hseiken [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Sprite Editor Resets View with UNDO

Mon, 13 Oct 2025 02:22:38 UTC

When I'm drawing i dont' want to accidentally bleed into another image, so I select the sprites and zoom level I want. But when I hit CTRL+Z, not only does it properly undo the last action I did, but it unfortuantely skips back the zoom to default.

This is super annoying. I'm not sure if it's a bug, but it makes drawing super frustrating in Pico8 when using non-standard sizes with the sheet selection tool.

Ports and Accuracy

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 20:08:28 UTC

I find myself in an interesting position I wasn't looking to be in, which is that for fun and curiosity, I started downscaling Adventure Island into a single sprite sheet (as best I can) usable by Pico8 to, with clever coding, reproduce everything from the original game, down to multiple bosses, etc. knowing full well I'd have no intention of actually trying to figure out how to stuff 32 levels, many that are 2-3 screens tall and 32+ screens long, far larger than the built in MAP() memory, blah blah blah list of things i can't do trails off into the distance

And then I stumbled into PicoMap, and was like, 'Oh snap, the thing that sucks trying to figure out and get working, the bane of every designer, the engineering portion, has been basically swept off the table of problems?' So that got me interested in actually completing ALL of the graphics at the very least and probably the music too and map out all the stages, but THEN...something struck me...a position of great power...and thus great responsibility...

I have all of the maps of the original game, the ROM I can hack to start at any stage I need to in order to preserve enemy placements, movement, etc...and yet...I don't actually have to. I could take all this stuff and make a completely different game maybe even in the style of it's Now Productions-produce sequels which play basically nothing like the original. Or I could make an endless runner instead, etc. What I'm saying is that..one, this is a 'fan' project (in quotes because I wouldn't call myself a 'fan' of any incarnation of this game...it's good...but I'd rather play something else) and to some degree, there's historical reference on the line here, especially for a Hudson game and the history of that company's Bee and the odd persistence of trains in the company, but on the other hand, we're in do anything space...

Some of the things I considered while toiling away at the pixels were things like making look like the NES when not in motion but the scrolling is more like the arcade Wonderboy, with some parallax, the stages would be like the NES...or like only using half the stages, ditching ones that repeat too often and hand picking for variety, etc. All things that wouldn't be 'accurate' to the original. I even thought about adding a feature that would sort of egg the player into 'finding the line', making it more obvious. By the way, 'the line' is basically a path through the stage in which you can hold the run button and keep the dpad/stick held to toward the goal, catching every moving platform and enemy at just the right angle so that everything misses you in a dazzling display of early videogaming parkour...basically it's the precursor to platformer speedrunning as a staple of the core gameplay...it's kind of important for that reason, more so than mario, which emphasized a different style of play in which speedrunning was emergent of the community, not a design principle of the developers...of course this is my conjecture. I didn't interview anyone at Hudson or Westone for that matter. I'm just inferring things based on the design decisions in the game that force forward momentum even harder than SMB and the fact they got a 'pro gamer' as the protagonist, who'd be the guy who'd be speed running games at that time before the AGDQ basement party invites went out.

That brings me to something I never even considered as someone who definitely enjoys ports that deviate from the original as much as ones that the authors pride themselves on being accurate as much as they can in one way or another (i.e. the transcode ports of Williams games to the Tandy Color Computer, where they painstakingly changed lines of assempbly from the original source to get it to compile over to a different system) which is what path to take? And the more I think about it with the assets I have, I'm like, 'I've played Adventure Island. It exists, anyone can go check it out...I should do something different because then what is the point of it other than saying 'well, i did that' and getting the 'oh, that's so cool you squeeze that into pico 8 and it's just as annoying as the original blah blah' (assuming, of course, I could even pull of said accuracy).

Going through all of the ports/demakes/inspirations that I can find in the Pico8 library, there's a TON of 'what consitutes a port' discussions to be had. Also, personally, I'd love to retire the word 'demake'. That along with a slew of other 'cutesy gamer jargon', but that's another blogpost I reckon. But back to the ports, there's some that...for instance, I recently commented on a SmashTV port in progress that appeared to be abandoned long before I stumbled into it (which, sadly, is true of a lot of projects i thought look promising I keep finding) and they were going to add a reload mechanic into it. I made joking fuss about it because frankly it's a fun project someone's doing and their instincts and ideas are not universal, nor mine. It did, however, come after I was already sort of having mild anxiety about what to do with all the Adventure Island stuff as the more I played with the map editor and saw how crazy it could morph the assets I made, it was hard not to start doing wildly not-original-game stuff. And I stopped and went, "This isn't adventure island anymore if I do that..."

