taxicomics [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

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)

Seeking The Beast III

Sat, 28 Oct 2023 14:37:01 UTC

seekingthebeast3

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

This is the third installment of my longest-running series:

SEEKING THE BEAST III

You and your friend went cave diving, but now it is getting dark. It is widely known that staying outside when it is dark is not a smart move as a giant beast roams the lands. But your friend lost the key to the gate house! Recover the key and get home safe!

Controls:

Arrow Keys Move
C Attack
V Block and Interact

Context:

This is a rather ambitious try to create a 3d RPG engine for future demakes. It is a short game, more like a little tech demo, and i hope you enjoy it. It was created with the help of Mot`s Instant 3d plus! and some of amusicians pixel art from a former, abandoned project.

Notable Features:

-Inspired by the books in Morrowind I added a possibility to display books containing clues about the world you're in. This allows for some more immersive worldbuilding
-3d-Particle Engine that kinda runs okay
-classic RPG scrolling texts
-a multiphase boss fight
-a speedrun timer! (my best is 3:42"133)

Quickfix Update:

fixed some spelling errors
fixed a respawn altar location
fixed the player getting stuck in the attack animation upon death or in the boss fight

Show custom books as a readable ingame book

Sun, 24 Sep 2023 09:23:01 UTC

show_book()

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

This is a function that draws a book with some custom content to the screen. My inspiration was morrowind and its plethora of books. All this function needs to work is an external,global page variable.

How to use:

copy this function to your code
declare a global page variable (that starts at -1, which is the cover page)
keep in mind that it resets camera() to print the book on screen regardless of the camera offset, so use it after you already printed you game with desired offset
add your book as a pair of title and a long content string like this: {"Title","Super long and cool content"}, to the books table
consider using P8SCII to achieve certain effects cheaply - it breaks the function in fun, weird ways

function show_book(title)
	camera()
	local given_title=title or "how to use show_book"
	local books={
			{"how to use show_book",
			"this book will teach you how to use the show_book function in pico-8. the show_book function takes a given title and displays the book content on the screen. you can use the⬅️ and ➡️buttons to turn the pages, and the 🅾️ button to exit the book. you can also add your own books to the books table, as long as they have a title and a content string. the function will automatically split the string into lines and pages, and draw the book cover and pages for you. you can also change some variables in the function, such as the maximum length of a line, the maximum number of lines per page, and the colors and positions of the book elements. to use the function, you need to call it with a title argument, like this: show_book ('how to use show_book'). have fun reading and writing books with pico-8!"
		 },
			}
		local function split_str(str,length)
			local max_length=length or 13
			local strings=split(str," ",false)
			local result={}
			local cur_str=""
				for i in all(strings) do
					if #cur_str+#i<max_length then
						if #cur_str!=0 then
						cur_str=cur_str.." "..i
						else
						cur_str=i
						end
					else
						add(result,cur_str)
						cur_str=i
					end
				end
			add(result,cur_str)
			return result
		end
		--end split_str

		local function draw_cover(tit)
			local title=split_str(tit,11)
			local line_nr=0
			rectfill(64,25,117,100,2)
			line(118,25,118,100,15)
			rect(66,27,115,98,15)
			for i in all(title) do
				line_nr+=1
				print(i,70,35+line_nr*6,15)
			end
		end--draw_cover_end
		local function give_book(tit)
		local title=tit or "the hanging tree"
			local book_lines={}
			local lib={}
			local ret={}
			--lookup the book and split
			--the strings
			for i in all(books) do
				if i[1]==title then
					book_lines=split_str(i[2])
				end
			end	
			for i in all(book_lines) do 
				add(lib,i)
				if #lib==10 then
					add(ret,lib)
					lib={}
				end
			end
			if(#lib!=0)add(ret,lib)
			return ret
		--
		end--give_book end

		local content=give_book(given_title)
		--dislay background
		fillp(▒)
		rectfill(0,0,127,127,0)
		fillp()
		if page>0 then
			--draw the book itself
			rectfill(10,25,117,100,7)
			line(10,24,118,24,2)
			line(118,25,118,100,15)
			line(64,25,64,100,15)
			--page numbers
			print(page,64-print(page,0,-1000),95,4)
			print(page+1,66,95,4)
			--print left page
			trash=0
				for i in all(content[page]) do
					trash+=1
					print(i,12,24+trash*6,13)	
				end
			if#content+1>=page then
				--print right page
				trash=0
				for i in all(content[page+1]) do
					trash+=1
					print(i,66,24+trash*6,13)	
				end
			end
		elseif page==-1 then
			--draw the book cover
			draw_cover(given_title)
		end	
		--controls
		print("🅾️",111,115,4)
		if page+1<#content then
			print("➡️",111,95,4)
			if(btnp(➡️))page+=2
		end
		if page>-1 then
			print("⬅️",11,95,4)
			if(btnp(⬅️))page-=2		
		end
end

401 tokens

DayNight Cycle - function

Tue, 25 Apr 2023 19:23:38 UTC

Day night cycle

Hi! I made a function to add a day night cycle. It shifts the palette and takes two arguments, hour and minutes. The palettes can be modified.

