@@shulkyofshulkor6640 I'm 10, so my programs aren't that complex anyways, and I never get close to the character (yes, I know it counts tokens now instead) limit and I don't mind the font.
Making animated objects in P8 can also be done like this: Make a table for each animation, make a animation speed number (for example 0.2) then add the animation speed to the animation table index until the index is at the tables highest index + 1 or higher. Then change the sprite variable to match. It's way easier and saves characters and tokens.
I learned how to use Pico-8 a couple months ago while doing a rogue-like game jam. I would love to see some videos about it! Just so you know, setting up an external editor is actually really simple if you use Atom, as it has a downloadable structure for Pico-8's language directly in the program. As well, if you open up Pico-8 from a CMD window, you can call the function PRINTH() and it will print debug strings to that CMD window!
From only hearing about it occasionally, I was under the impression Pico-8 was a legit oldschool engine - got the bundle, never noticed it - thanks miz
The PICO-8 and Fantasy Console discords are good places to just check into every now and again to see amazingly pretty stuff just grow through update gifs and such
I didn’t even realize that Pico-8 was in the bundle. I saw the DragonRuby engine in there and have been thinking about trying that out but definitely need to try this out too. I need to go through at some point and just try all the different engines in that bundle.
about the character limit: tokens run out much faster than characters, so it's almost always better to use more characters if it means using less tokens
>dislikes Lua Aw man, I love Lua. I started with making text games in Excel's VBA stuff and Windows Forms (through Visual Studio obvs lol) in highschool from boredom during classes, and never found a programming language I liked until I found Lua. The tables stuff just makes way more sense to me, and there's just enough "straight forward" features that I don't get too confused no matter how complex the code I'm looking at gets. Tried python once and had no idea that having something tabbed over one too many times would cause it to crash lol. It definitely gets people laughing at me when I bring it up but as someone who's a hobbyist coder and an artist first it's been a godsend for 2d work for me. Maybe all Lua programmers are weird or something.
Lua is an interesting language with lots of interesting features like metatables, but the lack of strict typing and some departures from common language conventions all make it kind of hard to work with a big enough codebase.
@@Selicre i mean static typing is nice, but lua is a dynamically typed language and those have their advantages too you know! also, what departures? the only inconsistency is "arrays start at one" which is not true. You can have arrays that start at zero it's just not the standard way.
@@apestogetherstrong341 Except the stdlib assumes that they start at 1, and breaks in various ways if they don't. As for other departures, mostly the weird syntax (~=) and dubious semantics like global-by-default. Don't get me wrong, it's a nice language, there's just better choices.
@@icproductions648 Lua 5.4 (which is the most recent version of Lua) still has no assignment operator. Pico-8 uses a custom variant of the Lua library (which also includes stuff such as != instead of ~=)
As the Lua documentation states: "You can start an array at index 0, 1, or any other value" And this is a very good summary of why Lua is probably one of the most flexible programming languages.
The fact that you have to do everything in code is awesome. Drag-n-drop interfaces cluttered with menus and buttons should be punishable as a crime against humanity.
i just want to start a game in Pico-8. I installed Pico-8, I double click on the .p8 game..... I get a multicolored screen with what looks like every line of code for the game, but the game doesnt start..... HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Some assembler like language would be much more interesting for this type of console and it maybe be more convenient than lua Edit: on second thought, C would be more comfortable than asm or lua, also it would be more easy to include especially with tcc (tiny C compiler)
Maybe if more AAA studios knew how to code like you do with pico then we wouldnt end up with so many badly optimised games that run like crap because the developers only know the 'drag n drop' method of making games. And then when said badly made game inevitably break, you wouldnt need the community that actually does know how to code, to come along and fix the games with patches. I honestly do think that while game engines that are literally just lego sets requiring nothing but sticking bricks together to make a game are convenient for newbs. Big studios making big games should know how to code. And code with limitations, like learning to code in older systems. That way you wouldnt end up with as many games chewing your computer up because they just turned the "make it look good" sliders to full. Instead of learning how to make games look and work good via actually putting work in and being inventive with how they achieve it. Its why we have so many badly optimised games that need a hundred 4090's to run despite looking like a playstation 3 game. Im looking at you forspoken. Sorry. Just pisses me off how lazy bug studios have got when a lot of the indie stuff on say itchio or pico wipe the floor in terms of gameplay and creativity in comparison to things like Golum or calisto proticol (a game whose fire sprites are actually sickening at how bad they are and how low their frame rate is compared to games over twenty years old) its crazy.
