taxicomics [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

ChunkyRally

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 07:31:37 UTC

rallytron

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

Rallytron

I really enjoyed driving in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas and wanted to get as close to that feeling as possible within Picotron. This is a soft first release to catch any bugs prior to a release on itch.

Learning the game

All the courses are unlocked from the get-go, but you have to finish them with the Pinter to unlock the other cars. The on screen instructions can be toggled in the pause menu.

Controls:

THIS CAN NOT/HARDLY BE PLAYED ON MOBILE!

WASD to move your car/choose a car and race
SPACEBAR to use handbrake/confirm
CTRL to restart the game

About the game

Tinkering with sprite stacking is really rewarding, and I enjoyed it a lot. Have fun chasing the best times and your ghosts, do let me know what kind of cars and tracks you'd like to see in potential future versions!

Credits

The game wouldn't have been possible without freds72 efficient sprite rotation function. I also used xietanu's userdata based particle engine for the skid marks and a few of abledbodies SFX for the music.

Feedback

These are some of the questions I have:

Do the cars feel distinct enough?
How long did it take you to feel "comfortable" with the controls?
What tracks did you enjoy/what would you like to see added?

Update 21.8.25

changed menu theme
made medal reveals respect your time
convinced the ghost car to come in on time
reduced camera jitter
revised the save system(sorry for your saves <3)
changed label

Update 25.8.25

added controller support
added Dusk map with two new tracks
added car lights
gave "Addo" a bit more "oomph"

Custom Pause Menu Template

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 19:21:43 UTC

pausemenu

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

Hi! This is a pause menu template you can use as is or as a jumping off point. It allows you to shut down Picotron(useful for exports) and control the volume. It has support for sub menus and custom actions. It can also be controlled by two players, which is important for STEAM to like your game. It consists of four parts of which you only need to use three.

init_pause_menu() initializes all the important stuff, use it to customize your pause menu. All menu elements consist of a title and a corresponding action. e.g.:{"Exit","EXIT"}.
it also declares a new global called game_paused. Use it to halt the execution of other update functions. Sadly we can't just stop the execution of the program due to our custom menu behavior. Use this function in your _init()
update_pause_menu() handles the navigation. You can customize the inputs here.
draw_pause_menu() draws the menu. Customize it however you'd like! One important note: It calls camera() to make sure that it is drawn in the center of the screen. It does automatically detect the resolution, though.
do_pause_menu_action() is just a helper function for the update function. No need to use it yourself. It is only useful if you want to implement your own menu actions like maps, inventories etc.

You should be able to just save this script and include it into existence. Do let me know all the bugs it causes!

Here is the script in it's best copy&paste-ability:

function init_pause_menu()
	--if you declared your window somewhere else comment this line out and 
	--add pauseable=false to your window
	window{pauseable=false,autoclose=true,capture_escapes=true}
	--
	game_paused=false
	pause_menu={
		title="Game Is Paused",
		title_reminder="Game Is Paused",
		items_and_actions={
			{"Continue","BACK"},
			{"Options",{{"<\16\16\16\16\16\16\16\16>","VOLUME"},{"Sound On","TOGGLE_AUDIO"},{"Return","BACK"}}},
			{"Exit Game",{{"Go Back","BACK"},{"Really Exit","EXIT"}}},--comment this line if you don't want to exit accidentally
			{"EXIT TO PICOTRON","DEV_EXIT"},--delete this for your exports
		},
		sounds={--comment this for no sfx or set this to your own sfx if you want UI sounds
			blip=1,
			select_item=2,
			toggle_visibility=3,
		},
		current_item=0,
		current_sub_menu=nil,
	}
end

