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Hello! I'm a research student at the New Mexico State University, and I've been analyzing the usage of different IDE's used in game-development related classes (Digital Game Design, Senior Projects, Intro to Game Design/Programming, etc.).

I was recommended PICO-8 by my professors, and I quickly became addicted to messing with this fun, simplistic software.

However, I was wondering if any teachers, professors, or students have had any experiences with PICO-8 in the college classroom. What class was it used in, and how was it implemented?

I asked a similar question to the TIC-80 community, and I would love any insight about either software! Also, if available, would you guys be willing to share some sample projects (while crediting the creator, of course)?

Thank you for sharing!

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I don't have experiences in using PICO-8 in classroom, however I do take Game Design, OS, Graphic Manipulation, intro to programming etc.

I think while PICO-8 is really fun to play, I don't think it has the depth needed to be a full blown college course or as the primary focus (this is of course derived from my comparison with my experiences in such classes).

For comparison:

  • OS: was tasked to create a basic 8 bit os from a barebone kernel for the whole year while being taught how OS work from boot to memory representations of things, architecture, etc.
  • Game design: taught about the theory of actual design process, tasked to create a unique game (we need to give a proposal of the game to be approved by the assistant lecturer) with multiplayer support
  • Graphic manipulation: mostly learning about direct buffer for graphic manipulation and OpenGL
  • Intro to programming: procedural/functional primer mostly, how to think programmatically

It's not like a course cannot contain PICO-8 element at all though. I can see that it would be a great addition for classes as a task for the student to simply try things out and have some fun in the process.

I was an assistant lecturer for a couple OS related courses, and if I had known PICO-8 existence that time, I would have tasked the students to create a multiplayer runner game in PICO-8 and have multiple PICO-8 communicate via serial/GPIO lol. That would make them think how to design a protocol for reliable message passing.
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I know it's been done - the emcee for zep's PRACTICE 2018 talk mentioned having taught a class with it - but I've never been in or taught a class that used it, so I can't speak to any personal experiences of it.
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I have not used it for teaching a college class, but I have successfully used PICO-8 in classes for students from age 6-7 through high school.

For extremely young students (6-7), I've usually pre-built a very simple game (like this one) and then made it very easy for the kids to change certain variables and also edit the sprites and sounds. They loved it. To them, just being able to make simple changes to a game and immediately see how that worked was extremely effective.

For elementary/middle school students, it was having them make very simple games with one game mechanic, maybe two. This gives them enough of a framework that they can understand all the code, see what all the parts are doing, and make simple changes and expansions on that, but doesn't bog them down in a lot of "architecture".

For older middle school and high school students, it's doing games like my top-down adventure game tutorial. These kinds of games give them enough of a structure where they can see "systems" in place and can learn to make new systems that integrate with the current systems.

I've also used PICO-8 in teaching advanced coding and computer science to juniors and seniors in high school because it's extremely easy to get something up and running quickly that visually demonstrates a concept. For example, I used PICO-8 when I was teaching my students about 3D perspective projection mapping because it was extremely easy to demonstrate the concepts quickly and easily inside PICO-8 with minimal code.

I hope that helps.
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That ^^ by Wm V has to be the most intelligent piece of SPAM I have ever seen in a desperate attempt to fly under the radar.

Do we live in an age now where robots can write such things as above just based upon the words written before by legitimate Piconians ?

@dw817 This is the third time Ive seen a bot sample the page it was spamming and fool me. Yes we do live in that age I guess :\

Between this smarter spambot and the PNP 10 year olds spamming and linking offsite I was sure there was about to be another wave of bots just waiting to assess moderation

Might as well

@WilliamVoris am I banana?

edit: moved below

I'm going to get my bag of popcorn

@dw817 @VgBlade @SmellyFishsticks Just out of curiosity, have all (or any) of you marked that particular reply as spam? (I'm trying to track down an issue with the mod queue.)
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I've marked down all the replies that I find fishy as spam,
let me go find em..
ya it was
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=38875#p
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=4022
I don't know what else to do besides mark as spam so ya but doing that..
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@SmellyFishstiks Thanks, that's helpful. You're definitely doing the right thing. There's a glitch on the mod queue end of things, but hopefully it'll be sorted out soon.

Oh yes, @MBoffin. I certainly try to mark them when I find them. They used to be removed saying they were SPAM, now they do not. But I still mark 'em all the same hoping some moderator such as yourself can see it. :)

If you can add an automation I would mark for SPAM any post that includes a clickable link that is NOT in a list such as:

  • Lexaloffle
  • Itch.io
  • Youtube
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Discord
  • Mediafire
  • Google Drive

And other good sites like this which could be marked VALID for Pico-8.

If it's not in the list, it's probably SPAM and could be auto-marked for this.

rate limited, needing to click a full stop to post, and not seeing a new post button, oh man did i get flagged as a bot?

@MBoffin yes i flagged the smarter bot in this discussion

Ok I could see the new post button from my laptop but not my phone, any clarification?

Edit:could, now I can't from any device and that was after not posting all day

@VgBlade Not sure what you mean? As in, you're not seeing a button to make a new post?

@VgBlade Oh, ha. I see what you mean now. I literally just just saw the rate-limiting message myself after submitting the above reply. Not sure what's up with that. Never seen that before.

@MBoffin correct I see no option to start a fresh thread(I admittedly I currently don't have a reason to start a fresh thread but when I saw I was weight limited it made me curious if I possibly had earned a shadow ban)

No worries I just wanted to make sure that any automated moderation didn't flag me since I mostly do short posts, have a couple of URLs linking off site, and may have gotten a little bit spam flag happy with the PNP fanbase that were just smashing the keyboard. Maybe I'm just really dumb or something but I honestly I'm not seeing the button to create a new thread anywhere even though I saw it from my laptop last night, though I do have a vague memory of having difficulty finding the icon/link when I first signed up

Guys, I have the same thing. I thought I was shadow-banned too, but not - not if you other folk have it.

So - I think it's global, ZEP's way of keeping too many unrelated posts from appearing such as the earlier and existing fiasco with PNP.

Fair, hopefully zep can whitelist users that have paid for the softwares, and apply the restrictions to them as needed if they become a problem

Also OP sorry for derailing this discussion

@MBoffin & @dw817

pretty sure i figured out how to make a new post but i wont spoil it just incase it was hidden away intentionally




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