PICO-8 – Fantasy Console
lexaloffle.com
lexaloffle.com
I just wasted 30' in 1 click. Something I can't say about my steam library. I think it has to do with the instant-ON aspect of the games. <click> -> start, immersed. As opposed to many screens, "oh that needs an update"...
IMO it's the remixing that makes TikTok work. The equivalent would be every game is open sourced and remixable in easy ways. Like the way you can take one TikTok's video audio and recontextualize the meaning with your own video. Or an audio track can become the format that everyone follows by using the audio.
Maybe it is possible though, would love to see the day if so
(I'm not affiliated)
I found exactly the same thing. I really got into the Sega Mega Drive over the past year and a bit, despite having a PS4 and modern PC. It's not because the games from 30 years ago are necessarily better, but when you only play games for 2-3 hours every few weeks, a 50GB install followed by a 20GB patch really kills the experience.
When it comes down to it, developers are disrespecting users, whether it's disregard for the compute (Web slowness), bandwith or storage. I can understand if textures are higher res these days, but in many cases I suspect it has more to do with skins, IAP and general developer laziness.
Buying and downloading Valheim was a breath of fresh air though, something like 1 GB and a beautiful game.
If you're buying the game ahead of time or already own it, then shouldn't auto-updates take care of things so you can jump right in?
To be fair, one half of my house is a literal online retro games store, so perhaps my experience circa 2020 is not the norm.
But also to be fair, back in the day you could simply walk down to the nearby shops, buy the cartridge and play it as soon as you got home.
I'm not necessarily making an argument as to why everyone should own a Mega Drive in 2021 (although if you enjoy collecting physical media, there are some fantastic hidden gems on that machine - my personal favourites are Rocket Knight Adventures, Alisia Dragoon and Shadow Dancer!), but modern console gaming has become a lot less streamlined than it used to be.
With the PS5 and Xbox Series X emphasising their ultra-fast SSDs, I can only see this becoming worse.
Anything that is over 300MB, just gets a big no, no matter how cool it might be.
Same applies to any game on Windows Store.
1. https://twitter.com/search?q=%23tweetcart&src=typed_query
Brief selection of some projects things that I personally enjoyed[1]
And they all have one thing in common: They hit the limits and were unable to progress.
I remember when the first thing you had to do in order to program a videogame was creating your own TIFF or BMP parser. That's ok if you enjoy that sort of thing, but it gets in the way when what you want is a working videogame, not a tech demo. That kind of limitation, frankly, sucked.
On the other hand nowadays the problem is the opposite: there's so many ways to do stuff. So many options. Which engine. Which language. What graphics pipeline. Which Entity-Component System, etc.
The trouble is that we are back to the previous problem. The tech decisions get in the way of the creative process.
What Pico8 does right is limiting the amount of tech-related decisions you have to make. That frees mental cycles in order to be creative and build something that works. I know from the get go that I've got 8x8 16-color bitmaps, and that's it. No time wasted parsing TIFFs, and also no time wasted choosing tech. You start and go.
All that said, I don't think Pico-8 is for everyone. If you feel restricted by it, perhaps you will be more comfortable with other engines. I program games as a hobby an I am very limited on the amount of time I can dedicate to it. I tend to make small 1-evening prototypes that are never finished. Pico-8 is awesome for that. It's definitely awesome for me, at least.
How is it a tech-related decision if I want to add another sprite, but can't, because PICO-8 decided for me that I'm only allowed to have a specific amount? It's completely arbitrary and literally stops a game's development! That's not what a game development tool is supposed to do!
A screwdriver isn't "good" at putting nails down. It would be pointless to say that it's not a good screwdriver because it doesn't drive nails. Pico-8 is like that. It only allows a certain amount of everything: sprites, sounds, colors, even program tokens.
I must point out that it is possible to drive a nail using a screwdriver. You hold the screwdriver from the metal end, and repeatedly hit the nail head with the handle. It's a bit awkward. (But also sort of impressive. Like the people that do 3D stuff with Pico-8).
There are options out there to go around most of the limits if you really want to. You might have to sacrifice something. You need to be creative, the same as with the screwdriver. I actually enjoy that.
More like lovely schizophrenic tool. Not everyone need/want to get lost in a tonnes of features.
Being Nim-based means the result can be compiled to C or JavaScript, so it can run at native speed or in the browser.
Personally quite looking forward to what people make with it, the pico8 community really went to town with games and concepts
I love love pico! But also SNES is my childhood console. I would love something as simple/fun as Pico.
