First game I made in pico 8 for ld39. Released under General public license v.3
Feedback, tips and tricks are definitely welcomed!
PS The ai is definitely not stupid and can't be effectively abused until there are too many of them. Who is more powerful now huh?
2 comments
I was playing around with loops and learning exactly how iterators work and stumbled across this...
When we write the following:
for k,v in pairs(t) do ... end |
In regular lua it is identical in function to writing this:
for k,v in next,t do ... end |
Because that's what pairs(t) returns: the builtin next() function, which iterates over the hash table that underlies lua tables, and t.
In PICO-8, we don't have direct access to next(), but we can get it:
next=pairs(any table, doesn't matter) |
Once done, we've spent 5 tokens getting it. However, the "in next,t" form of the loop is one token shorter (and two characters). So if you convert more than 5 loops, you're saving.
I know it's minor, but I know some of you end up scrimping and saving for single tokens, so I thought I'd pass it on. Um. Enjoy? ;)
@zep: any chance we could just get next() available directly?
0 comments
In Lua, long comments using --[[ / ]] cannot be nested: another opening --[[ in there will just be ignored. So the following code will print 2 in Lua, and 1 in PICO-8:
a=1 --[[ [[]] a=2 --]] print(a) |
This is actually a funny way to detect whether you’re running inside PICO-8 :-)
print("running in ".. --[[[[]]
"lua!") --]] "pico-8!")
|
1 comment
Tried to incorporate everything from the 16-gif tutorial + dug into some music stuff
Time to add intro and proper game over screen
0 comments
This is the same as the player below, except it's illustrating a way to link multiple animations using cutaways. Normally you would need to account for each shape in a previous frame in the new frame as they are intended to 'animate'. That can be used for interesting effects, like the cat gif below that has words transition from Japanese to Meownese. But using this structure allows you to more traditionally link completely unrelated scenes so they will be played in a sequence, before returning to the main program state.
11 comments
On Windows 10, if the mouse cursor is all the way on the left or right of the screen (so it's not visible), scrolling does nothing visually. However, the moment my mouse comes back on the screen, the editor jumps to where it would have visually scrolled to had my mouse been on the screen. Here's a gif of what's happening. (When the mouse goes off the screen, I'm scrolling up and down.)
0 comments
Looking for thoughts, suggestions on tightening up the gameplay and feel.
Rules:
Match 3 or more tiles in any direction on the bottom game board
3: 50 points
4: 250 points
5: 1000 points
Score multiplier for quick matching.
You can hold 5 tiles at once.
Extra drop at 1000 points
Additional colors introduced every 1000 points
Controls:
Down arrow to speed up drops
X to drop a tile
if you lose you can reset the cart
Todo:
Need a better game over sound.
Need to fix some bugs with the matching algorithm
(Try this pattern:
__X _X_ XX_ |
)
3 comments
NOTE: Not playable here due to cartridge swapping.
Only the menu is here due to level data on other carts.
10 carts in use with this alpha release.
A fully-playable HTML export is on my itch.io page here:
https://juanitogan.itch.io/landing-party-of-legend
Landing Party of Legend
"Dead people are going to die."
Are you an awesome enough starship captain to direct your landing parties through the perils of nine mysterious worlds?
Welcome to Landing Party of Legend, a strategy adventure game of campy, red-shirt-style attrition. You and several other famous and notorious people from history have escaped your captors and are trying to make it back to Earth (without too many casualties) so that the world may know your tale.
4 comments
I've been using PICO-8 to prototype a potential game for the Commodore 64. It's mostly testing out the graphics and exporting the tiles, map and sprites to asm source code. In the end having the wrong palette made things too confusing for me.
So I bring you PICO-64:
It is just PICO-8 with the palette changed into that of the VIC-II, the graphics chip of the Commodore 64.
On OS X the palette that PICO-8 is using is in the binary PICO-8.app/Contents/MacOS/pico8.dat file. Just search and replace to change. I used macvim and the Tools/Convert to HEX and Convert Back.
These colors:
1d2b53 7e2553 008751 ab5236 5f574f c2c3c7 fff1e8 ff004d ffa300 ffec27 00e436 29adff 83769c ff77a8 ffccaa |
Needs to be changed into these (Pepto's VIC-II palette):
ffffff 68372b 70a4b2 6f3d86 588d43 352879 b8c76f 6f4f25 433900 9a6759 444444 6c6c6c 9ad284 6c5eb5 959595 |
To overcome the small screen I have been using PICO-8's mouse feature to scroll around a 320x200 pixel screen. Not optimal, but still usable.
If you try this out and start hacking binary files, don't blame me if something breaks!
10 comments
Working on a game for LOWREZJAM 2017 and I'm running into some issues with getting the background to scroll up to simulate movement while still maintaining the player's position.
Here is the current issue I'm encountering: 
My issue is arising from the camera moving up along the drawn map and snapping back to the bottom when it reaches a certain y value. That works fine for the background but I'm not sure how to get the player to maintain their y position when the map snaps back to the bottom.