function update_pause_menu()
	if game_paused then
		if btnp(2) or btnp(2,1) or keyp("w") then
			pause_menu.current_item-=1
			if pause_menu.sounds then
				sfx(pause_menu.sounds.blip)
			end
		elseif btnp(3) or btnp(3,1) or keyp("s") then
			pause_menu.current_item+=1
			if pause_menu.sounds then
				sfx(pause_menu.sounds.blip)
			end
		elseif btnp(5) or btnp(5,1) or key("esc") then
			do_pause_menu_action("BACK")
			if pause_menu.sounds then
				sfx(pause_menu.sounds.blip)
			end
		elseif btnp(1) or btnp(1,1) or btnp(0) or btnp(0,1) or keyp("a") or keyp("d") then
			local action=pause_menu.items_and_actions[(pause_menu.current_item%#pause_menu.items_and_actions)+1][2]
			if pause_menu.current_sub_menu then
				action=pause_menu.current_sub_menu[(pause_menu.current_item%#pause_menu.current_sub_menu)+1][2]
			end
			if action=="VOLUME" then
				if btnp(1) or btnp(1,1) or keyp("d") then
					do_pause_menu_action("VOLUME_UP")
				elseif btnp(0) or btnp(0,1) or keyp("a") then
					do_pause_menu_action("VOLUME_DOWN")
				end
			end
		elseif btnp(4) or btnp(4,1) or keyp("space")  then
			if pause_menu.current_sub_menu then
				do_pause_menu_action(pause_menu.current_sub_menu[(pause_menu.current_item%#pause_menu.current_sub_menu)+1][2],pause_menu.current_sub_menu[(pause_menu.current_item%#pause_menu.current_sub_menu)+1][1])
			else
				do_pause_menu_action(pause_menu.items_and_actions[(pause_menu.current_item%#pause_menu.items_and_actions)+1][2],pause_menu.items_and_actions[(pause_menu.current_item%#pause_menu.items_and_actions)+1][1])
			end
			if pause_menu.sounds then
				sfx(pause_menu.sounds.select_item)
			end
		end
	end
	if keyp("escape")  or btnp(6) or btnp(6,1) then
		if game_paused then
			do_pause_menu_action("BACK")
		else
			game_paused=true
		end
		if pause_menu.sounds then
			sfx(pause_menu.sounds.toggle_visibility)
		end
	end
end

function draw_pause_menu()
--remember to call camera() before this function to nullify your own offset
camera()
	if game_paused then
		local half_screen_height=get_display():height()/2
		local half_screen_width=get_display():width()/2
		local y_item_padding=15
		local y_size=#pause_menu.items_and_actions*y_item_padding
		local y_start=half_screen_height-y_size/2
		local width=200
		local x_start=half_screen_width-width/2
		rectfill(x_start,half_screen_height-y_size/2,x_start+width,half_screen_height+y_size/2,1)
		rect(x_start+1,half_screen_height-y_size/2+1,x_start+width-1,half_screen_height+y_size/2-1,7)
		local length=print("\^w\^t\^o0ff"..pause_menu.title,0,-10000)
		print("\^w\^t\^o0ff"..pause_menu.title,half_screen_width-(length/2),y_start-16,7)
		local counter=0
		if not pause_menu.current_sub_menu then
			for i in all(pause_menu.items_and_actions) do
				local length=print(i[1],0,-1000)
				local pretext=""
				if (pause_menu.current_item%#pause_menu.items_and_actions)+1==counter+1 then
					pretext="\^odff"
				end
				print(pretext..i[1],half_screen_width-length/2,y_start+y_item_padding/4+1+counter*y_item_padding,7)
				counter+=1
			end
		elseif pause_menu.current_sub_menu then
			for i in all(pause_menu.current_sub_menu) do
				local length=print(i[1],0,-1000)
				local pretext=""
				if (pause_menu.current_item%#pause_menu.current_sub_menu)+1==counter+1 then
					pretext="\^odff"
				end
				print(pretext..i[1],half_screen_width-length/2,y_start+y_item_padding/4+1+counter*y_item_padding,7)
				counter+=1
			end
		end
		print("\131\148 or W S to navigate \142 or SPACEBAR to choose \151 or ESC to exit",half_screen_width-165,get_display():height()-8,7)

