i want the shells of some of my cartridges to look different than usual:

cartridge	source
	"my less good cartridges", section "2022-11-21: Welcome! — special edition 2"

more examples

cartridge	source
	Niji-Famicart (comment)
	Shooting Star (comment)
	one-off character creator
	it is a mystery (meme recreation)

so i created a GUI tool to replace shells of pico-8 cartridges

download & source

• Download
• Source code

every part of this program is licensed under one of these licenses:

• MIT License
• GNU GPL v3
• CC0 1.0 Universal

how to use

the GUI has these steps:

1. put the original cartridge into the 'original cartridge' field
2. put the replacement shell in the 'edited shell' field
3. save the edited cartridge

after saving the new cartridge, you can load and run it in pico-8

limitations

filetype limitations

this program acepts only PNG files

image limitations

• you can't change the image size of the cartridge
• you can't move the 128×128px thumbnail that will be shown in splore and on the lexaloffle bbs
  • you also can't change the size of the thumbnail area
• if you use more than 16 colors from the pico-8 extended palette in the 128×128px thumbnail area, the thumbnail will look unnatural and wrong in splore
  • if you use colors outside of the pico-8 extended palette in the thumbnail area, the thumbnail will look even more unnatural and wrong in splore

early history

you can read about the pre-release history of this tool in 'my less good cartridges':

• section "2022-11-20: Welcome! — special edition"
• section "2022-11-21: Welcome! — special edition 2"
• section "2022-11-25: the impossible cart"

Hiya,
As awesome as this is - how do you run it?
I've downloaded the release, but it has no extension?
I'm on Windows and it seems from your screenshots that you are also.
Thx in advance

yes, the screenshots were made on Windows, but that version is barely tested.
for safety, i only exported on Linux, where i developed the program and tested it very much.
if you want to take the risk, you can run the Godot 4.0 project in Godot 4.x.

i developed the program on my Linux computer during school holidays.
when i wanted to write this post, school holidays ended. so i wrote this post in a short period of being done wth homework. to save time, i made this post on the Windows Laptop i use for school homework

@Sosasees Ah, ok - no probs.
Thanks again for creating it - very cool idea indeed!

yooooo this is amaaaaazing

how did this go as unnoticed (as in "it has barely any comments or stars") for two months? this works?? this is kinda freaking phenomenal!

@aKidCalledAris this went unnoticed because i am an unknown lexaloffle bbs member.

but even if i was well-known in this community, cartridge shell replacer might still have gone unnoticed, because i did not do much marketing for it:

(in this context, ⭕ and ❌ don't mean 'right' and 'wrong', but 'marketed' and 'not marketed'.
i think that the following cases of not marketing the cartridge shell replacer were right decisions)

• ❌ it's not one of my featured posts on my profile. there can be only three, and i chose three posts that i find more important:
  • color contrast table
  • one-off character creator
  • touch keyboard design for pico-8
• ⭕ in 'my less good cartridges', i blogged about custom cartridge shells since section "2022-11-20: Welcome! — special edition", and i linked to the cartridge shell replacer in this comment
• ⭕ i mentioned the cartridge shell replacer in some comments sections of games i made special edition cartridges for — these are cartridges with a replaced shell that i designed — and i linked to this cartridge shell replacer post after i finished the tool:
  • Niji-Famicart (comment)
  • Shooting Star (comment)
• ❌ outside of 'my less good cartridges', i didn't mention the cartridge shell replacer in my posts about my own cartridges. the only way to find out that the cartridge had a custom shell was to download the cart:
  • one-off character creator
  • it is a mystery (meme recreation)

@timothyferriss yes, this is what i have done 🙂

I like the look of all these shells.mapquest

WOW! Thats amazing! How can i run it in windows?

@wolfguy00 i have not made a Windows export because i did not test the program on Windows, so do it on your own risk:

first, download the source code.
then import it into Godot Game Engine v4.0.
from there you can run and export the program.

At my own risk? What can go wrong?

i can't think of anything that can go wrong when using this in the stable version of Godot
since i didn't put any OS-specific code in the program
but just in case it's still better to cautious since i didn't test the program on Windows (only on Linux)

thinking about it, the warning made sense when i made my program (the newest state of Godot 4.0 was Beta 2) but now you can most likely use the program safely in Godot 4.1.3