So what is all this meandering about ports and stuff all about? I don't know. It's just...I find it a weird spot in game making culture where...on the player side, you have folks that swear by a certain 'version' amonst many that all tried to be exactly like one another...but then you have deviations sometimes which players will say is the definitive revision...then on the programming side, you have folks that do ports as an exercise to study solving certain kinds of problems and really the game is just a side effect of that to the other end where maybe the programmer is really tired of copying things all the time and tired of other people doing it to, so they're going to add a little spice to the bland pasta sauce. Of course, obviously I speak not of the copyright issues surrounding this whole thing, just assume that everyone is fine with the aesthetics/naming in general, even if it's WAY in left field comapred to the original (i.e. like a cyberdemon flapping through BFG blasts instead of flappy bird flapping through pipes)...and I'm wondering about folks that seek out ports and play them as well as make them what their reasons and criteria are. This isn't for my own decisions at all, but really is more like...a discussion starter on people's thoughts about this whole slice of games.

For what it's worth, again I hate the term 'demake', just port the game let your choices of the limits be what they are. Demake is like a low key psychological back door to the developer AND PLAYERS to not expect a good or complete game. It's basically saying, 'lulz jokez shitpost gamez' by that term and truly a disservice to some brilliant works that should be called proper ports.

Anyway, some that I think captured the essence of the original game well, but do so in different ways:
Thegder (plays like Thexder almost to a fault, but randomizes levels Rogue Thexder, neat!)
Amadar (Has a nifty title screen, extra music, but otherwise is like a smoother feeling version of the original)
PicoDriller (One of those 'kinda of hard to mess up if you can program the core elements well enough' games done well)
etc.

Also, of note, there's a version of Elite that looks really nice...but I can't play Elite to save my life due to the vicious cycle of 'too opaque to get into and by not getting into it becomes boring and being boring makes it opaque to get into etc.'.

Well...for those who like reading, there's some shit to read. There's a comment button down there if this topic is interesting. I don't have shit to hawk or a game in production to show off. It's just something I think there's enough folks around here with an opinion enough to prod some of them out into the open for my own curiosity's sake.--

(also, I didn't go back and proof read any of this...do point out errors or weird wordings that dont make sense or sound offensively clumsy)

Adventure Island Pico-fied

Mon, 29 Sep 2025 03:19:53 UTC

I suck at coding so if someone wants to take that on, hmu. Otherwise, look forward to this being finished in 18 years.

Mockup Pico-8 Review/News Zine Page

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 03:59:47 UTC

Might do more with this idea. I know there's already a magazine, but I'd be taking a different angle, the gamer angle who wants the maps and strats and the lines of lua to edit to get higher jumping, more lives, etc.

Nico Pico MVS Boot Sequence

Wed, 17 Sep 2025 18:59:00 UTC

nicopico

by hseiken

[Click to Play]

Feel free to use anything in this cartridge for your own purposes, including art and sound. Do not use the code because it is absolutely terrible. Legally you're allowed, though.

Pico Bob Ross

Sun, 04 Jul 2021 21:20:04 UTC

For a color exercise, I did a couple of sketches using pico 8's full 32 color palette. It's not always easy to figure out when to use dithering and when to choose another color. Anyway, if nothing else, this might inspire some folks for their in game graphics. A sun set in a southwester US kinda thing and a more 'rocky mountain' scene during the day.

Neither of these are finished, they're just sketches, mostly working with color combinations.

Overdoing Effects/No Dynamics

Fri, 02 Jul 2021 19:27:39 UTC

One thing I've noticed a WHOLE lot of in pico8 games is screen shake and extreme overabundance of particle effects.

I think these are both useful in providing presentation flourishes and I love them both but, especially with screenshake, some designers seem to want to 'flex' their knowledge of special effects without thinking about the actual point of the effect itself.