	end
end

function do_pause_menu_action(what,menuitem_string)
	if type(what)=="table" then
		pause_menu.current_sub_menu=what
		pause_menu.title=menuitem_string
		pause_menu.current_item=0
	elseif what=="BACK" then
		if pause_menu.current_sub_menu then
			pause_menu.current_sub_menu=nil
			pause_menu.current_item=0
			for i=1,#pause_menu.items_and_actions do
				if pause_menu.items_and_actions[i][1]==pause_menu.title then
					pause_menu.current_item=i-1
				end
			end
		else
			game_paused=false
		end
		pause_menu.title=pause_menu.title_reminder
	elseif what=="VOLUME_UP" or  what=="VOLUME_DOWN" then
		--determine current volume
		local cur_volume=peek(0x5538,2)
		if what=="VOLUME_UP" and cur_volume<64 then
			cur_volume=cur_volume+8
		elseif what=="VOLUME_DOWN" and cur_volume>0 then
			cur_volume=cur_volume-8
		end
		if pause_menu.sounds then
			sfx(pause_menu.sounds.select_item)
		end
		poke(0x5538 ,cur_volume)
		poke(0x5539 ,cur_volume)
		--visually represent the change and change the menu items label
		local new_label="<"
		for i=1,8 do
			if cur_volume/8>=i then
				new_label=new_label.."\16"
			else
				new_label=new_label.."-"
			end
		end
		new_label=new_label..">"
		if pause_menu.current_sub_menu then
			pause_menu.current_sub_menu[(pause_menu.current_item%#pause_menu.current_sub_menu)+1][1]=new_label
		else
			pause_menu.items_and_actions[(pause_menu.current_item%#pause_menu.items_and_actions)+1][1]=new_label
		end
	elseif what=="TOGGLE_AUDIO" then
		--poke the global volume setting for both sfx and music (0x40==1.0-->0x00==0.0)
		current_volume=peek(0x5538,2)
		local new_label="Sound Off"
		if current_volume==0 then
			poke(0x5538 ,0x40)
			poke(0x5539 ,0x40)
			new_label="Sound On"
		else
			poke(0x5538 ,0x00)
			poke(0x5539 ,0x00)
		end
		--visually represent the change and change the menu items label
		if pause_menu.current_sub_menu then
			pause_menu.current_sub_menu[(pause_menu.current_item%#pause_menu.current_sub_menu)+1][1]=new_label
		else
			pause_menu.items_and_actions[(pause_menu.current_item%#pause_menu.items_and_actions)+1][1]=new_label
		end
	elseif what=="DEV_EXIT" then
		exit()
	elseif what=="EXIT" then
		send_message(2, {event="shutdown"})
	end
end

How To Publish A Picotron Game on Steam

Sat, 12 Jul 2025 14:17:57 UTC

Dear fellow devs!

I fell in love with Picotron and wanted to create a bigger title fit for a release on Steam. That's how "Journey Through The Nightmare Realm II" was born, and it just released on Steam. It would mean the world to me if you could check it out or wishlist it to appeal to the algorithm. Thank you!

Here is what I learned about the process:

Why?

Picotron and PICO-8 are really nice and cozy development environments, creating games and other applications in them feels great. The spirit of helping each other and sharing your games in our community is really important to me and I will never stop doing so. From time to time I create bigger projects that I sell on Steam, which I used to create with Godot, another great engine. Playing around with Picotron has shown me that it is very possible to create bigger (read >2 MB) projects in this engine. So I set out to do just that, and find out the following:

how do "regular" gamers react to games made in Picotron with it's retro-aesthetic and lack of modern conventions?
how do Picotron games behave on handhelds like the Steam Deck?
how is the compatibility with the different platforms?
can this be a viable alternative to Godot for me personally?

How

For those who have not had a look at the process yet: Everybody can publish a game on Steam, and the past years have had a huge increase of indie games of varying quality - a trade off of Steam's decision to democratize the access to it's platform.
You register with Steamworks and buy an app credit which allows you to create a game on Steam. There is a LOT of setup required: You need store graphics, library graphics, system requirements, at least one trailer, multiple screenshots and at least two weeks of time to wait for Steam to approve your game's store page and game build(separately).

Store Page and library assets

The graphics need to fit very specific requirements, they need to be the correct resolution etc. The description needs to fit your project, the trailer needs to meet certain criteria, the screenshots too. And Steam needs to think so, too. Plan ahead and give yourself enough time for multiple revisions.