Personally, I’d say it’s better to describe the “dictionary” which you used to make the player and ghosts as a “class” because they bear a bigger resemblance to classes, but still great tutorial :D
Apparently, PICO-8 has 8 controllers and keyboard/mouse input. I only know of one game that can use 8 controllers, it's some sort of top-down spaceship racing game. (it's splitscreen with way too much screen crunch and player 1 and 2 have slightly wider viewports for some reason)
at 1:16 he types "this is symbols" below "this is text". i had realized the length was different when i saw it but only some of the symbols had been shown previously so i had to look up a map
My experience with pico-8 when it became free during the onset of the pandemic... DL everything needed to get everything running with pico-8 while reading some tutorials and docs... dl, done! Okay, Back to Godot..
For anyone watching who likes the look of this but isn't a massive fan of the self-imposed limitations, check out LÖVE (love2d.org/), another Lua-based framework (no fancy guis or out of the box physics handling), but with no limits around pixels/characters/files etc. This is a great example of something made with LÖVE, a mash-up of Super Mario Bros. and Portal: stabyourself.net/mari0/
Pretty cool to see the learning process, documentation -> tutorials -> derivative project -> entirely original additions That font is horrendous though, M and W are way too hard to read
No dont worry. Lua is very syntactically simple. The 2 problems i have with it are arrays starting at index 1, and no real support for classes. Otherwise its one of my favorite scripting languages. Its also really fucking fast when you use luaJIT
Godot or Unity. (unity is more 3D orientated and can achieve better graphics more easily, and I think you can find more unity tutorials than Godot tutorials)
Godot or Unity are probably the best choices, but maybe you want to try the following: -Gdevelop is the simplest game engine I've used, programming is mostly visual. It has potential for great 2D games, but no 3D. And it's free. -There's also Game Maker Studio 2, it has the simplest code I've seen. Some great 2D games were made with it, but it should be avoided if you ever want to cross to 3D. It costs money, and the more platforms you want to reach, the more you'll pay.
I wanted to do a "It means he's afraid of Santa Claus" joke about the "then" and "end" blocks but I couldn't figure out how to phrase it in a RUclips comment.
you mixed up the letters U and W at 0:58. this could be a common mistake for beginners (i don't know if it is), because the PICO-8 font is different enough from the normal alphabet that you have to relearn reading slightly
If you don't want to pay $15 for pico, you can also make one for free using github.com/kitao/pyxel instead. It's also a retro game engine but with python instead of lua. Array starts at 0.
Personally I never used lua before and learned it alongside with pico8. You can check out Bridgs pico8 tutorial series, i found it very helpful. Here's a link : ruclips.net/video/NOcZonu65hE/видео.html&feature=emb_title
Honestly I don't understand why you'd use Pico-8 over godot or unity. You could easily recreate the graphics from Pico-8 in unity, and the code editor wouldn't be 128 by 128...
@@Uniquename12345a I think that Unity would be beter for learning since there are so many references and guides online to help. There are definitely more resources with Unity. On top of that, Unity also uses C# , which is a more powerful language than lua, as well as it following coding standards more closely than lua does. I can't say too much about godot since I haven't used it, but it also seems like a much better alternative to pico.
Pico-8 is alright, but if anyone wants to work with retro-style restrictions I'd say just learn 6502 and make an Atari game. It's not as difficult as one would think.
![8 Reasons We Love PICO-8 [2021]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/C5TJgIJACtg/mqdefault.jpg)
"I don't want to do pathfinding so I made ghost that don't collide with walls"
Ah yes, game design.
Funny how limitations sometimes makes actually fun mechanics
@@Tantandev eyy TanTan! I like your videos :)
This is why at least 2 of my games have ghosts in them. XD
and then call it a "Feature"
It is not laziness, It is a feature
I do really like the pixelart code editor :P It can be messy and not convenient but it looks *beautiful* . :)
yeah such a pretty aesthetic
It's messy, not convenient, pretentious and looks like garbage
I know this comment is one year old, but I just couldn't pass by :)
@@awesomegamedev I like the pixelart style but sure, I understand that coding in that is probably pain.
@@shulkyofshulkor6640 I love pixel art in general, but seeing pixel-art code editor is beyond what I could bear 😅
@@shulkyofshulkor6640 I'm 10, so my programs aren't that complex anyways, and I never get close to the character (yes, I know it counts tokens now instead) limit and I don't mind the font.
