41–48 of 48 posts
I put together a tutorial on writing a simple game in PICO-8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuaLuMhwcc8 its really a fun platform to play with
Excellent! Really nice demo .. me and the kids are sitting down to watch it together later today and see what we come up with after watching your tutorial. Thanks for that!
This system is quite amazing. Peek and poke! Extremely limited pallet! An integrated development environment. The restrictions make for some very interesting design choices and force you to limit the scope of your designs -- super important if you ever actually want to finish a game. I highly recommend this system to anyone. It's great and I've been having a tonne of fun with it. It's no Amiga 500, but boy it has tha…
You might also enjoy Octo[1] which is based on a real 8-bit system called CHIP-8. There's even a month-long game jam going on right now![2] [1] https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Octo [2] http://octojam.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA_1802
Built on Silicon-on-Sapphire process, it was radiation and EMSEC tolerant plus low-power. Used in Galileo space-craft. Highly reliable. It's still sold with a spec that you can fully understand and that documents every state:
http://www.intersil.com/en/products/space-and-harsh-environm...
So, not just a toy, Octo or CHIP-8 could be used to prototype applications that just run and run and run in the field. Heck, even a retro-gamer might appreciate a system that never freezes past game logic errors.
Only thing about PICO-8 that makes no sense: the 32k limit. Otherwise, an awesome set of limitations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SymbOS
Little excuse for arbitrary limitations even in retro scene. Exception is demoscene where it's kind of the point.
PICO-8 is totally awesome. I've built a few simple games, and have been encouraging my daughter to make games. She can't program (yet!) but she can play with the sprite editor and sound editor :) The limitations really make it easy to not worry and just make a dang game! For those of you worrying about cart size limits: if your game is too big for one cart, make it a two-parter :P Also, apparently you can load data f…
PICO-8 is totally awesome. I've built a few simple games, and have been encouraging my daughter to make games. She can't program (yet!) but she can play with the sprite editor and sound editor :) The limitations really make it easy to not worry and just make a dang game! For those of you worrying about cart size limits: if your game is too big for one cart, make it a two-parter :P Also, apparently you can load data f…
My understanding is that with PICO-8 you can export to HTML5. If this is the case, (I haven't used this myself.. Yet.) why would you need direct support for mobile and Pi's? Couldn't you just change the dimensions of the app to fit mobile devices, and take advantage of the HTML5 support while on a Pi?
Pi is just a bit too slow to run the JS engine, it needs to be ported to native ARM for full speed.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might also enjoy Octo[1] which is based on a real 8-bit system called CHIP-8. There's even a month-long game jam going on right now![2] [1] https://github.com/JohnEarnest/Octo [2] http://octojam.com
Thanks for the link. Most interesting was that it was implemented on the mighty RCA 1802 processor and very directly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA_1802 Built on Silicon-on-Sapphire process, it was radiation and EMSEC tolerant plus low-power. Used in Galileo space-craft. Highly reliable. It's still sold with a spec that you can fully understand and that documents every state: http://www.intersil.com/en/products/s…
Eventually I would like to equip Octo with an optional 1802 emulation mode and the necessary mixed-mode assembler for producing 1802 machine code. Probably won't be available any time soon without strong demand, though.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the link. Most interesting was that it was implemented on the mighty RCA 1802 processor and very directly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RCA_1802 Built on Silicon-on-Sapphire process, it was radiation and EMSEC tolerant plus low-power. Used in Galileo space-craft. Highly reliable. It's still sold with a spec that you can fully understand and that documents every state: http://www.intersil.com/en/products/s…
Sure! Eventually I would like to equip Octo with an optional 1802 emulation mode and the necessary mixed-mode assembler for producing 1802 machine code. Probably won't be available any time soon without strong demand, though.
Not sure how far you like to push yourself on low-level coding, reading on or doing it. I'll end with these links for your entertainment:
4-bit MCU's: the next challenge for 8-bit masters to strut their stuff. Interesting article esp how they're sold. http://www.embeddedinsights.com/channels/2010/12/10/consider...
Example 4-bit CPU's for public http://www.ttlcpu.com/content/links
Note: Really wonder what best retro games would look like on 4-bits, esp after hardware acceleration tradeoffs. I always challenge the demoscene to show us. ;)
Motorola 1-bit processor: "Real men don't need hulking 4-8 bitters!" Haha http://www.electro-tech-online.com/threads/mc14500b-a-1-bit-...
Note: Manual and source code are attached to comments on that page. Would be amazed at seeing people do anything useful in modern applications with these. They'd win by default on memory/power/area efficiency haha.
They also have a pretty interesting Voxel fantasy console: http://www.lexaloffle.com/voxatron.php . This was funded through a Kickstarter, and a lot of backers are pretty bitter over the progress and direction of the project - just check out the forums. I love the idea, but I'm very sad that this isn't open source.
Zeb has said on Twitter that he's fine with people building new runtimes.