To understand why some people (including myself) are going nuts about Pico-8, here's one random feature: when you save your virtual cartridge as 'mygame.p8.png' it automatically generates a neat cartridge png representation with the screenshot of your choice from the game. Like so: <a href="http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/cposts/1/10022.p8.png" rel="nofollow">http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/cposts/1/10022.p8.png</a>.<p>Big deal you say! well, check this out: this png IS the game. It embeds the executable written in LUA. Try it for yourself - take the png I posted above, load it in pico8 then press escape: voila, full source code, sprite sheet, tracker data, etc. Type "RUN" and the game plays.<p>Pico8 (and its cousin voxatron) also contain an online cartridge browser that lets you discover and learn from everyone who contributed a cartridge.<p>Pico-8 is choke-full of these incredible little details that make all the difference. Unfortunately it's not open source itself, which some find a bit odd considering it encourages the open sourcing of the cartridge written for it. Good to see some projects such as TIC-80, LIKO-12 and now PX8 mixing things up a bit, that said it's still a nascent environment and let's not forget it's very much the arbitrary, sometimes amusing limitations imposed by the lead dev that makes these things fun.
Just a quick heads up. Ludum Dare 38 is happening this weekend (theme: "a small world"). And I've certainly noticed an uptick in gamedevs targeting PICO-8 and SCUMM-8 platforms. Rather apropos given the theme, no?<p>A few Gifs of WIPs:<p><a href="https://twitter.com/Huginn18/status/855857089960345600" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/Huginn18/status/855857089960345600</a><p><a href="https://twitter.com/quaIiaa/status/855878802563633152" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/quaIiaa/status/855878802563633152</a><p><a href="https://twitter.com/topkeki69/status/855743127616970752" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/topkeki69/status/855743127616970752</a><p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dISx_dR6kLI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dISx_dR6kLI</a>
Wow, I've never heard of the PICO-8 before, but it's <i>fantastic</i>! This is exactly what I've always wanted, some ultra-simplified game console/emulator that's easy to create content for and easy to distribute that content. People have even built cool demoscene-esque content for it![2] And some of the games people have made are fantastic, and you can play them in your browser here: <a href="http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?mode=carts&cat=7&sub=2&orderby=rating" rel="nofollow">http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?mode=carts&cat=7&sub=2&orderb...</a><p>Also, I was a bit confused by the term "fantasy console" so here's what I've been able to learn with some reading: it seems the PICO-8 is a kind of ultra-simple game VM with it's original implementation being in HTML/JS with access being sold by the creator[0]. At some point, the PICO-8 vm was ported by its creator to work on the CHIP computer, and now the PICO-8 VM is pre-installed on all CHIP computers[1].<p>What the OP link is for is an open source implementation of the PICO-8 VM in Rust. This isn't the only open source implementation of PICO-8.<p>[0] - <a href="http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php</a><p>[1] - <a href="https://getchip.com/pages/chip" rel="nofollow">https://getchip.com/pages/chip</a><p>[2] - <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTvnYkmtleI" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTvnYkmtleI</a>
My first thought is that such a focused environment for the code to run in might make this a helpful tool to teach kids programming in a fun and engaging way. I sincerely believe that game creation is the single best vector to get children interested in programming, and this seems like a cool possible vector. (Python is a great beginning language!)
In case anyone is interested in learning more about PICO-8 and it's "clones", I started one of those 'awesome lists' for that last year.<p><a href="https://github.com/felipebueno/awesome-PICO-8/" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/felipebueno/awesome-PICO-8/</a>