Pocket Platoon

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 09:55:09 UTC

Pocket Platoon

by donbattery

[Click to Play]

A party game for up to 4 buddies

This game features:

Local multiplayer for 4 players
3 game modes (PvE, PvP and PvPvE)
Infinite random generated maps (3 different planes: Earth, Void and Ruins with 9 possible color schemes)
Pixel perfect terrain destruction
2 power-ups (Med Kit and Weapon Box)
2 traps (Land Mine and Acid Barrel)
10 unique weapons
melee combat
techno squids

Controls

Player1 and Player2 can share a keyboard
Player1 - Player4 can use any SDL compatible gamepad / controller with at least 6 buttons

Move horizontally with Left and Right
Use your jetpack with O
Aim in 8 directions, shoot with X
If the end of your weapon is inside a wall, X performs a wall-punch
If you, or the end of your weapon is touching another object, X performs a melee attack

Objects

Med Kit
Every soldier has 10 HP by default. You can only pick up a Med Kit when your HP is below 10. Picking up a Med Kit will restore your HP to 10.

Weapon Box
You get a Pistol by default. Picking up a Weapon Box will change your weapon to a random weapon which is not a Pistol, and not the one you are currently carrying.

Land mine
Stepping on a Land Mine will activate it

Acid Barrel
Watch out for Acid Barrels!

Techno Squid (Weapon: Lazer Melee: Cyber Tentacles)
Vicious machine spirit risen from the radioactive ruins of civilization, hunting for the remains of life to destroy

Main Menu

Players can join at any stage of the game, by pressing either O or X
After each battle, all players are disconnected, and needs to re-connect for the next battle
Once connected, navigate in the menu with Up and Down
Select menu options with Left and Right
Submit the menu with O or X

Mode controls the game mode:

War is the PvE mode - there is no friendly fire
Arena is the PvP mode - there are no techno squids
Chaos is the PvPvE mode - everyone is for themselves, and soldier kills scores you 2 points

Time sets the length of the battle in minutes

Boxes controls the amount of Med Kits and Weapon Boxes spawned
Traps controls the amount of Land Mines and Acid Barrels spawned
Bots controls the strength of the invading machine forces
Enter the Wastelands will open the Map Menu

Map Menu

Pressing O or X on any menu option will generate a new map with the current settings
Density controls the air/wall ratio
Shape controls how open the map is
Fabric controls the strength of the map, each plane has 3 color schemes
Terraform will just generate a new map
Enter the Battle will generate a new map if there is none, and start the game
Back to Base will bring us back to the Main Menu

In Game

Race against time to collect as much points as possible
Killing a soldier or a techno squid will score you one point
In War mode you cannot kill other soldiers
In Arena mode there are no techno squids
In Chaos mode a soldier kill scores you 2 points
If a techno squid, a Land Mine or an Acid Barrel kills you, you lose one point
You also lose one point if you kill yourself
If you die, you respawn in three seconds

Arsenal

Weapon      Damage       Burst   Magazine  Fire-rate  Reload-time
Pistol      2.8 - 3.2        1          8       2.72          1.5
Knife       6 - 9            1          1        1.3         0.75
Bolter      0.9 - 1.1        1         35         10            2
Shotgun     0.9 - 1.3        5          5          2         1.83
Lazerifle   6 - 7            1          4        2.4         1.83
Rocketeer   7 - 8            1          1        0.5            2
Flamer      0.5 - 0.8        3         50          6          1.6
Granadeer   4 - 6            1          5          1            2
Orber       2 - 3            1          1          1            1
Molter      2.5 - 3          3          3          2         1.25

Knife can be thrown and stick to the ground, your melee attacks deals 3X damage, when you are carrying a knife
Rockets will lock on the first available target in sight
Flames has a chance to burn trough terrain
Grenades are bouncing off the terrain
Orber blobs are going trough terrain, dealing additional area damage
Molter blobs are sticking to the terrain, and detonate over time

Credits

First of all I would like to thank zep for creating PICO-8!

I would also like to thank Gruber Jam for composing the music Space Lizards and making it royalty free! Although this is a really catchy chip-tune, it can get repetitive over some time. You can turn off the music separately from the sound, in the PICO-8 pop-up menu.

I would like to thank the PICO-8 community (here, on YouTube, on Reddit, on Discord) for providing learning-materials, tutorials, snippets, tips and tricks.

Special thanks to BeastPete for developing the original idea with me.

the game is also available on itch.io

simple terminal implementation

Tue, 01 Apr 2025 09:53:00 UTC

A simple terminal implementation for 251 tokens (I'm pretty sure you can find some clever ways to reduce this), for your dev tools.

Currently I'm working on some editors for my game, I had to implement mouse controls, buttons and layout. However I have missed a crucial part: text input.

I have looked inside the community wiki and found out how to read the keyboard buffer. I have made this simple terminal which I'm really satisfied with, and I thought maybe it is worth to share. Nothing fancy just a shell ready to interpret whatever command you type in and hit enter.

function new_terminal(text_color, bg_color, error_color)
  local t = {}
  t.history,
  t.buffer,
  t.t_col,
  t.bg_col,
  t.err_col,
  t.commands,
  t.append,
  t.render 
  = 
  {},
  "",
  text_color or 11,
  bg_color or 0,
  error_color or 8,
  { cls = function(_ENV) history = {} end },

  function(_ENV, str, err)
    for line in all(split(tostr(str), "\n")) do
      add(history, { s = line, c = err and err_col or t_col }, 1)
    end
  end,

  function(_ENV, x, y, h)
    -- while there is a character in the keyboard buffer
    while stat(30) do
      -- read the next character
      local c = stat(31)
      -- backspace
      if c == "\b" then
        buffer = sub(buffer, 1, #buffer - 1)
        -- enter
      elseif c == "\r" then
        -- prevent pico-8's pop-up window
        poke(0x5f30, 1)
        append(_ENV, buffer)
        local parts = split(buffer, " ")
        buffer = ""
        local p1 = parts[1]
        if p1 ~= "" then
          if commands[p1] then
            local res, code = commands[p1](_ENV, parts)
            if (res) append(_ENV, res, code)
          else
            append(_ENV, "unknown command: " .. p1, 1)
          end
        end
      else
        buffer = buffer .. c
      end
    end

    rectfill(x, y, 127, y + h * 6, bg_col)
    -- you can remove these but then the terminal will look a bit ugly
    x += 1
    y += 1
    local lines = min(#history, h - 1)
    for i = lines, 1, -1 do
      print(history[i].s, x, y + (lines - i) * 6, history[i].c)
    end
    print(">" .. buffer .. "_", x, y + lines * 6, t_col)
  end

  return setmetatable(t, { __index = _ENV })
end

-- example usage
function _init()
  -- turn on the dev kit so we can access the keyboard
  poke(0x5f2d, 0x1)

  term = new_terminal()

  -- attach a command to the terminal
  term.commands.hello = function(_ENV, args)
    return "hello" .. (args[2] and " " .. args[2] or "") .. "!"
  end

  -- attach a command with multiline results
  term.commands.ls = function()
    return "a\nb\nc"
  end

  -- attach a command with possible error results
  term.commands.ok = function(_ENV, args)
    local ok = rnd() < .5
    return ok and "success" or "error", not ok
  end
end

function _draw()
  cls(1)
  -- draw the terminal starting from y, y with height in rows (each row is 6 pixel tall)
  -- the terminal always spans to the right edge of the screen
  term:render(0, 22, 10)
end

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