First you can see it in action here:

Thing to note

The night palette is very different from the rest, adjust it based on your sprites. Originally this palette was made by Achie72
It is very token intensive at the moment. That can surely be optimized by either cleverly contstructing the palettes at runtime or deleting those you don't use. But I kept it like this for readabilities sake.
Maybe adjust the time to your needs. I took a shorter day as a model but you could also change the times(ho=hour in the function) in code

function set_pal(h,m)
local pals={
--night palette from achiegamedev - thx ♥
{[0]=0,129,130,131,132,133,5,13,2,4,137,3,1,141,136,143},
--regular second palette
{[0]=128,129,130,131,132,133,134,135,136,137,138,139,140,141,142,143},
--sharpen contrast
{[0]=128,1,130,131,132,5,134,135,136,137,138,139,140,141,142,143},
{[0]=0,1,130,131,132,5,134,135,136,137,138,139,140,141,142,143},
--introduce greens
{[0]=0,1,130,3,132,5,134,135,136,137,138,139,140,141,142,143},
{[0]=0,1,130,3,132,5,134,135,136,137,138,11,140,141,142,143},
--introduce yellows
{[0]=0,1,130,3,132,5,134,135,136,9,138,11,140,141,142,143},
{[0]=0,1,130,3,132,5,134,135,136,9,10,11,140,141,142,143},
--introduce reds
{[0]=0,1,2,3,4,5,134,135,136,9,10,11,140,141,142,143},
{[0]=0,1,2,3,4,5,134,135,8,9,10,11,140,141,14,15},
}

local ho=h or 12
	if ho<7 then
		pal(pals[1],1)
	elseif ho==7 then
		pal(pals[2],1)
        elseif ho==8 then
		if(m<30)pal(pals[2],1)
		if(m>20)pal(pals[3],1)
		if(m>40)pal(pals[4],1)
        elseif ho==9 then
		if(m<30)pal(pals[5],1)
		if(m>20)pal(pals[6],1)
	elseif ho==10 then
		if(m<30)pal(pals[7],1)
		if(m>20)pal(pals[8],1)
	elseif ho==11 then
		if(m<30)pal(pals[9],1)
		if(m>20)pal(pals[10],1)
	elseif ho==12 then
		pal()
	elseif ho==17 then
		if(m<30)pal(pals[10],1)
		if(m>20)pal(pals[9],1)
	elseif ho==18 then
		if(m<30)pal(pals[8],1)
		if(m>20)pal(pals[7],1)
	elseif ho==19 then
		if(m<30)pal(pals[6],1)
		if(m>20)pal(pals[5],1)
	elseif ho==20 then
		if(m<30)pal(pals[4],1)
		if(m>20)pal(pals[3],1)
	elseif ho==21 then
		if(m<30)pal(pals[2],1)
	elseif ho>21 then
		pal(pals[1],1)
	end
end

I hope this is useful, have fun with it!

A Stardew Valley Demake: Pico Valley

Sat, 22 Apr 2023 10:19:39 UTC

Pico Valley!

I love that cozy games are finally getting big, and one of my favorite cozy games is,without a doubt, Stardew Valley. I played Harvest Moon growing up and enjoyed it a lot, but when somebody told me about Stardew Valley my mind was just blown. This is why I decided to make a Stardew Valley demake that i could have played growing up.

picovalley

by taxicomics

[Click to Play]

Update:18.11.23
I hate reading old code. Well at least I can be sure I got better since April :D Let's go.

added the ability to play the brilliant Journey Of The Prairie King Demake which was quite the undertaking. A lot of things needed to work together in order to return the player to the original game with all of the progress saved. Read more about it on the Journey Of The Prairie King page.
repixeled a lot of sprites, toned down the contrast
added the graveyard
added the saloon and 2 new NPC`s
added save file detection
rewrote token wastezones(the rest of the code is still a hot mess though)
adjusted the time scale to 0,7 of the previous value
increased the maximum energy
added an interaction indicator

Update:23.4.23

rebalanced some values
you now loose some items if you fall unconcious
made music track longer
update mining palette

It is a 64x64 recreation of Pelican Town and some of its residents. The code started out clean but got messy fast because i wanted to finish this game.

I made some boxart and a manual for the game:

Before i upload this to itch.io i wanted to upload it here. Here are a few pages from the manual:

Things to note:

-if you want to keep your progress open the game in Pico8, your progress is saved on every new day
-get your fishing rod at the beach
-enjoy yourself and don't hesitate to report bugs!
-this is somewhat modable and i encourage everybody to make their own little town and characters. There is some (but not a lot) of documentation in the code to get you started.