Hey everyone! I'm trying to download some of the cartridges that have been posted to the BBS but I cannot figure out how. I wanted to be able to look at other people's code to see how they make their games. That's the biggest reason I bought Pico 8 was to learn from other people's practices. Any help would be appreciated, thanks!

Below the player for a cart, there is a link that says "cartridge" (next to a small icon of a cartridge) which points to the .p8.png file. That image is what you want to download (it has the game embedded in it).

You can also use SPLORE to load the cart you want, then quit SPLORE and hit ESC to access the code.

Once you download the *.png file, boot up Pico-8 and go to the folder, then at the prompt type:

LOAD WHATEVER.P8.PNG

And that will load the game. Then do:

SAVE WHATEVER.P8

And that will create a *.p8 file which has the actual code. So you'll have 2 files when you're done, the PNG and the P8 file.

Thanks for the replys fellas! I assume I'll just put the png in the correct directory, find it and run it?

And yeah I could find games with splore but when I pressed escape it just paused the game 😯

the SPLORE method:

• load pico8
• at command line type SPLORE
• navigate menu to load game of your choice
• quit splore
• ESC to gain access to source

In case anyone is looking for where to save the cart .png for the manual load method - From the manual:
The default location for PICO-8's drive is:
Windows: C:/Users/Yourname/AppData/Roaming/pico-8/carts
OSX: /Users/Yourname/Library/Application Support/pico-8/carts
Linux: ~/.lexaloffle/pico-8/carts

To load a cartridge directly from this forum, Tymogr, look below the cartridge where you see something like this:

Cart {#donikapobo-0#} | Code | 2019-08-22 | No License | Embed

in PICO command mode (not the editor), type out what is between the square brackets with the pound sign key first: "#"

load #donikapobo-0

For instance. This cart ID will vary from one to the other but will let you immediately load the cart you are looking at in the forum.

Then you can type:

run

To execute it.

Possibly off topic: but I'm a newbie, and I didn't know that I could type "folder" at the pico8 command prompt and it would open the folder with the carts in it. Dump a png cart image there and you can load it with "load <name of png>".

(This system is so awesome!)

"Possibly off topic: but I'm a newbie, and I didn't know that I could type "folder" at the pico8 command prompt and it would open the folder with the carts in it. Dump a png cart image there and you can load it with "load <name of png>"."

ah!! This is the information I was looking for! Super helpful and important to know! :D

Yes that is pretty important if you want ot share your cartridges, or at least thats how I do it

incase someone has passed through this and is on windows on and wants to load the cartridge, another easier way is when you save as the cartridge, open with Pico8 (You might need to find the exe) and itll load it right up.

yeah but how do you run the game in the Image??

@xanderonamy2020 You can just copy the file into your PICO-8 carts folder, then start PICO-8, enter LOAD whatever.p8.png, then type RUN and enter or hit CTRL-R to run the game.

tried playing ExTerra on my retro handheld in Retroarch and it crashes when loading the first stage. The title screen loads, and the menu, but right when the loading screen appears it crashes

@MKZ_713 are you using the official PICO-8 or an emulator like fake08 as the Retroarch core on your handheld? The emulators don't always behave well with all games.