Game Build

The same is true for your game build. Depending on whether or not your game is played with a controller you need to fit a different set of requirements. Also keep in mind that "regular" gamers have no idea that our control scheme with X and O exists or where to find those buttons! My title is a local CO-OP title, so it can be played by up to two people with controllers. Steam is very specific about controller support and, at it's current stage, Picotron does not fit all of it's demands. I was NOT able to display my game as supportive of controllers even though it absolutely is, because player two couldn't control the built in pause menu. I started out with controller support, and everything worked out of the box, but Steam's review of my game's build forced me to disable it. This means that players on the Steam Deck need to do some manual setup to make the controller behave as intended. It is fine for players on PC's, though.
You are also expected to display the correct button graphics for different types of controllers, in my case Playstation, Picotron, PC and the Steam Deck. Picotron can not detect the type of controller - I solved this by having different fonts for the different controllers and prompting the players to choose a layout on their first boot, changing the font to the one corresponding with their choice. Xbox controllers do NOT work at the moment, the shoulder buttons do not map to picotron's shoulder buttons. So be careful if you plan to have local or remote play CO-OP!

Platforms

I only support Linux and Windows as I do not own any MacOS devices and I do not intend to battle the lengthy process of making the game behave well on MacOS.

Remote Play together

This is a magical feature of Steam-and I'm glad to report that yes, it does work great! The only times I had trouble with it was when playing cross platform, so a mix of Windows and Linux. But this is an incredibly valuable tool that allows for online play without us having to do any networking. Marvelous!

Expectations

I do not think my game is going to sell particularly well- retro games are a rather small niche, twin stick shooters are even smaller and, let's face it, there are fancier shooters floating around the internet free of charge. But I'm still happy to have gone through the process and I can't wait to see whether future versions might fix some of the issues and allow us to incorporate controllers a little smoother. Steam support is on the roadmap-and I for one am excited to see it.

Special mentions

Picotron executables are tiny! To think that the whole game, all of it's graphics, sfx, music etc fit in just 4MB is crazy to me. One Curator on Steam took note and included it in their collection.

Special thanks

I couldn't have finished the game without the help of these people:

@abledbody for their magic instrument skills, they created INCREDIBLE sfx and provided a lot of playtesting feedback and an impressive highscore
@washburnello helped me with artistic feedback, playtesting and they featured a pre-release built of JTNR2 on Twitch
CatLadyGames for playtesting
My dear neighbor Alex for playtesting
@packbat for their wonderful two node instrument collection

Thank you for reading all of this, feel free to ask any questions you might have, I'll try my best to answer them. Have a great day!

How To Use Color Tables

Wed, 28 May 2025 19:58:37 UTC

colortablesexmaple

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

Hi!

TLDR:

Color tables are basically free to use because the gfx pipeline uses one by default. By modifying it we can achieve effects-in this case we add 2 colors that allow us to draw "shadows" and add lit areas. Copy the function below and give it a 64x64 sprite as a color table. Now draw shapes with color 32 and 33 to apply the effects.

My attempt at explaining color tables

I've struggled with understanding color tables, but thanks to @washburnello I finally got it. He is using a sprite to visually represent the color table, which makes it much easier to plan.
This small function allows you to do the same and use a 64x64 sprite to visually represent and plan the color table. It then memmaps it into the appropriate spot in memory.
The color table sprite looks like this:
On the vertical axis are the colors that you are drawing with. The horizontal axis are the colors that are already on screen at whatever position you're drawing. Their intersection is the color that will get drawn instead.
The first 32 colors will always get drawn as themselves(in this case) with the exception of color 0, which is always mapped to the color that is already on screen. This is how Picotron makes transparency work.
Two colors got added: Color 32 and 33 have alterations to achieve the lightning effects. Color 34 is another set of our original colors as a starting point for your own custom effect color.