I'm convinced 3:26 was intentional :P
👀
this was really cool
it sounds mad limited (duh lmfao), but it's still a really charming lil thing
yeah super charming and cute, I admire the devs who stick it out and make super polished games with it
Making animated objects in P8 can also be done like this: Make a table for each animation, make a animation speed number (for example 0.2) then add the animation speed to the animation table index until the index is at the tables highest index + 1 or higher. Then change the sprite variable to match. It's way easier and saves characters and tokens.
I learned how to use Pico-8 a couple months ago while doing a rogue-like game jam. I would love to see some videos about it! Just so you know, setting up an external editor is actually really simple if you use Atom, as it has a downloadable structure for Pico-8's language directly in the program. As well, if you open up Pico-8 from a CMD window, you can call the function PRINTH() and it will print debug strings to that CMD window!
github is going to sunset atom in December 2022 :(
spit out my milk at “fun features like...16 colors”
I've used the color pallette of pico8 more times than I can count. Always thought their code editor was neat but ill stick to GMS2.
From only hearing about it occasionally, I was under the impression Pico-8 was a legit oldschool engine - got the bundle, never noticed it - thanks miz
Its amazing to see how such a limited color palette can be used to create such good looking visuals!
Love the content dude, keep it up
The PICO-8 and Fantasy Console discords are good places to just check into every now and again to see amazingly pretty stuff just grow through update gifs and such
I didn’t even realize that Pico-8 was in the bundle. I saw the DragonRuby engine in there and have been thinking about trying that out but definitely need to try this out too. I need to go through at some point and just try all the different engines in that bundle.
F for godot. If there is one thing i look for in my game engine it is inconvenience
about the character limit:
tokens run out much faster than characters,
so it's almost always better to use more characters if it means using less tokens
this game logic makes so much sense to me coming from retro console programming
>dislikes Lua
Aw man, I love Lua. I started with making text games in Excel's VBA stuff and Windows Forms (through Visual Studio obvs lol) in highschool from boredom during classes, and never found a programming language I liked until I found Lua. The tables stuff just makes way more sense to me, and there's just enough "straight forward" features that I don't get too confused no matter how complex the code I'm looking at gets. Tried python once and had no idea that having something tabbed over one too many times would cause it to crash lol.
It definitely gets people laughing at me when I bring it up but as someone who's a hobbyist coder and an artist first it's been a godsend for 2d work for me. Maybe all Lua programmers are weird or something.
Lua is an interesting language with lots of interesting features like metatables, but the lack of strict typing and some departures from common language conventions all make it kind of hard to work with a big enough codebase.
@@Selicre i mean static typing is nice, but lua is a dynamically typed language and those have their advantages too you know! also, what departures? the only inconsistency is "arrays start at one" which is not true. You can have arrays that start at zero it's just not the standard way.
@@apestogetherstrong341 Except the stdlib assumes that they start at 1, and breaks in various ways if they don't. As for other departures, mostly the weird syntax (~=) and dubious semantics like global-by-default.
Don't get me wrong, it's a nice language, there's just better choices.
@@Selicre certainly not for gamedev. Lua is the fastest yet with luaJIT
I love LUA! I don't think I'm weird...?
"pico 8 uses lua"
i think i saw you use += which is not in lua so it has to be some modified version
"my least favorite language"
>:(
Those operators have recently been implented into Lua
@@icproductions648 Lua 5.4 (which is the most recent version of Lua) still has no assignment operator. Pico-8 uses a custom variant of the Lua library (which also includes stuff such as != instead of ~=)
@@Exxag and // for comments
@@darxoonwasser wait but in 5.3 u use // for floor division. why would they do that :(
pro's use LuaU
Smooth, to the point and informative. Good video and didn't waste my time. ✔💯
I had no clue Pico-8 was in that bundle!!! Thank you, I'm getting it now
3:25
Ah yes, the frustration.
*_YESSS YOU FINALLY DID IT YOU FUCKING LEGEND_*
I take offence that you claim lua tables start at 1.
they actually start at 0 OR 1 thank you very much.
As the Lua documentation states: "You can start an array at index 0, 1, or any other value"
And this is a very good summary of why Lua is probably one of the most flexible programming languages.
MATLAB: *sweating intensifies*
It's uploaded in 2020 during era of Ray Tracing, but that video is very nostalgic and cool, it remind me of the life when I was a kid.
Omg miziziziz doing Pico 8?! AWESOME
This begs for a question:
What's next on the list? LIKO-12? TIC-80? Maybe Voxatron even?
The fact that you have to do everything in code is awesome. Drag-n-drop interfaces cluttered with menus and buttons should be punishable as a crime against humanity.