Here are my experiments and games from a couple of years ago: https://diegofg.com/projects/pico8/
Eventually I wanted to make larger projects, so I was inspired to make my own engine, for when you want to transcend its limitations.
Because of its minimal nature, you can kind of scope up gradually, to whatever kind of project and scale you like.
"Gezellig" always implies having a good time with other people. Being alone, no matter how comfortable, cannot ever qualify as gezellig.
The word contains "gezel", an old Dutch word for companion, which is where the [ multiple people ] qualification comes from. We also find it in "gezelschap", meaning "a group of people", and "metgezel", meaning "close companion".
But where those words only refer to the collective itself, "gezellig" indicates more than just being together. It encompasses a specific kind of uplifting atmosphere as well.
Like I mentioned before, there is an element of spontaneity. But more important is that everyone involved is either having a good time, or it can be expected that everyone involved will have a good time.
It usually implies an event that will bring people closer together. There are hints of an explicit freedom to be yourself (a temporary absence of social judgement) and the clear desire of everyone involved to sustain a good mood all around.
For those that are familiar with the concept, the casual playing of a board game usually qualifies as "gezellig" (unless very fanatical players are involved). A plan to go do something with one or more friends can be gezellig. A gathering that turns out to be a lot more jolly than expected is gezellig as well.
I think this community has a huge problem with thinking that releasing the source code to things automatically makes them accessible and automatically empowers other people, but there are plenty of open-source projects that are actively user-hostile. The reality is that all too often on this site when people say "I wish this was open source" they aren't saying that out of any interest for how that would make the project better or create a better community, but instead are saying it from a standpoint that only considers how it would benefit them personally.
I'm sure there's a lot of open-source projects that are the exact opposite of vibrant communities, and the exact opposite of empowering and user-supporting.
However, as a great man once said, "No Taxation Without Representation". People using PICO-8 and writing games for PICO-8 aren't paying taxes as such, but they are investing their time and creative energy, their efforts advertise the PICO-8 platform, and thus they enrich Lexaloffle just as surely as if they'd filled out a 1040 form. Some people want to be reassured that they have some measure of control over a thing before they invest time, money, or energy into it. It doesn't have to be open-source, but for software that's more legally sound and practical than staging an armed insurrection and writing a constitution.
A lot of people probably don't care what Lexaloffle does as long as their existing games keep working, many people probably trust Lexaloffle's reign to remain benevolent and just indefinitely, and I don't know any reason (beyond human frailty) why that wouldn't be true. But some people want a better guarantee of future performance than mere past performance, and that's where (some) calls for open-source come from.
So for me it is sufficient guarantee to know that even if PICO-8 is closed source right now, a compatible open-source clone would doubtlessly spring up (I suspect there some already, but I haven't felt the need to look) and be settled on by the community almost overnight if Lexaloffle ever ceased to be benevolent. Paradoxically, knowing that is why I'm happy to stick with the official PICO-8 and Lexaloffle for now. It might not be open source, but there's still a clear exit strategy.
Or from a philosophical standpoint
I'm sorry you're bothered by my comment; it's simply an expression of how I feel.
> PICO-8 is one of the most vibrant communities in existence for beginners making games. Thousands of people have made thousands of games with this software....licensing allows people who purchase the engine to distribute it in their own games.
Windows is also very popular, and it is also proprietary software. It enables lots of other people's jobs to exist, but that doesn't mean that it's ethical to deprive its users of the source code to the software that's running on their machine.
>The price point to purchase is extremely cheap, supports the person that created it...
I don't have a problem with donating money to help out a project; I have a problem with the software not respecting the four freedoms (liberties) of free software. (https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html)
> It is one of the most open, empowering, user-supporting pieces of software...
It isn't open and it isn't user-supporting or empowering. Users don't have access to the source code, and in that way the developer holds power over the users. Bruce Perens, who really popularized the idea of 'open source' once said "When I say 'Open Source', I mean the same thing that Richard means when he says 'Free Software'."
> there are plenty of open-source projects that are actively user-hostile.
would you like to provide some specific examples?
> aren't saying that out of any interest for how that would make the project better or create a better community, but instead are saying it from a standpoint that only considers how it would benefit them personally.
A better community would be able to improve the software itself with access to the source code. Also, simply because it-being-libre-software would benefit me personally doesn't mean it wouldn't also benefit the rest of the community equally as much.
If price is a problem for anyone, you may already own a copy. PICO-8 was (quietly?) included as part of the legendary itch.io mega "Bundle for Racial Justice."
I'm maintaining picolove but it's currently more of a pico-8 runtime than a virtual console.
Perhaps the answer is “all of them” and I just don’t fully understand the abstraction.