I will not pull up any specific examples so as not to offend any one in public or make them feel bad. What I will offer is some advice, and this advice is very generalized, but is a good principle with any kind of creative endeavor. I know some people are thinking at this point I'm going to say 'less is more', but instead, what I want to say is 'consider dynamics'.

So what I mean by this is the peaks and valleys of your presentation, your art, your game, your sound, anything. The idea is that without the quiet, there's no such thing as loud. Without the still, there's no such thing as the movement. Without the weak, there is no such thing as the strong, etc. The idea is that when presenting your game that uses a screen shake, for instance, if literally ever tiny explosion causes a screen shake, then when a boss blows up and it also screen shakes, it's impact has been lessened by the fact every other little explosion causes the screen to shake. If every little tiny flame has a ton of particle effects on it, then when there's a need to dip into particles for a huge explosion with smoke and all that, then it will just look like yet another flame in your game.

And this goes for any kind of gimmick used for presentation, whether it be as simple as 'speed lines', close ups, slow motion (with obvious exception to Super Hot style games!), it makes a huge difference on how the game feels when using special effects and limiting them so that when they do happen, it's like, 'WOW!' or 'WHOA!' or 'OH NO!' Their best uses are for visual underlining of the events on screen.

I hope this makes sense and those who read this will take into consideration how and when to use effects like these for maximum impact and not just 'flex' their programming skill for the sake of it.

Thanks for reading and keep on keepin on!

Using defaults with prejudice

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 08:26:41 UTC

Not even using a full editor block....remember,,,make dual use tiles.

Non Violent Games

Wed, 09 Oct 2019 10:02:03 UTC

One thing I've noticed becoming a little more popular is non-violent gameplay and I really like this trend, even if it's rather miniscule compared to the broader amount of games being made. Violence is a part of our media in general (see the writings of bell hooks for more info) and so it's nice when a game provides different kinds of solutions to obstacles that don't involve 'kicking something else's ass'. Notably, most of these games, though, tend to be in visual novels, but I suspect that there's an infinite amount of possibilities to do non-violent games that aren't simply puzzles or choose your own dating adventure (i'm being sarcastic with the latter, btw) but are still high on action and skill.

I'm just writing this in hopes someone else sees this an possibly thinks of an alternative to the 'kill enemies' approach to gaming. It's been done a billion times (probably literally a billion times at this point) and while I do enjoy a shooty shooty game as I'm an arcade junkie by nature, there's a lot of games I've played that aren't inherently violent and get my palms super sweaty...and yes, I consider abstract games to be of this nature (such as Every Extend, etc.)

If anyone cares to chime in, please do. Again, I'm not making value or moral judgements here, it's just something that I think has great room for exploration thematically within game design and I look forward to being surprised because dude with gun or person that squishes enemies by stomping on them is definitely a crowded genre/concept.

Peace and keep on making games, even if they do involve a little bit of shooty shooty. I'll still be there to play it!

Possible Pico8 Displays

Tue, 08 Oct 2019 21:45:50 UTC

I'm tentatively scouting around for a good OLED display for Pico8 project in the future as a handheld computer (i.e. think Pocket Chip stylee, with full keyboard). I'm not a fan of LCD screens or TFT at all and prefer something that gives off an image that more closely resembles CRT with deep blacks and rich colors. Thus far, I found this, 128x128 color OLED screen.

Does anyone else have any experience with hooking up piZero to OLED? Does it require any kind of specific device driver?

Link to the screen if anyone's interested.
https://www.buydisplay.com/default/serial-spi-1-5-inch-color-oled-display-128x128-graphic-module-ssd1351

Celeste, Celeste...CELESTE!

Fri, 20 Sep 2019 05:29:27 UTC

I don't think anyone will seriously read this, I'm a nobody and I never blog here.

However, it's a tad frustrating that there seems to be an overabundance of Celeste mods within the normal places to release carts which makes me wonder if maybe Pico8 BBS needs a section just for game mods?

I think it would help fix a little of the clutter. I look at what appears to be a new game then after I get into the thread, I find out it's a mod of a game I already played.

It's just something I was thinking about and there's no place on the forum to speak to this so I figured I'd just mention it into the air for it to disappear forever. :)

A Couple of Questions

Wed, 18 Sep 2019 04:57:21 UTC

I apologize I have no code snippets here, it's actually a question about code.

