Overwritten.net
Community => Art => Topic started by: idolminds on Tuesday, April 21, 2015, 03:10:00 PM
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PICO-8 (http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php)
PICO-8 is a fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs. When you turn it on, the machine greets you with a shell for typing in Lua programs straight away and provides simple built-in tools for creating sprites, maps and sound.
The harsh limitations of PICO-8 are carefully chosen to be fun to work with, encourage small but expressive designs and hopefully to give PICO-8 cartridges their own particular look and feel.
Specs
Display: 128x128, fixed 16 colour palette
Input: 6 buttons x 2 players
Cartridge size: 32k
Sound: 4 channel, 64 definable chip blerps
Code: Lua (max 15400 bytes of source code)
Sprites: Single bank of 128 8x8 sprites (+128 shared)
Map: Single 128x32 (+128x32 shared)
I only know what some of that means. I don't know LUA so so far I haven't made anything fun, but I did make something with PICO-8 tools today. BEHOLD!
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CDJVKiFWEAA4djn.png)
Yes, it is super original. Making Pac-Man (Pico-Man?) fit in 128x128 was a fun little challenge. Obviously I could get more space out of it if I made narrower blocks but then building the map and sprites get all kinds of more complex so whatever this is what I made deal with it.
If you want to see what people have actually made with this little "system", check out Hug Arena (http://www.lexaloffle.com/play/?pid=10022). It's cute and fun.
So one really neat thing about PICO-8 that I like is the "cartridge" format. Here it is:
(http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/cposts/1/10022.p8.png)
Yes, its a .PNG file. All the game data is stored in it. You can literally save the image and then load it into PICO-8 to play. So cool.
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So Pac-Mans stage isn't green, it's blue. There isn't really a bright blue color in PICO-8 so I went with the kind of teal. Then I could use the darker blue to make a "drop shadow" kind of thing, or maybe just give depth to the walls.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CDKC0ivWEAAmyGR.png)
That looks cool. Hmm, I wonder what it would look like filled in?
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CDKC3WlW4AEDYnh.png)
Ok, I like that. But the "endcaps" are different sizes to make room for that shadow. So I'll drop them and keep the filled-in look. While I was at it I rounded all the corners just a bit.
(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CDKC5LxW4AAmJqi.png)
There we go! I like it. Now I need to learn some LUA and see if I can actually make the characters move.
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Haha, neato!
Hug Arena was cute and fun, as advertised.
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I haven't played with PICO-8 for a little while but I wanted to share these. I saw an article (http://boingboing.net/2015/08/19/get-mysterious-with-dusk-child.html) about a PICO-8 game called Dusk Child (http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=2274) thats worth checking out. You can beat it fairly quickly but its neat.
Also if you want to learn more about PICO-8 you should totally read the fanzine (http://sectordub.itch.io/pico-8-fanzine-1). It has some history of its development, some tutorials and sample games to get you started, and a nice selection of games other have made that you should check out.