This is the function:

function apply_color_table(color_table_sprite)
	local sprite=get_spr(color_table_sprite)
	--copy the sprite into the address 0x8000 in memory
	memmap(sprite,0x8000)
	--poke the bit that makes it work for shapes(circ,rect etc.), the bit for sprites
	--is already set by default.
	poke(0x550b,0x3f)
	--the color table got copied and will be used. This is the same color table 
	--that pal() modifies.
end

The function takes the sprite, which is userdata, and puts it in the appropriate spot in memory. It also does a poke poke(0x550b, 0x3f) to make the gfx pipeline apply the color table to shapes like rectfill etc.

The cart provided above will result in this effect:

Picotron has the ability to handle 64 colors, but only 32 are being used by default. The color table allows us to define color 32 and 33 as our "shadow" or "light" color respectively. Play around with the color table, switch colors around, add more shapes to the code, make them overlap, have fun!

I enjoyed playing around with it a lot and came up with a little sample scene. All the lightning effects were achieved using nothing but shapes drawn with color 33 and 32.

EDIT 31/5/25

This function allows you to change just one specific row of your colortable.

function apply_colortable_row(color_table_sprite,color_row)
		local sprite=get_spr(color_table_sprite)
		local address=0x8000+color_row*64
		for x=0,63 do
				c=sprite:get(x,color_row)
				poke(address+x,c)
		end
		poke(0x550b,0x3f)
end

Bullet Template

Sun, 04 May 2025 15:03:16 UTC

bullettemplate

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

This is a base project to create your very own Bullet Hell/Heaven, Shooter, Stealth etc. game!

Controls

Best played with twin-stick controller!

Controller:
LEFT STICK - Walk
RIGHT STICK - Aim & Shoot
X(bottom button)-Advance to game

Keyboard+Mouse:
WASD - Walk
MOUSE - Aim
LEFT MOUSE - Shoot
C - Advance to game

Content

It includes:

a system to manage the different types of guns and bullets with different values
multiplayer support
basic AI that looks for the player and follows them
basic enemies(one melee, one ranged)
a basic item system
a particle system
a handy function to switch maps
environmental damage(spikes)
a basic HUD

Feel free to use this as a base for your games, and please share them with me once you're done :)

UPDATES

5.5.25 added a fancy label, better control instructions and a simple game over screen

Peak Of Empires (Age Of Empires Demake)

Sun, 06 Apr 2025 18:13:47 UTC

peakofempires

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

Best played in fullscreen or with a controller

Welcome to Peak Of Empires v1.0!

How To Play

Mouse Or Arrow Keys to Move Pointer
Left Mouse Button or X to Choose Units
Right Mouse Button Or C to Send Units
ESDF or screen edges to Move Camera

Click units or buildings to view their stats and actions. Keep an eye on your resources, which are wood, food, stone, gold and housing. Make sure to build enough houses and send your workers to work! Once you've given them a task they will try to keep doing it until there is nothing in their vicinity left to interact with.

Whenever the game spots a "lazy" worker it will offer you to select that worker with a button next to your minimap.

Although the game does support controllers it is best played with the mouse.

How to beat

Make sure to get rid of all the enemies units on the map. Once you've done that you've beaten that scenario and can advance to the next one.
More about the game

This is a small bite-sized Age Of Empires demake with 5 scenarios to beat.

The idea came from this post on the PICO-8 forum, and I'm happy that oNek agreed to collaborate on this game.

UPDATES

7.4.25

added in-game instructions

8.4.25

added camera movement with the player 2 movement controls
added controller padding to the camera movement(the camera now only gets moved when you are at the edge and trying to go over it, no more scrolling zones when using the controller
made the units finally respect their movement speed
gave the juggernaut a new set of armor
fixed the blinking "lazy unit" icon
fixed UI deselection bug

Fades and Transitions Collection

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 17:46:21 UTC

Hi!
Let's start a library of transition effects!
They should take one argument called progress. If you want to fade out instead of in you just use fade(1-progress).
My first contribution:

function fade(progress)
	for xx=0,15 do
		for yy=0,15 do
			circfill(xx*8+4,yy*8+4,8*(1-progress)+sin((yy)/15),0)
		end
	end
end

Bloodletting

Sun, 19 Jan 2025 15:28:09 UTC

bloodletting

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

Controls

Arrows to move
X to attack
C to dash

TLDR

Zelda dungeons with an orange cat friend. (Thx @8bit_gnosis)

Story

You're taking a casual ride on your dragon when all of a sudden the dragon has to sneeze! You and your cat companion get thrown off, and now you have to try to climb the dragon tower to get back on.

