#lexaloffle

[highly-nonexistent]

ilo sitelen pona!!

ilo Pikowe (Pico-8) la, mi pali e toki lawa ilo tawa ni: sina ken kepeken sitelen pona!! toki lawa ni li kepeken nimi Token 111 taso, li ken ante, li kepeken nimi P8SCII. sina li wile ala kepeken e sitelen Spritesheet !!  ni li pona tawa sina la, o pana e ni tawa jan ante !!

I've made code for Pico-8 that allows you to use sitelen pona!! This code only uses 111 tokens total, is customizable, and uses P8SCII, meaning you won't have to use a single slot in your spritesheet for it!!  If you liked it, please feel free to share!!

https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=52489

https://nonexdog.itch.io/ilo-sitelen-pona

[andymakesgames]

Just posted a bunch of my old #tweetcart projects on the #pico8 bbs!

Really cool to have a place to share source code in a way that compression doesn't totally devour!

[blubadventures]

Hello pico-8!

Welcome to my blob! I mean blog!

Lately I've been messing around with pico-8, a really fun game dev environment created by Lexaloffle Games. I'll be documenting my progress here.

So what's special about pico-8? It's a "fantasy computer" meant to resemble old home computers from the 80's like the Commodore 64. The hardware capabilities of the pico-8 are extremely limited, but these restrictions only exist to breed creativity. Pico-8 also comes with built-in editors for code, sprites, music, and more, so it's actually really easy to make games for it, in spite of the technical limitations.

Here's a basic overview of the pico-8's specs and limitations.

128x128 pixel resolution. Even smaller than a GameBoy screen!

16-color palette, and the colors are all pre-defined. However, there are also 16 "secret" colors you can use... Kind of. I'll make a post about that some other time.

Games are written in the Lua programming language. One cart is limited to a maximum of 8,192 tokens and 65,535 total characters!

4 sound channels

128 8x8 sprites.

One 128x32 tile map.

Enough shared space for either another sprite sheet, another map, or some combination of the two.

Up to 8 controllers, each one having 6 digital buttons and no analog.

See for yourself what kind of cool games people have published for this fun device!

[mogwaipoet]

Look Who's The Shining Two!

I just shipped my PiCoSteveMo game, Look Who's The Shining Two! You can play it on itch or on the Lexaloffle BBS. Splore 'em if you got em! It works great with a controller, good with a keyboard, not-terrible on a phone.

I had two goals in mind for this game. One was doing an extended riff on the tropes of The Shining franchise. The other was a blending of the Zelda style adventure game with the block-pushing puzzle solver. I'm pretty proud of the results.

Most Puzzlescript-style games are very tightly designed, with no extraneous pieces and exactly one solution. I tried a pretty different approach here, more like an immersive sim where there aren't so much "puzzles" as situations that you approach with whatever tools you happen to have on hand.

I saw playtesters discover solutions I didn't think of, which in a block-pusher is typically considered a design failure, so I got to feel like an iconoclast by delighting in it instead.

[jusivthefourth]

Obligatory Introductory Post

Twitter has been my social media platform of choice for the past 6 years but as that trainwreck continues unfolding in slow motion I finally decided to claim a spot here as well.

So hey! If you know me from anywhere else online, it'd probably be from one of these places:

itch.io / Lexaloffle Forums, where I make games and PICO-8 things (like FUZ!)

Twitter, where besides my gamedev stuff I've been posting daily pixel art for 5+ years (and counting) following the prompts from Pixel Dailies*

Cohost, where I mostly cross-post my pixel art

Instagram, which I've basically abandoned but just has some of my pixel art

Trove, a voxel-based MMO I was an active creator and modder for from 2015-2019

Various Discord servers

I go by Jusiv or Jusiv_ just about everywhere so I'm usually pretty easy to spot. I had to make an exception here for some reason, I guess Jusiv was too short.