Reading the specs for pico8, there's a 32kb limit. Is this for JUST code? I know that obviously the cart cover shouldn't be counted against any actual program/graphic/sound data, it's just for decoration and distribution, but I am working on a program at the moment, I only have 800 tokens, have used about 1/4 of the sprite sheet, no audio/sound data, and about 64 lines of text in the code...

But I'm reading 15kb already and that seems a little excessive and it's got me spooked in terms of how much further I can take this even though I'm barely using any of the resources.

Is the 32kb for JUST code? Is it 16kb for 'built in data' i.e. graphic memory and 16kb for code?

I'm curious what the actual structure is because I feel like as little data as I have thus far (no cart image taken for this program thus far) is far below 15kb.

Thanks for any help on clarification.

BBS Icon/Header Image Update Broken?

Fri, 27 Jan 2017 23:57:30 UTC

Has anyone else experienced trying to change their icon and blog header and found a broken jpg icon instead? I even tried reverting back and it's not showing...

I guess another question is...do you SEE an icon right now for my avatar? Could be problem on my end too...Been noticing an increasingly invasive Avast as of late, even going so far as to breaking google drive for me when active.

Thanks!

What System Do You Think Of?

Tue, 25 Aug 2015 13:54:11 UTC

I'm curious as to how people look at the Pico8. While it is it's own thing completely unlike any other real console, it does share some similarities to quite a few of them, if changed somewhat still. I myself can't be helped to be reminded of how similar it's sprite capabilities and FPS being locked to 30 and color output are similar to the Atari Lynx and so I tend to think about games I would've loved to have seen on it (though the sounds on the Lynx is way better! lol) .

However, I think Pico8 also does a good job of feeling like a Gameboy Color or Palm Pilot OS3 type device as well, maybe a NGP?

Does anyone else think of the Pico8 as some kind of way to feel like your idea for some console-specific game to come to life or does everyone else kinda just shrug and think 'this is pico8, this isn't anything else at all'?

There's really no purpose to this question, just more of a curiosity about other people making stuff on it...

System 16/Super-scaler demo

Mon, 17 Aug 2015 02:08:18 UTC

System 16/Super-scaler demo alpha

by hseiken

[Click to Play]

Testing out an engine for Super Scaler games. It's still work in progress, much is needed to be worked out with how I ultimately want to handle the slices (tiled 8x8 images or custom stretches and sizes for everything?).

Currently, sorting of the layers is not in there as I'm having trouble figuring out the best way to use FOREACH().

I want to ADD and DEL from the tables that make up the sprites, and then use FOREACH() to do the scaling rather than arbitrary FOR/END loops based on a sprite limit. The idea is that if I can keep adding to the front and deleting from the back, then I don't need to sort anything (i.e. speed increase)...but I can't get it to work!

Halp? :)

FLYING WINDOZE

Sat, 15 Aug 2015 01:41:56 UTC

FLYING WINDOZE 95

by hseiken

[Click to Play]

Screensaver for when you're tired of playing small games. Every button does something. Not all of it will benefit your experience. Most effects will not be immediately noticeable. Simply hold the button for the effect long enough for it to become noticeable. Letting go of the button leaves the setting as it is so don't expect going neutral on either p1 or p2 pads will grant you any savior of frame rate.

This was a small research project for a planned item for the future. Feel free to enjoy the source for your own works. There's also a song in there commented out at the top fo the script if you're bored with flying squares.

Taking the Cart context to logical conclusion

Tue, 27 May 2014 17:52:42 UTC

Okay, so it looks like since I've been away, Voxatron has shifted towards a virtual voxel-based console system, which I think is super cool. And I know the current version is only 0.2.1 and that it's original inspiration is Robotron...however...

It would be nice to set controls to something other than twin stick shooter-based controls (and beyond just mapping stick two to the mouse, etc.)...

I.E. I'm not saying just making it a completely open scripting language based system because that is cumbersome for beginners and such. The current level editor and checkbox style main editing is just fine...however, choosing different control schemes and level-base properties would be welcome. For instance:

Platformer - Controls would be one stick for movement and 2 or 3 buttons for actions, one of them shoot, one of them jump, one of them free assign (i.e. use item?) and have option for the map to 'lock axis' to keep free 360 movement from happening either on x or y axis depending on the person making the stage.