What is Bloodletting?

The tower is powered by the blood of fallen dragon riders - and it offers you certain deals for your blood.
These deals can make or break you, so be careful!

Beware!

Destroy the chests to sometimes find a heart

These buttons unlock gates, but careful, they have an evil twin!

Try to find a key to open these doors.

These spikes are the towers way of collecting your blood.

Try to find the stairs up so you can reach the top!

Updates:

29.1.25 The refactoring update

changed the loottables (more casual difficulty now)
weapons are now only available through trades
changed Game Over Screen to combat OCD
reduced spike damage

Credits:

PICO-8 SFX pack by Gruber
Playtesting:
Retro_Pup_Pico_8
Tony Clifton
@morganqdev
haher69
@Heracleum

Last Minute Cookies

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 13:30:46 UTC

Last Minute Cookies

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

A tiny golfing game for the 2024 Advent Calendar.

Last Minute Cookies

Santa is coming but you forgot to put a cookie on his plate!
Try your best to nudge it on there so he can enjoy it.

How To Play

Nudge the cookie onto the plate and try to beat the par(times of strokes an "average" player needs to beat the level) for any given level.
Watch out for obstacles, blue spots slowing you down and yellow spots speeding your cookie up.
This game saves your progress, so do share your achievements!

Special thanks

First and foremost a big thank you to @bikibird for organizing this amazing calendar!
Special thanks to @freds72 , @NerdyTeachers and @Mr_Ceppah for their invaluable playtesting

made by taxicomics

The Count Is Enraged!

Sun, 13 Oct 2024 19:02:16 UTC

thecountisenraged

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

The Count Is Enraged!

Bring back peace to the asteroid belt by slaying Count Jaspawd! This is the first level of that game.

Controls

ARROWS to Move
X or x to shoot
O or c to shoot torpedos

but...why?

I was sick this weekend and tried another game for my mission:
I'm trying to make one game of every genre, even the ones I could never get into. This is my weekend attempt at making a shmup, a genre I'm not really familiar with.
Do tell me about all the things you hate in it and I might even work on it some more!

Jump And Run / Metroidvania Template

Sun, 22 Sep 2024 12:57:10 UTC

jumpandrun

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

Hi everybody!

This is yet another template-have fun with it. Or don't. Kinda tired of promoting my stuff. This will be my goto template for Metroidvanias.

You can jump but you can't hide.

UPDATES:
-27.9.24 added ladders and one way platforms and made all of those and spikes sprite flag based.

Boxart Template

Sun, 15 Sep 2024 14:20:18 UTC

Creating boxart for your games

After watching @thesailor create a manual I felt inspired to create some boxart for their game.

I also turned the file I used for that into a template that I would like to share with all of you. Your games deserve a nice box, your games deserve to be displayed! Maybe add a little manual or a QR code that leads straight to the game. And do share what you come up with :)

Make your own boxart!

You can find the template on my itch.io

Top Down Engine

Mon, 26 Aug 2024 12:57:09 UTC

topdownengine

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

Top Down Engine 0.5

This is version 0.5 of my TopDownEngine, so please still consider it prerelease!

Videos explaining the engine

Quickstart guide

What does this do?

This project aims to:

support single and multiple players at the same time
provide a window system to render these players
include saving and loading
include a map animation function
provide a system to work with multiple maps
using a "doors"-table
include functions for basic code-side inventory
management with item checking, giving and taking
provide an easy to use text system
include the framework for interactables
include basic enemy system with animations and states
include basic ranged weapon system
include basic pickups
include basic interactables
include basic particle system with premade efx(xplode, blood, smoke)
include a tileset (https://opengameart.org/content/classic-rpg-tileset) to get you started.
Thank you jestan! The tileset was recolored and some tiles were dropped. Some
other tiles were NOT part of the original tileset and were added later.
Read the full license terms here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
include map scanning to spawn anything you'd like
map pooling to affect every player and enemy in the same way and boost perfomance
different camera modes(free and smart chunkbased)
& much more!