I also have a personal site: jusiv.me! Check there for info on my projects and even an extensive gallery of my Pixel Dailies submissions!

*You can also find Pixel Dailies themes on Reddit but I don't usually post there as of yet.

[marinamakes]

Game Dev Blog October 8th 2023

October 8th 2023-

I have awoken once more. The days go by as blurs of house-chores, dreams, and work. I'm concerned that doing such similar work from day to day is bad for motivation, it reminds me of my latest unfinished project, "Frogs vs. Ghosts". I will no longer speak its name. It cannot be good for me, or development.

This is the GIF I last posted on Twitter on the 5th.

Moving on from all that, recently I've found myself worried about the future. How will this work out? I've understood for some time I'd have to work a day job in the future, but I'm still for some reason worried. No matter what, I need to ensure that I don't stop development, on this game or in general.

Maybe I should start posting this blog to Reddit or Lexaloffle, and update it instead of using this text file? I'll look for a blog site for a little bit before beginning work. I'll ask Twitter. But maybe I should make art so people actually see it?

Finished in 5 minutes! Well, outlining took about 30 seconds too, but yeah, this is sufficient.

Alright, slow day only about an hour of work, but I spent the last hour finding a good blog spot. I've settled on Tumblr. I want this blog to be relatively on the down-low, so this is good. I want my blog to be easy to make, so this is good. And I'm familiar with social-media platforms, so this is great. I guess this will be my first post??

Should I introduce myself?? Idk...' I'm Marina makes and I make games using Pico-8. I founded the "Pico-View" zine, and have released several games. This is to be my secret blog space. If you recognize me from anywhere be sure to shoot me a text! This month I plan to finish a Halloween release and an article or two. Enjoy!

That seems good. Time to get back to work!

While making the bullets, I giggled with excitement as I was having fun. I notice in the process of creating my games I worry a lot over whether they are fun or not. I think I should cast aside such worries, except when using them to enhance game-play.

My last game, "Robuilder" was severely lacking in several aspects, the most apparent to me was the rushed home-menu and meta-game. I'll explain what the game was... It was a falling-block puzzle game where the goal was to connect arrows on blocks, but the falling of the blocks was completely in your control. Essentially it's a building game where you connect arrows. On top this there were four packs of blocks available... As I was saying the most lacking aspect was the home-menu and meta-game. Each 'game' consists of three rounds. This has no rhyme or reason. On top of this the way you change packs of blocks was unintuitive. Here's a gif...

Overall I want to avoid this with this game by implementing a home menu as soon as the first level is being tested. I'm about to head to bed. Here's progress...

Need to add a muzzle flash on the player and ghost. So sleepy... Hope you guys enjoy this blog! If u do then reassure me in dms or replies or something??

[kiwimadegames]

'Zen Puzzle Garden' (2003) By: Lexaloffle For: PC A geometric puzzle game set in Japanese rock gardens. The goal of each puzzle is to rake all of the sand without turning corners or breaking raked lines. Download it here: https://www.lexaloffle.com/zen.php There was an iPad remake developed by PikPok, but is no longer available.

[loop-feedback-loop]

dev log #1 - space explorers

making a game, little game.

using pico-8, a retro 'fantasy console' that has a built in game building suite.

in this game, you pilot a space ship around a solar system, named - olivander 127, you can visit and explore planets as well as moving around inside your ship

i will be using and referencing pico 8 code from mccolgst's astroid clone on the lexaloffle forum

i will be using the lua programming language with the pico 8 api for all of my code examples

This code is cool.

