https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/thewebster/blaze-miniature-powerful-hackable-display-with-tou
"Blaze is a miniature, high-res 1.6" 240x240 display with capacitive touch, a powerful 120MHz Cortex M4 micro with GPIO and storage."
3 comments
TL;DR - consider making pico-8 free for very inexpensive hardware, as a means to spur community growth and get it into the hands of the next generation.
So - this is easy for me to suggest, it costs me nothing.
I loves me some pico-8. Part of why I am so fond of it is it puts me back in my early teens, on my Atari 400, writing random silly games for the sheer joy of it. (I was fortunate enough to have parents able, and willing, to gamble nearly a grand on what amounted to a toy computer for their kid) But it has other great features - it is small enough to be learnable, it actively encourages sharing of code, and dammit - it's fun. It would be awesome if all kids had that same opportunity. Hold that thought for a moment.
One bit that I would love to see is an actual hardware realization. Yeah, I can play my stuff on OS X, but I crave a handheld, maybe something GBA or Nintendo DS flavored in terms of size. I don't want to carry around a laptop to play pico-8 games, and kids don't really have that option, until you maybe have an iOS/Android version.
I have a half-baked idea that it would be cool to take a Pi zero and do the fiddly work to make that happen; It is not impossible that the costs for such a project might get into the $30 total range, and for a kid to be able to have a handheld game console that they can make their own games on self-hosted, and trade the results - I can't help but think that would be phenomenal.
So - mixing that all together in a bucket:
What I was going to suggest is this; to encourage this sort of thing, offer a reduced (ideally free) license for pico-8, but only for hardware costing less than $N - where N is somewhere around 20 USD, give or take. You would end up included, by default, on EVERY danged distro ever for those bits, and usage would spread like wildfire, especially to schools and to kids who have savvy parents that are simply too poor to run bigger hardware. Also, it would spur development of inexpensive low-end linux-capable hardware to host it - "open source" handhelds, with proper controls and screens pixel-for-pixel suited to run pico-8.
I am not an business guy - but I would think what you lose on direct sales would be made up for by skyrocketing use, and more direct sales from old guys like myself who see that console, and want to develop for it, but would rather do so on our actual desktops.
Just thinking out loud.
2 comments
I'm playing with lighting effects to create a more moody atmosphere. Frame rate just isn't quite up to snuff though.
10 comments
Hi All!
Myself and a buddy made a game for the Global Game Jam, first time using Pico-8.
The theme of the jam was "Ritual" and we decided to focus on your morning rituals before you go to work.
It's a little rough around the edges but would love to hear what you thought.
Thanks!
3 comments
I've been learning Pico-8 and Lua a little and I'm wondering: is Lua object oriented at all? It would be really useful to know whether there is some way of making classes and objects, or is it all just functions?
4 comments
Apprentice yourself to the Great Witch of the realm & help her complete a ritual of dire importance. Inspired by Rick and Morty, I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, The Walking Dead, and games by Spiderweb Software.
4 comments
Made for the Global Game Jam 2016
Complete the ritual to open the door.
arrows move
z or x resets the level if you get stuck
9 comments
Hello guys,
I'm new to Pico-8, but not new to programming in general. Before, I used Codea, Love2D, Corona, Gideros, Polycode and tried some other frameworks. I managed to code some, more or less, simple apps (mostly for drawing/animating stuff) but no games at all. I want to change that, because I love games and the good ol' days! Pico seems to be quite accessible. - With all its constraints it might be even the right tool and should be able to hold me back from overestimate myself. It might also help me to understand the hardware side of things a little better. (Which is very important to me.)
As of right now, I have a hard time to wrap my head around everything, since I was used to have a handful of helpful little functions, like tweens, meshes, etc. Also the lack of math knowledge seems to fight me also, as I now have to write all these function myself. But I think I get there slowly...
