Birdstonelabs [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

A little help with tables

Learn code vs. game design: Overcoming frustration