Instead of - up, down, left, right

it uses:

up as forward

left as turn left

right as turn right

this seems to be the easiest way to have non-sprite game objects that can rotate innside of pico 8

lets talk about how this works...

the foundational idea is a circle and points along that circle

looks like a clock?

what does this depiction of a clock have?

circle

line

center point (bottom of the line)

a point that moves and follows the circle line (tip of the line)

as you see the line "pointing in directions" in whichever direction that the line is facing, the object will move when a forward force is applied, "forward" being whichever direction the line is pointing towards

(this particular example has both linear momentum for the player movement and angular momentum for player rotation)

--code to be input into pico 8--

function _init()

x=64 y=64 dx=0 dy=0 a=0 da=0 r=2+rnd(2) c=5+rnd(3)

end

function _update60()

end

function _draw() cls() circ(x,y,r,c) end

we will start off with this, a mock up of a circle on our canvas.

[andmaybegayer]

The current sequel to flash is Pico-8 and other fantasy consoles, a lot of people who used to work in flash have really gone hard in on fantasy consoles. The Lexaloffle BBS is full of people experimenting with tiny game concepts, but it's more niche, I think because it's easier for kids to get normal full games now. We played flash games because buying a game was expensive, if it was even possible at your local game store. Nowadays you've got free games and Epic hands out a mix of mid and genuinely good PC games every week.

its kind of sad how flash games as an art form just like. totally died. i think i brought this up before and someone mentioned itch.io which is just a whole other thing. like yeah people are still making them but it's a weird niche thing. theres a qualitative difference in the nature of an art form between making it because youre a weird niche artist interested in the particular form vs it just being like, in the air as a natural tool to use to express your vision, yknow? the former isnt worse, but it's different

[pico-8-update]

Orbys by POD

An old classic from the TokyoDemoFest 2016 by castpixel and zep, revitalized recently with new details.

original thread | pouet | youtube

[dw-817-blog]

🎮dw817′s Favorite Pico-8 Games (sorted by stars)

Works in Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, and Opera internet browsers

[firstlevels]

Chocolate Castle, by Joseph White

Info: https://www.lexaloffle.com/choc.php

[8bit-caaz]

State Based Design

Today I’m going to cover the concept of state and how I handle it in PICO-8,

State Based Design is an approach to game development in which you define how an object or group of objects behaves in certain contexts. In the example above, my tetris game has a title menu, in which you can select three options, each of which can take you to different states, the third of which brings you to another menu where you can choose options for how the game state will be initialized.

Tetris was an early game for me, but I found the concept of state based design incredibly helpful when making games, as more complex games have even more complex states. So let’s break down a simpler example, and look at the code.

Here we have a simple menu/title which waits for any button to be pressed before starting the game (which simply moves a pixel in a circle!) In the corner we have a simple statistic display, which you’ll find common in my games. Now let’s look at the code to see what’s happening.

_ichor = { version = '1.0.0', order = {}, modules = {}, update = function() _ichor('update') end, draw = function() _ichor('draw') end, add = function(name,module) _ichor.modules[name] = module return _ichor end, set_order = function(state,order) _ichor.order[state] = order return _ichor end, set_state = function(key) _ichor('destroy') _ichor.state = key _ichor('init') return _ichor end, __call = function(this, call) for key in all(this.order[this.state]) do local module = this.modules[key] if module[call] then module[call](module) end end end, } setmetatable(_ichor,_ichor) _update = _ichor.update _draw = _ichor.draw _ichor .add('cls', { draw = cls }) .add('stats', { info = { function() return 'ichor version '.._ichor.version end, function() return 'state '.._ichor.state end, function() return 'mem '..(stat(0)/2048)..'%' end, function() return 'cpu '..(stat(1)*100)..'%' end, }, init = function(this) menuitem(1,'toggle stats', function() this.show = not this.show end) end, draw = function(this) if this.show then for i, call in pairs(this.info) do local label = call() local y = i*6-5 rectfill(1,y,#label*4+1,i*6+1,0) print(label,2,y+1,7) end end end }) .add('game',{ init = function(this) printh('initializing the game!') this.tick = 0 end, update = function(this) this.tick += .01 end, draw = function(this) pset(sin(this.tick)*10+64,cos(this.tick)*10+64,7) end }) .add('menu',{ update = function(this) if btnp() > 0 then _ichor.set_state('game') end end, draw = function(this) print('press any button to start!',12,64) end }) .set_order('game',{'cls','game','stats'}) .set_order('menu',{'cls','menu','stats'}) .set_state('menu') _ichor.modules.stats.show = true

Now I understand this is larger than my previous examples, but bear with me, it’s less intimidating than one may think. So let’s take this a chunk at a time.

