Emalan-P [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Little masking effect demo

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 05:23:49 UTC

masking_demo_emalan

by Emalan-P

[Click to Play]

Simple, interactive demo of a custom masking technique I was playing around with for fun.
A good example of an application of bitwise logic in computer science!

← and → to change the background fill to emulate changing opacity
(x) [x] to toggle masking effect
(o) [z] to show only the mask layer

The pulsing background is drawn into screen memory at 0x6000.
Shapes and background fill for the mask layer are drawn into memory at 0x8000 with color 15.
Four bytes each from 0x6000 – 0x7FFF and 0x8000 – 0x9FFF are compared with a bitwise AND operation (band()) and the result is written directly to screen memory.
There's not a lot to it besides that, but I thought it looked cool and wanted to share.

What will Picotron mean for the future of PICO-8?

Tue, 26 Mar 2024 00:18:42 UTC

Hello all,

With the release of the alpha of Picotron, I've been thinking about how the growth and adoption of Picotron may possibly affect PICO-8 as well.

I'm curious to hear what any of you have to say — Do you think Picotron will make PICO-8 obsolete due to its more advanced tools, or do you think PICO-8 will maintain its appeal? Will much interest from the community flow towards Picotron leaving PICO-8 behind, or do they occupy distinct niches that can coexist?

As someone who has a few PICO-8 projects I have been working on that have yet to be completed/released, I'm wondering which fantasy platform might be more worthwhile in the long run to focus on, if a choice must be made. I wonder what PICO-8 will still have that would continue to attract those who might also be interested in Picotron.

When Picotron gets into full swing, will any of you keep sticking around with PICO-8 or will you mostly switch to the new platform?

Thoughts?

Question: Once login is added, could BBS support be as well?

Sat, 10 Dec 2022 17:43:53 UTC

This is much more than just a small feature request because it would likely require much more effort to make it happen (if it's even feasible).
But while I was using Splore and looking at the "search BBS thread" and "open thread in browser" actions, I started wondering: Once the login feature has been added to PICO-8, would it be possible to access the BBS directly from PICO-8 as well? Has this idea been floated around before? And if it is not possible in PICO-8, then what about Picotron?

If it's possible then it could be a neat way to unify the whole PICO-8 experience within the software.

Any thoughts?

Feature request: vert and horiz scroll bars in code editor

Thu, 08 Dec 2022 17:08:39 UTC

Vertical and horizontal scroll bars in the code editor would be a godsend. The code editor isn't exactly the easiest to navigate (especially when trying to move horizontally), so for the sake of accessibility, this would be a wonderful addition.

Is there a way to set a new cart directory?

Wed, 12 Jan 2022 22:48:49 UTC

Forgive me if this is commonly known (I am new). I simply want to know how I could set a different folder as the directory for saving existing carts and creating new ones as opposed to the files being saved right in the \pico-8\carts file. Say I wanted to save all of my projects in the folder \pico-8\carts\projects.