Since ever I dreamed to make a small rpg. Something like Pokemon or a some sort of a [b]survival game
0 comments
Hello guys,
I'm new to Pico-8, but not new to programming in general. Before, I used Codea, Love2D, Corona, Gideros, Polycode and tried some other frameworks. I managed to code some, more or less, simple apps (mostly for drawing/animating stuff) but no games at all. I want to change that, because I love games and the good ol' days! Pico seems to be quite accessible. - With all its constraints it might be even the right tool and should be able to hold me back from overestimate myself. It might also help me to understand the hardware side of things a little better. (Which is very important to me.)
As of right now, I have a hard time to wrap my head around everything, since I was used to have a handful of helpful little functions, like tweens, meshes, etc. Also the lack of math knowledge seems to fight me also, as I now have to write all these function myself. But I think I get there slowly...
Since ever I dreamed to make a small rpg. Something like Pokemon or a some sort of a [b]survival game
4 comments
This is my work in progress for global game jam 2016. I decided to go solo this year and give pico8 a whirl. You have to use the available weapons and work with your friends to survive the onslaught. The gun can kill monsters, but their angry spirits will come after you. Use the torch to exorcise the body and banish the spirit. The medikit can revive fallen teammates.
2 comments
-up and down arrows control character
-character has a fan that clears clouds away
This is a game conceived during Ludum Dare 34. I didn't finish it by the deadline, but I used the two themes presented during the game jam: "growing" and "two buttons". This is the first game I've completion. Let me know what you think!
1 comment
Every day, Professor Miggles goes to work. And every day he snoozes in bed until the last possible moment. To keep the points you get for snoozing, make sure to head out in time without forgetting to put your trousers on.
v1.1: Fixed high score bug, and added persistent high score (when played from pico-8)
13 comments
So, it's 1am and this is what is keeping me up.
Boot up pico-8. Bask in it's glory. Hit esc to jump into the editor.
Type something, mess with mouse. Text selection. Go to icon editor, and the mouse is your main tool. So - clearly the pico-8 fantasy hardware supports a mouse.
Why can't my programs read the mouse? Possible answers:
1) The editors are "special" (do not like! seems unfair somehow.)
2) You can, it's just hidden or undocumented (ooh)
3) Because the editors are not written in the language we are using and have special access (probably the real answer, but very unsatisfying. breaks the illusion/metaphor of fantasy hardware.)
Or maybe something else? I noticed that you can poke in values to monkey with screen modes; if there were peeks somewhere that read the mouse x/y and buttons that we have yet to discover, that would be just kinda awesome.
If there are not - would be super cool to see them someday. Even if they were slipped in quietly for the community to accidentally discover via experimentation. Just sayin.
-- Your Friend Biggles
4 comments
Introducing the Alpha Version of "Crazy Craftbeer Tapper" - a game about serving craft beer.
Keep your customers happy and your counter clean!
TODO:
- fix: reset after internal restart
- half implemented: introduce level with "craft beer nerds"
0 comments
Hello everyone,
Does anyone know of an easy way to export music from one cart and import it into another? I got someone to make some music (thanks Pizza!) for a game I'm nearly finished but I can't really think of a way to get it into my cart.
I know copying and pasting the data to/from the .p8 file as text works in theory, but I already have sound effect/music in my game, so I know they won't really transfer properly because the indexes for the sound effects will be off.
Any advice would be much appreciated! Thanks!
5 comments
I've grown quite fond of Pico-8, and am hoping to use it in a future Ludum Dare. To familiarize myself with the tool, I created an enhanced version of my LD33 entry.
Tapping Z and X at the same time toggles the music.
All feedback is welcome. If you find a level particularly difficult, please let me know.
Update 8/10/16 - Finally got around to fixing a bug with the tank.
Update 9/28/20 - Fixed a typo. Also, updated the behavior of the arrow to better indicate the player's off screen position.
32 comments
I just missed the Screensaver Jam, but this is in the same spirit. A simple, silly thing—the cart creates endless permutations of the artist Josef Albers' 'Homage to the Square' paintings. Of course 'endless' meaning variations of sixteen colors and four composition types.
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This is not coded in Pico 8 ( I had no time, and Construct 2 feels way more comfortable ), but the music is tracked in Pico8 and the graphics are made in Pico8 and fit in a cartridge.
A demo for #screensaverJam
2 comments