First, we have the table _ichor. This handles state, and is a common staple among games I create. In it are a few more tables, modules will be a table of tables which may contain the methods init, update, and draw. order is also a table, with state names as our keys, and a table as our values, containing key names of our modules to be used when under the corresponding key.

That’s... a mouthful. But again bear with me here. Immediately after initializing _ichor, we bind PICO-8′s update and draw functions to _ichor’s, this is so that we can let _ichor decide what to draw. After that we get into actually using ichor.

The first thing we start doing with _ichor is start adding modules, and we do that using _ichor’s add function. We pass it a name, and a table. this table doesn’t necessarily need to define all of init, update, and draw, but it can. In the first case, we simply provide it draw, and give it cls, which is PICO-8′s internal function for clearing the screen.

Next, we give it a module named stats. This module has a table inside called info, this isn’t used by _ichor, but is used by itself. Because _ichor passes the module to itself when calling init, update, or draw, we have access to itself and can use this info table. In stats we utilize the init function to add a menuitem to PICO-8′s pause menu to toggle stats on and off. We don’t utilize update, because for a true statistics info, we’re gonna want those calls to execute last, in our draw step. so in draw, we do that.

Next is the actual menu and game the user interacts with. I won’t explain this as there’s not much new going on, so let’s skip over to those set_order calls.

The _ichor function set_order takes a state name, and a list of module names. it essentially declares and initializes a state. The table provided executes in that order.

After setting up the order and states, we now set a state in _ichor by calling set_state and passing a state key. _ichor will call init for each module and update its state variable so that they call on update and init.

I’m not entirely sure if I’ve explained this in enough detail but if you’ve got any questions feel free to leave me an ask and I can try to explain anything I’ve really missed.

[sarahbduck]

Toxic Invaders - A PICO-8 Bullet Hell

A few months ago, me and my partner made a really awesome PICO-8 game! Ribbon did the artwork and SFX, and I did the coding and music. We're both super proud of it! We really deepened our bond working on it, it was so much fun.

It's free, and runs in a browser. You can play it on Itch, Newgrounds, or on the Lexaloffle BBS!

[retronator]

Sprite Show for PICO-8

A few months ago Yanik released a neat little tool to aid artists working with PICO-8 (a fantasy console from Lexaloffle). PICO-8 already comes with a built-in sprite editor, so making art is pretty easy to begin with. What Sprite Show adds is previewing animations and basic character controls to test out your sprites in action as fast as possible. This is especially useful, for example, at game jams, so you can start cranking out animations even before your team implements animations in the game itself.

I have to admit the UI is a bit unintuitive to navigate, so make sure you first get used to it, before using it in a time-sensitive situation. 

Another usability issue is that even though Sprite Show was written with PICO-8, it is only available as a standalone app (and Windows only). The tool imports your sprite sheet from a PNG file that you had to previously export from your own copy of PICO-8 (where you actually drew the sprites). This means that any time you want to fix something, you have to go through the whole export-import process again. If Yanik offered a cartridge instead, I can imagine it’d be easier to quickly switch between drawing and previewing your animations.

Still, for the free (or pay what you want) price, Sprite Show might be useful for any of you PICO-8 artists out there. If that is so, you can get it from its itch.io page.

[mft-toyama]

via @lexaloffle

pic.twitter.com/rsmVx1Bbs1

— zep @ lexaloffle (@lexaloffle) February 26, 2018