It includes a documentation.txt in the project files, do let know what you think.
I plan on making videos to explain the project a little better and get you started, but
please have fun with this and report any bugs you might find!

Updates

27.08. minor bugfix
01.09. v0.6
-fixed the map interactables inclusion
-added the conditalk interactable for easy quests
-added the "amount" and "change_to_tile" option for chests
-unified the interactables so they all take their content as a table argument
-added optional lootdropping for slain enemies

Aquatic wallpaper

Wed, 21 Aug 2024 12:34:21 UTC

aquarium_wallpaper

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

I isolated the aquatic part of TenSum to use as a wallpaper and I thought I'd share. Just move it to /appdata/system/wallpapers/ and choose it in the settings to activate it. Have a great day!

TenSum - Cozy Counting

Sun, 16 Jun 2024 16:09:53 UTC

tensum

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

TenSum

When Tweetjam happened I got addicted to MakeTen by @pancelor. A simple concept, perfectly executed in 500 chars. But the eyestrain from Pico8's HD resolution was just too much, which is why I started making my own version in Picotron.

How To Play

You control the whole game with your mouse.
The goal of the game is to connect fields that add up to 10. The bigger the area you cover the more points you get.

Afterthoughts

Pancelor is working on an update for MakeTen, packed full of new,crazy gamemodes and hours of fun. You can play this while you wait for that version.
This is my second game for Picotron, and I really hope our little community will continue to grow. Do let know your highscores, do let me know what you think.

Beware of the Web Version!

I advise you to play this in Picotron itself for two reasons.
The web player is still very messy, audio doesn't work and neither do userfiles-and you probably want to hang on to your highscores!

Updates

16.6.24 -added "How to play" section in Main menu
12.8.24 -redesigned Main Menu and background, added "ZEN" mode
12.8.24 -fixed a game crashing bug(thanks @pancelor) with the help of @snowkittykira 's dithering function (https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=141280)

Unfinished Business

Mon, 03 Jun 2024 15:16:03 UTC

unfinishedbusiness

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

TLDR

Help other ghosts reach the afterlife in a creepy, old mansion while being hunted by Ghostists

Unfinished Business

This game was created for the MicroJam 15, I also released it on Itch.io It placed 5th out of 87.

Ever wondered what it is like to become a ghost? You've worked as a Ghostist your whole life-but this one last job flips your world on it's head.

Explore a haunted mansion
Outwit other ghost hunters that are trying to shoot you with their salt guns.
Help the ghosts to pass on to the after life
Find tons of secret passageways
Find a powerful magic item that helps you to fool the Ghostists
Want to be quick? There is a speedrun timer, post your results in the comments! My best time is 8:22 for 9/9.

Controls

Arrows Move the player
X Interact with the world
O Check your inventory

Special thanks

@pancelor did some great playtesting, thank you!

Updates

Update 10.6.2024
v.1.1(postjam update)

changed intro
fixed inventory popup after dialogue
changed ghosts needs
changed map and enemy spawns
changed music volumes
added a ghost
made items a little easier to find
made cracks in walls easier to spot
made enemies less triggerhappy
added shortcut FX
changed and added sounds and music
added step sound

Saving and Loading in Picotron

Sat, 06 Apr 2024 13:02:20 UTC

I've been trying to wrap my head around saving and loading in Picotron.

As always feel free to correct or improve, I'm always happy to learn.

2 main concepts to understand

As far as I know there is no automatic allocation of space for persistent userdata like in Pico8. You save your userdata as you would in other conventional game engines as an extra file. This makes it a whole lot easier.

This data is best stored as a table, so try player_vars={"Tammo",{"Sword",1},}. That data structure is internally stored as a .pod, which can be saved or read via store and fetch respectively. (Otherwise you'll have to arrange your data and pod it before saving just to unpod it after loading it.