Scrolling Shooter - Controls would be same as platformer, except you have two shooting options and third button could be free assign (i.e. shield activate? Drop bombs?). Autoscroll x/y would be a level option along with 'loop background' as possibility...

RPG - Same as platformer without scroll locking, jump would be optional button.

etc.

That's just some examples of how it could work. In the main voxatron control setups, the user could set their own controller options per type of level that way they don't have to remap them in the middle of a game. It's already setup for all possibilities to their preferences before they play a cart.

I think it'd fairly easy to add these 'base modes' to the editor and even have it on a per level basis that way if someone wanted to go all out with one of those old NES games that have multiple modes (like Bayou Billy or Vice: Project Doom), then these modes are tied to the level itself, not the entire cart.

Anyone have comments on this? Yay/Nay?

ANSItron..?

Mon, 27 May 2013 14:03:00 UTC

In the spirit of Voxatron, I created ANSITron for Petitcom on Nintendo DSi. Here's a short video of me trying to play it through an iPod screen and keep from dying and keep the game in center frame. Hint: The results are me playing extremely bad! Basically, it's Robotron done in ANSI characters available stock in Petitcom, thus really 'blocky' movement of everything. There's only 4 kinds of enemies and 10 specific level designs before it generates random levels until you get a game over. 3 of the enemies (Green, Yellow and Red) are destructible. The Grey enemies are not. They wander around seeking to destroy diamonds, which are your bonus points (and each one you collect doubles in points, so grabbing as many as you can without dying will net you some extra men!). The 3 destructible enemies just move towards you faster and faster. Depending on their color, they take up to 3 hits to destroy. If you touch anything other than a diamond, you lose a life. My highest score was around 500k and I got to the 13th level. There is a bug that causes it to crash randomly and I could not find it because it doesn't show up until after about 30 games...very hard to track!

At any rate, the download link to the QR codes is in the description if you have Petitcom. If you have a DSi/3DS, you should check out Petitcom, it's a neat little mini dev kit available in Nintendo eStore.

I've got other projects in the works for it, but this one is actually finished. :)

Video of ANSITron in action
Download ANSITron for Petit Computer

PC-88 pixelling...

Tue, 14 May 2013 17:28:26 UTC

I like the way PC88 coloring forces creative dithering...

I took an outline someone else did and attempted the same sort of coloring style...this doesn't have 'tall pixels' but does follow the 8 colors only scheme of PC-88.

I used D-Pixed and layers using it's built in dithering patterns, alternating color/transparent spots in the two colors available.

This one was started from scratch. No intention of finishing it but uses tall pixels and was done using GRAFX2.

It's fun playing around with these methods of coloring...feels almost like weird printing press with CYMK style coloring methods...

Save format?

Fri, 22 Mar 2013 01:02:51 UTC

Hi, I know this question is not really related to voxatron but in a way it is...

I noticed at the bottom of the PNG save files is some 1bit noise that is likely monster/event data.

I'm working on a program in PetitCom for Nintendo DS and have run into an issue where I have massive amounts of data I need to convert to an image in order to save and load it but I can't think of how to do this properly and have all the data save in the alloted space of the image (256x192x256).

To be in more detail, I am trying to save map data. For each map, there's 32x24 tiles. For each tile, there's a 3 digit pointer for the image, a pair of 2 digit pointers for colors of the tile to be used, and several other 1 digit pointers for various other tile properties. Take each of these and multiply it x2 minus the tile graphic and colors. So you're looking at approximately, if they were all put together in a single string, about 32 characters ('m just using 32 to make it easier to work with in the whole powers of 8 world).

Now what's the best way to convert this data into pixels? I'm racking my brain and can't seem to figure out how it's done, which is why I'm asking here because you seem to have figured it out on your own. I'm thinking, though that a lot of your data is binary to begin with whereas each piece of data I'm working with for the tile is arbitrary to the data itself...i.e. for the tiles I have CONVEYOR which has value of 0-5 and another property is HEIGHT which can be 0-9...

so can't quite figure out how to do this...any insight on converting this kind of thing into an image would be helpful. Ultimately, I'd like to stack all of that data into a single pixel since I have option for 256 colors instead of just black or white, but any advice I'll definitely take.

Thanks for the help!