pico-8-update

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Joseph White (AKA zep), creator of PICO-8, gave this talk in 2018 at NYU Game Center.

In it he explains what PICO-8 is to newcomers, and also talks about his creative process during the design of the fantasy console among many other insightful topics.

Recommended watch for any PICO-8 enthusiast.

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RPi + Kano OS + PICO-8 workstation

Last year, game dev Dylan Bennet tweeted about this project he was working on: the setup of several workstations to teach kids to develop games with PICO-8.

He’s using Raspberry Pi’s with Kano OS installed (from Kano PCs). The monitor is a 10.1″ LCD screen with the RPi attached on the back.

The setup looks smart and cool, specially for kids learning the ropes!

be sure to check Dylan Bennet’s twitter feed and other endeavors, like his PICO-8 Game Development Zine and itch.io page.

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Raspberry Pi PICO case

A few years ago, a user by the name of gradualgames  posted this photo on the BBS of a Raspberry Pi case customized with a 3D printed logo of PICO-8.  Simple, but extremely cool!

original BBS thread

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Dank Tomb

This game has to be one of the most polished and impressive creations in the history of PICO-8.

Jakub Wasilewski (AKA krajzeg) developed an engine of sorts for the lighting effects in the game, that was documented in real time in social media, as progress was made. It was very insightful to watch at the time.

Since the developer put the game in a pay-what-you-want model through itch.io, we will not embed it here, but let you choose to name your price if you want to play it and support him. Note that the full download has additional goodies like a map, journal, etc.

If the incredible lighting effects weren’t enough, the handling of the pico-8 palette will convince you this is on another level. But it’s not all looks: The game has some very interesting puzzles, and a save game feature reminiscent of older console game methods.

For all of this, Dank Tomb gained a spot in the PICO-8 Hall of Fame. Be sure to check out the rest of Jakub’s carts and games, for there is something to learn and admire in them as well!

If you are interested in the history of this game’s evolution, it is all well documented in krajzeg’s twitter timeline, starting in Jan 2017.

Jakub also wrote a very insightful article over at hackernoon.com split into 4 parts, about the realtime lighting effects and other game design considerations for Dank Tomb, which we cannot recommend enough.

Dank Tomb @ itch.io | @krajzeg | original bbs thread

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Neon by Lucatron

A very simple demo on first sight, until you realize that PICO-8 has no native “chroma aberration” effect, and that was made in code. 

It’s a very neat trick of using many colors to emulate the mixture in luminance of the primary RGB values.

And it also has one of the most catchy chiptunes ever made on PICO-8. What’s not to love?

original bbs thread | @lucatron

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Best PICO-8 Handheld ?

There are many projects, hacks and devices that support PICO-8, either out-of-the-box or with some tinkering required.

The ClockworkPi Gameshell is one of those, and one of the best... Or not. That depends on your needs and your budget.

As with many other consoles meant for hackers and tinkerers, the Gameshell has its pros and cons.

Krystian Majewski from the Lazy Devs Academy already did a very thorough review of the Gameshell specifically for PICO-8 usage, so you better watch that video:

You should judge for yourself if the console suits your needs and if it is a good candidate for THE BEST PICO-8 HANDHELD. 

In our opinion, the cons outweigh the pros: It’s very expensive, and the lack of a keyboard (in contrast to the PocketCHIP) means you can only use it to play games in portable mode... And that’s a deal-breaker for us. But if you are looking for a handheld to only play your PICO-8 games while developing in another platform, then the control scheme is ideal.

Also, if you are an emulation or retro-gamer fan, the Gameshell seems to be much more capable than the aforementioned CHIP.

The assembly-kit / DIY / easily hackable nature of the Gameshell is also a fun aspect of it, but if that is useful or just a gimmick is another thing that you’ll have to judge for yourself.

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Debugging tips - part 1

This will be a series of posts for coders looking for tips on debugging their carts on runtime.

Let’s start with the basics...

Essentials: RESUME

This might be very basic knowledge, but it surprised me when I found out: If you press Escape after running your game with RUN, you are thrown back to the command line; If you use the command RESUME, the game will continue running where it left off, as if it was just paused (well, kind of- it calls a new frame in the _UPDATE() game loop).

You can run code in the prompt as usual, but here is the tip: you can use the variables with the values as they were left by the game state when it was interrupted. This means you can PRINT their values or modify them and resume to test without editing the actual code. You can change values to quickly test things without having to run the game from the beginning up to that point. Neat!

Old School: PRINT() everywhere

An old time classic, fill the code with PRINT statements to see if that part is reached in runtime, or to see the value of a variable as it changes in realtime.

A good way to do this in a game loop is to save the variables you want to debug in another variable in your _UPDATE() loop, and print them in your _DRAW() loop.

You can even get fancy and save them in a table, to then print them in multiple lines, having a sort of debug watcher on a corner of your screen.

Community made tools

There are different solutions made by members of the pico-8 community that range from simple to complex. This is a list of PNG carts and their respective links to their BBS threads (remember that you can download these images as .p8.png files and load them in your pico-8 machine!)

Let’s have a look:

VDMP: var_dump to “pretty print” a table. bbs thread

Die n’ Dump: stop execution and “pretty print” a variable. bbs thread

Variable Inspector: Adds a popup to your game that lets you traverse complex tables like an unfoldable tree. Amazing! bbs thread

Debugging Tools: feature-rich debugging hud. bbs thread

Super Debug Menu: Press the tilde key during runtime to show an overlay with lots of debugging and performance info. Superb! bbs thread

...And that is all for this part of Debugging Tips. I will be surely trying out all of these snippets and tools and pick a favorite!

In the next part we will be looking at performance testing and CPU profiling. Cheers!

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Celeste

Not only one of the absolute classics, but also one of the most well known pico-8 games outside of the community, Celeste is a hardcore puzzle platformer that combines beautiful style, addictive gameplay and coding prowess.

It is also one of the most modded and remixed games in the pico-8 community.

The creators Matt Thorson and Noel Berry went on to make an extended standalone version of the game with enhanced graphics by Brazilian studio MiniBoss.

No doubt a great success story, Celeste has a well deserved place in the PICO-8 Hall of Fame.

Download cart !

itch.io | wikipedia

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Orbys by POD

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

original thread | pouet | youtube

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hello world!

Welcome to the PICO-8 _UPDATE() Zine !

This blog will function as a live-updating zine of sorts, covering everything related to pico-8 in the same fashion that old specialized magazines did for specific microcomputers of a bygone age.

You can browse all topics in the homepage, or use the specific sections of the site to browse by tag.

We’ll try to do our best to provide rich content and always cite and link authors by giving proper credit. Please let us know if we miss something or if you have any suggestions.

Thanks for visiting, and enjoy your stay!  ❤️