Is there a way (in the config file?) to have PICO-8 auto-launch (LOAD and RUN) into a cartridge on startup?

Thanks!

It would be nice to have command line options for this sort of thing. Maybe there already is?

you know what would REALLY be nice though?
tab completion in the shell

also, this reminds me of another feature that would be great:
run a cart from another cart.
like, for instance, you have a game split into four carts, and each cart holds a level.
when the player reaches the end of the level, load the next cart and run it!

There isn't currently a way to autolaunch a cartridge. It's a bit complicated; not to implement, but because at this point it would be the only way to make stand-alone carts, and I suspect it would encourage distributing pico-8 in its entirety. So I'd feel uneasy letting that cat out of the bag until I've provided at least one distributable player version licensed for that purpose. (I bumped the html5 player to 0.2 to deal with higher priority stuff first -- but it won't be too far away)

How would you use auto-launching, incidentally? There might be a more specific solution possible.

I will add commandline loading for 0.1.2 as this is also needed for opening .p8 files by double clicking on them

@Siapran
Tab completion is listed!

You can already load and run carts from inside another cart ( load("blah.p8") run() ), but note that it would only be useable from the development environment -- i.e. there won't be a standard way to distribute multiple carts as a collection. I'm hoping that in most cases it will be possible to compress multiple levels to a single cartridge though, using custom compression code. I plan to do this with jelpi, and will post whatever I come up with. It looks like it will be possible to store around 10x typical map data.

I'd like to use the auto-launching on a dedicated machine. I have an arcade cabinet that I'd like to put PICO-8 on (it's more fun to play with joysticks), along with a program that loads other carts (kind of like a little Winnitron launcher). It would be ideal if the launcher cart could be booted without needing to expose a keyboard on the cabinet (especially if it just needs a restart).

It's a very minor request, I understand if it doesn't make it on the todo list. I just thought maybe there was already a solution.

If PICO-8 eventually makes it to Raspberry Pi, I think this functionality would be nice as well. :)

Well it looks like command line launching is coming anyway since he mentioned being able to double click to launch carts, so you'll be able to run it from an arcade cab front end easily enough.

> I'd like to use the auto-launching on a dedicated machine

oh, that sounds sweet! I'll make sure there's some way to do it soonish.

(and please post pictures if it works out :) )

A Raspberry Pi version's in the works, but it looks like it will only run all carts full speed on a Pi 2

by the way, how does ls() work regarding the lua api?
I think right now it doesn't return anything.

More filesystem functions would be welcome for making tools and such, or even just checking if a cart exists (so that for instance, you can warn the user if loading a cart fails).

another solution would be pcall, which isn't implemented in pico8 at this time.

I mean a lot of tools stuff isnt going to be useful until/if we can detect keyboard/mouse inputs

file manager? alternate sound designer? there are a lot of tools that would only require the controller input
that said, grabbing mouse/keyboard input would make these tools more usable, and more popular

Zep: I tried to load PICO-8 on it, but the app just hung on launch. It's run by a pretty old Mac Mini, running OS X 10.6.8, 2Ghz duo core, 1GB RAM. I'm guessing my issue is the old OS. I thought I had seen system requirements somewhere before, but I can't seem to find a page with them.

Worst case for me is I replace the Mini with a Pi(2) when PICO-8 becomes available for it.

Auto-launching on a dedicated machine would be nice but I wonder if it could be designated to search a selected USB port for a USB drive for make shift cart style loading. :3
Just need to squish a flash drive into a cart sorta shape xD
Won't look fancy no matter what with a USB port sticking out but it'll work the easier than building a proper cart reader.
Easier for most people to make at home anyway.