Now you'll just need a place to store your data. It is good practice to create your own folder inside /appdata with mkdir. For example mkdir(save_dir)

These files can be opened and read, but this is fitting for our open community. Let's imagine the easiest possible usecase. We want to keep track of the highscore. We need to check for any existing high scores on _init and load them if they exist. If not we'll just start with the default value.
Here are the functions needed, tune them to your usecase:

--NEEDS these files in the main script
--save_dir="/appdata/TheDollarDream"
--save_file="my_save.pod"
--player_vars={
--"Herbert",
--{"sword",1},
--}

function save_game()
local err=mkdir(save_dir)
if err!="" then
print(err)
else
print("worked")
end
store(save_dir.."/"..save_file,player_vars)
end

function load_game()
local presave
presave=fetch(save_dir.."/"..save_file)
	if presave!=nil then
		print("loading succesfull")
		player_vars=presave
	else
		print("no save file detected")
	end
end

These functions need both a save_dir and a save_file declared globally.

	save_dir="/appdata/PicoWings"
	save_file="highscore.pod"

In this case we also need our player vars:

player_vars={high_score}

And please do correct me if I got it all wrong. Have a nice day!

PICOWINGS

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 14:06:32 UTC

picowings

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

Altough I was born a little too early to call this a "childhood" game I can still appreciate it's relevance of this game as a good first game for any beginner programmer. Enjoy!

Controls:
Flap with Mouse or Up

I'd love feedback on the code if anybody is willing :)

UPDATE:

incorporated @Cutievirus feedback, it feels way better now. Thanks! (fun sidenote: All I had to do was shift "-" right once.
made it playable with the up button-making this a single button game. Thanks for the feedback, @ahrotahn

UPDATE 6.4.24:

added automatic saves

Cave Diving Gone Bad(Flooded Caves Rewrite)

Wed, 03 Jan 2024 17:22:06 UTC

cavedivinggonebad

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

This game is inspired by NuSan's brilliant Flooded Caves, it is a fan game :)

It is your job to save people who went cave diving from drowning! Water is entering the caves, use your drill to carve tunnels to redirect the flow of water and try to save as many people as you can.

Controls:

X or V or Left Mouse Button to carve
Arrows or Mouse to move the cursor

The difficulty still needs some finetuning, do let me know how you like it! The Cave generation is based on GPT`s idea of a Noise Algorithm, I might clean it up in the future cause it was useful to me.

Update 6.1.24

Updated the menu to reflect the inspiration by Flooded Caves by NuSan
renamed "Easy" to "Learning Difficulty" and made it even easier and quicker
added rescue animation and sound
some bugfixes
a nod to @NuSan in the game's menu
added a "perfect win" indicator when you manage to save everybody

Journey Through The Nightmare Realm

Sun, 12 Nov 2023 19:24:08 UTC

j_t_nightmare_realm

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

I procrastinated my Godot Project by creating this game instead. I got a timelapse of the coding process over on Mastodon, it was all done this weekend. So please excuse some messy code bits. Anyway.

Journey Through The Nightmare Realm

You (and up to 7 friends) awaken in a dark dungeon. Nothing is as it seems. You have to stick together to not loose one another in the ever changing layout of the dungeon. The dungeon seems to keep track of your progress and rewards you with some stairs leading deeper into the dungeon every so often.

Controls

Player 1:
X to Shoot
Arrows to move

Player 2:
Q to shoot
ESDF to move

Multiplayer

Connect up to 7 controllers to play with up to 8 people at once!

The first player is the "king/queen" (notice the little crown), if they die the game is over for everybody. The other players can respawn with a totem.

Pickups

The heart that replenishes 1 HP

The Totem that can bring back a dead friend(if you're playing with friends)

The pistol you know and love, slow but reliable

The submachine gun you long for, try not to swap it for a pistol

(NEW) The shotgun has quite the knockback, but it one shots the grunts

Updates

-12/11/23 Refactored a lot of maps, made it harder without testing them. Reduced max HP. This is gonna be fun.
-12/11/23 Fixed a collision thingy, refactored some more maps and added whimsical minimal animations
-13/11/23 The Blooddate: Added the shotgun, a LOT of blood and made some more balancing changes
-13/11/23 Added 30 FPS and a menu option to toggle the gore(thanks, [email protected]">Kevin Trepanier)