Could you try the TIC-80 next?
Honestly i think TIC-80 and Pico-8 are kind of the same. They use the same language, both are fantasy consoles, people made cool stuff with them...
I love lua, it's a very comfy language despite its many, many flaws
wow you made a raspberry pico game!!! its awsome!
Just came across this video and found out the bundle you were talking about exists, almost a year late. Wish I could have gotten it :(
i just want to start a game in Pico-8. I installed Pico-8, I double click on the .p8 game..... I get a multicolored screen with what looks like every line of code for the game, but the game doesnt start..... HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
when a game engine is a game in of itself
i use pico 8 as my first game engine and its really easy and works great!
Some assembler like language would be much more interesting for this type of console and it maybe be more convenient than lua
Edit: on second thought, C would be more comfortable than asm or lua, also it would be more easy to include especially with tcc (tiny C compiler)
You are my favorite game dev channel
PICO 8, what game developers use while waiting for the PCB containing their game made in Assembly to arrive in the mail.
Please take a look at the quadplay fantasy console!
props to pico 8 users :O
Maybe if more AAA studios knew how to code like you do with pico then we wouldnt end up with so many badly optimised games that run like crap because the developers only know the 'drag n drop' method of making games. And then when said badly made game inevitably break, you wouldnt need the community that actually does know how to code, to come along and fix the games with patches. I honestly do think that while game engines that are literally just lego sets requiring nothing but sticking bricks together to make a game are convenient for newbs.
Big studios making big games should know how to code. And code with limitations, like learning to code in older systems. That way you wouldnt end up with as many games chewing your computer up because they just turned the "make it look good" sliders to full. Instead of learning how to make games look and work good via actually putting work in and being inventive with how they achieve it. Its why we have so many badly optimised games that need a hundred 4090's to run despite looking like a playstation 3 game. Im looking at you forspoken. Sorry. Just pisses me off how lazy bug studios have got when a lot of the indie stuff on say itchio or pico wipe the floor in terms of gameplay and creativity in comparison to things like Golum or calisto proticol (a game whose fire sprites are actually sickening at how bad they are and how low their frame rate is compared to games over twenty years old) its crazy.
I'd love to test this it looks very interesting!
fun fact: there was a free version of pico 8 called tic 80, you should go check it out. because you can download it on your android phone or tablet.
Really cool video!
I love PICO-8 so much.
Personally, I’d say it’s better to describe the “dictionary” which you used to make the player and ghosts as a “class” because they bear a bigger resemblance to classes, but still great tutorial :D
Apparently, PICO-8 has 8 controllers and keyboard/mouse input.
I only know of one game that can use 8 controllers, it's some sort of top-down spaceship racing game. (it's splitscreen with way too much screen crunch and player 1 and 2 have slightly wider viewports for some reason)
Lua's Arrays start at 1???, what kind of Monster would design such language
thee boomerangth
i thought pico-8 was just a celest easter egg lmao
love pico-8, it was p much how i first learned to code
at 1:16 he types "this is symbols" below "this is text". i had realized the length was different when i saw it but only some of the symbols had been shown previously so i had to look up a map
Wow this game engine looks very interesting! I’ll have to look at it sometime..
The prototype for Celeste was made with Pico 8
My experience with pico-8 when it became free during the onset of the pandemic...
DL everything needed to get everything running with pico-8 while reading some tutorials and docs...
dl, done!
Okay, Back to Godot..
Woah really cool, makes me wanna try!
Thanks for sharing this.
For anyone watching who likes the look of this but isn't a massive fan of the self-imposed limitations, check out LÖVE (love2d.org/), another Lua-based framework (no fancy guis or out of the box physics handling), but with no limits around pixels/characters/files etc. This is a great example of something made with LÖVE, a mash-up of Super Mario Bros. and Portal: stabyourself.net/mari0/
seems like a good way to ease into retro development, before you get into actually coding for old platforms (6502 assembly etc)
I remember having bought this bundle
but i'm new on intch so i'm a bit lost... where can i find it ?
This reminds me of SmileBASIC...
Yeah, but lua is a little bit more complex than Basic, still easy to learn though
love this aesthetic
why NOT Lua?
at 1:00 are u and w switched?
It looks like Commodore meets 2020 tech and try to adapt to it or something similar :P
right on brother, good content
If I want to get into game making should I start with GMS or unity?
3:09 this is easily solvable with compression
3:30 hm that is kinda neat. tho imo it would be cooler if the directions were shift+WASD lol
Yes pico-8 is the best.