The code I've written is as follows:
function _init()
--renders game at 64x64
poke(0x5f2c,3)
cls()
--creates variable t to store timer info later in code
t=0
--establishes boundaries of the level
level={
w=64,
h=250,
cy=0
}
cam_x=0
cam_y=0
player = {
sp=1,
x=28,
y=50,
h=100,
t=0,
imm=false
}
end
function _update()
--autoscrolling code
--moves both the level/background and the player at the same speed, to simulate movement
if level.cy<level.h-64 then
level.cy-=2
player.y-=2
end
--statement that will trigger invincibility frames
--inactive atm
if player.imm then
player.t += 1
if player.t >30 then
player.imm = false
player.t = 0
end
end
--timer and statement that flickers back and forth between sprites to simulate movement
t=t+1
if(t%8<3) then
player.sp=1
else
player.sp=2
end
--basic movement code
if btn(0) then player.x-=1 end
if btn(1) then player.x+=1 end
if btn(2) then player.y-=1 end
if btn(3) then player.y+=1 end
end
function _draw()
cls()
--camera that follows level's movement
--also keeps player on screen
camera(0,level.cy)
if level.cy<-80 then
level.cy=0
player.y=50
end
--draws map, extended to -100 to allow for longer stretch of road
map(0,0,0,-100,12,63)
--draws player car
spr(player.sp,player.x,player.y,.75,2)
end
|
5 comments
I thought people might be interested. https://itch.io/jam/lowrezjam2017
It started a few days ago but it's running until the 17th so you haven't lost too much time yet. Lowrezjam games are 64x64 but you can get this in Pico-8 by doing a poke(0x5f2c,3).
I'm working on a pirate sailing adventure. I've got sailing around working ok, working on disembarking so you can walk around islands to look for treasure. Here's my progress so far:
Anyone else want to share?
9 comments
The += operator seems to be implemented using some sort of string search and replace preprocessing. But there is a bug in there that eats the character just after the statement. Here is an example:
a=0 a+=(1)ba=42 print(a)print(ba) |
I would expect this to print 1 and 42 but it actually prints 42 nil. I believe this is because the b from ba=42 is removed, thus replacing the next statement with a=42.
Edit: here are some more problems with the += operator.
This code will print 1 despite the syntax error (trailing comma):
a=0 a+=1, print(a) |
And if we add a space before the comma, this code will print 0 (the increment isn’t actually done):
a=0 a+=1 , print(a) |
This will print 1 and nil for incomprehensible reasons:
a=0 b=0 a, b+=1 print(a) print(b) |
Edit: yet another problem; syntax validation seems to be restricted to the first line, so this will not work:
-- This will not work
a += b +
c
-- But this will work:
a += b
+ c
|
Edit: the above problem will silently create bugs, for instance:
4 comments
my turn to be that whiner guy I guess but here we go:
is there really a point to limiting compressed code size in html exports?
in my understanding exporting to html is a one-way street anyway, so why not just have the same limits as the exe? (of course I'm only asking this because I'm finding it really annoying and unfunny right now)
9 comments
The world is running out of power. Some energy crisis or another, I don't know. Anyhow, an old lightning rod atop Mount Olympus runs straight into the power grid; the only way to save everyone is to channel the heavens' fury atop the mountain.
In other words, send a guy up to disrespect Zeus: the one, the only.
- Journey through a secret mountain complex full of traps, because climbing is just too hard for our intrepid hero!
- Press buttons to open doors!
- Totally come back alive from this well-planned mission!
- Shout profanities at a god!
CONTROLS:
- Arrow Keys: Move
- Z/C: Jump/Walljump
- X/V: Use
TIPS:
- When hanging off a wall, move into it to slow down. Don't move if you just want to fall!
- Don't give up!
- There are 5 levels.
Made solo in 72hrs for the Ludum Dare 39 Jam event.
1 comment
Hi all,
I'm considering using Pico-8 to make a music video. I do have coding experience. Just a couple questions before I decide to pony up the $15.
-
Is Pico-8 appropriate for short videos, as opposed to games? Have you seen this?
-
Is there a demo version I can try before paying? I looked around but couldn't find one.
-
Is there a way to trigger a Pico-8 program concurrently with a separate (i.e. non-8-bit) audio track?
- My video is based on the periodic table, and I don't think I can quite fit the whole thing width-wise with 128 pixels. I understand the 128x128 is a hard limit. Does anyone know of something similar that's a bit (no pun intended) bigger? 256x256 would definitely be enough, even 192x192.
Thanks very much,
Xave
5 comments
You're the main operator at the Powarvester, one of our spaceships spread over the universe to gather power from local resources. Collect at least 1 gigawatt before moving to next area. The Powarvester has different modes that all need power, so use them wisely!
Use arrow to move target, C to fire Powarvester and X to change Powarvester mode. You can restart or skip area with the Enter menu.
Hints:
1 comment