0:59 So similar in fact you mixed up U and W.
Pretty cool to see the learning process, documentation -> tutorials -> derivative project -> entirely original additions
That font is horrendous though, M and W are way too hard to read
This is so cool. I love the idea of pico-8. I've no experience with lua, but your distaste for it has me concerned haha
No dont worry. Lua is very syntactically simple. The 2 problems i have with it are arrays starting at index 1, and no real support for classes.
Otherwise its one of my favorite scripting languages. Its also really fucking fast when you use luaJIT
Wait, Pico8 was in the bundle?!
DragonRuby next??
Pico-8's web export is useful, so I guess it's got Unity beat there.
i miss your godot tutorials
Man, I'd love to have a full one day of free time to learn something new. XD
1:00 u and w symbols are flipped mate
For people interested in Pico-8 but dont have the moneyz, there is a free alternative named TIC-80. Good luck to all of you during these hard times.
Damn, I'm earlier than usual
What *would* you recommend for making games as quickly and smoothly as possible? You said something to that effect at the end of the video.
Godot or Unity. (unity is more 3D orientated and can achieve better graphics more easily, and I think you can find more unity tutorials than Godot tutorials)
Godot or Unity are probably the best choices, but maybe you want to try the following:
-Gdevelop is the simplest game engine I've used, programming is mostly visual. It has potential for great 2D games, but no 3D. And it's free.
-There's also Game Maker Studio 2, it has the simplest code I've seen. Some great 2D games were made with it, but it should be avoided if you ever want to cross to 3D. It costs money, and the more platforms you want to reach, the more you'll pay.
omgggg thank u for telling me. it was in the BLM bundle. there's so much in there I barely looked lol
You should try LowRes NX
3:05 why, why, whai, whaaaaiii??
I wanted to do a "It means he's afraid of Santa Claus" joke about the "then" and "end" blocks but I couldn't figure out how to phrase it in a RUclips comment.
3:00 I also don't like lua
Why?
you mixed up the letters U and W at 0:58.
this could be a common mistake for beginners (i don't know if it is), because the PICO-8 font is different enough from the normal alphabet that you have to relearn reading slightly
Would you say Pico-8 is a good program to start learning game design, given its simplified coding and assets?
yes
if you are looking for different game dev ideas for one off videos can you try raylib, it looks cool
pico-8 is good for making prototype.
If you don't want to pay $15 for pico, you can also make one for free using github.com/kitao/pyxel instead. It's also a retro game engine but with python instead of lua.
Array starts at 0.
nice vid- the link doesnt work though, there's an extra "my" at the end
Inspirational video
I love pico-8 but dang the collision checking is just so buggy and hard to learn for beginners as I only touch Unity for a few months.
Should i learn lua language before this ?
Personally I never used lua before and learned it alongside with pico8. You can check out Bridgs pico8 tutorial series, i found it very helpful. Here's a link : ruclips.net/video/NOcZonu65hE/видео.html&feature=emb_title
@@Cerealae
Thank you so much !
Honestly I don't understand why you'd use Pico-8 over godot or unity. You could easily recreate the graphics from Pico-8 in unity, and the code editor wouldn't be 128 by 128...
@@ReviewOrcsUSA
Because you view others project code easily , so i think this is gonna be a good way to learn coding , or what do you think ?
@@Uniquename12345a I think that Unity would be beter for learning since there are so many references and guides online to help. There are definitely more resources with Unity. On top of that, Unity also uses C# , which is a more powerful language than lua, as well as it following coding standards more closely than lua does. I can't say too much about godot since I haven't used it, but it also seems like a much better alternative to pico.
He said lua bad :(
Minetest mod developer here, I can relate to your pain
Meh, deal with it. Sorry, but you will be dealing with this for life, until another language comes
Celeste gang!
eyyyy
Pico-8 is alright, but if anyone wants to work with retro-style restrictions I'd say just learn 6502 and make an Atari game. It's not as difficult as one would think.
3:03
Why
_Why_
*Why*
Whyyyyyy
0:00 IT WAS? I bought it twice then, atleast i got the 3D version so i it wasnt a loss
There is no 3D PICO-8
@@reesespuffs8998 its called voxatron
@@superzario1000 oh yeah I forgot Voxatron exists, though it's different enough from PICO-8 that it might as well be considered it's own thing
@@reesespuffs8998 yeah i just couldnt remember the name
Oh, Pico-8 is a game engine? I thought all these games just had the same developers.