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Hey All -- PICO-8 0.1.9 builds are now live on Lexaloffle and Humble!

Posting Carts via Clipboard

The handiest new feature is being able to post cartridges to the bbs via the clipboard, without ever saving it as a png. Use "SAVE @CLIP" to copy to the clipboard as text, and then paste it into a post (hit Preview to make sure it worked and to get rid of the wall of text). You can also copy carts from the BBS (look for 'Copy' under each cart) and paste it back into PICO-8 with "LOAD @CLIP")

Posting GFX via Clipboard

You can also do the same thing with sprites. Using CTRL-C in the sprite editor also stores a copy of the sprites as text in the clipboard, and can be pasted back and forth to BBS posts. Here's an example: (click the 40x8 and then CTRL-C the text to copy&paste it back into a cart)

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Jam

There's a new category in the BBS called Jam, which shows up in SPLORE. The Jam sub-forum (along with clipboard cart&gfx pasting) will be useful for things like the Tweetjam thread and for having a natural place to discuss / post ideas for external jams like Ludumdare.

I originally envisaged Jam-related stuff going in Collaboration, but I think Jam can grow into something quite worthwhile and separate. Collaboration will also be extended at some point to include a 'snippet library' of re-useable pieces of code/gfx/audio, which feels quite different from jamming.

Raspberry Pi GPIO

If you have a Raspberry Pi and an LED, try jamming one end into GPIO1, and the other one into GND, and you can make it blink on and off with POKE(0x5f81,255) and POKE(0x5f81,0). Note that you'll need to run PICO-8 as root: sudo pico8

60FPS HTML5

Exported html can now run at 60fps. To improve performance, the web player now always runs on a 128x128 rather than performing the scaling in software. If you are writing your own html shell for the exported .js, you'll need to do an unfiltered scale of the canvas to the desired size. (See the default exported 0.1.9 html shell for an example).

Pixel-Perfect Scaling

When changing the window size of PICO-8, or swapping from a window to fullscreen, PICO-8 now chooses the largest integer scaling factor that will fit inside the window to avoid blurry filtered pixels. For example, on a 1920x1080 real-world display, the largest scale is 8 which gives a 1024x1024 PICO-8 display.

PocketCHIP Update

We're working on it! I still can't give an eta on the PocketCHIP update, but the latest build is in testing and looks good across kernel versions, including GPIO access (so will likely skip to 0.1.9). It still needs to be coordinated with other things happening at Next Thing Co. though, so I'll keep you updated here.

Coming Up

There are still a bunch of small issues with the editors I'd like to improve, but PICO-8 is starting to look pretty close to beta! Next up will be website improvements to complement the clipboard & Jam category additions, and also long overdue support for touch devices. The main feature missing for beta is being able to login and submit scores from carts using SCORESUB(LEVEL, SCORE).

The next Voxatron update also has some new PICO-8 stuff -- the first version of the Voxatron API is a superset of PICO-8's and allows mapping one slice of Voxatron's display to PICO-8 video memory. (The display is basically a stack of 64 PICO-8 screen). So you'll be able to load PICO-8 cartridges into a Voxatron cartridge and make wee arcades and weird 3d ports and whatnot. It's fantasy consoles all the way down!

changelog:


v0.1.9

Added: Copy and paste sprites and whole cartridges directly to BBS posts
Added: JAM category in splore
Added: GPIO support for Raspberry Pi
Added: Read clipboard using stat(4) after user presses CTRL-V
Added: printh() can optionally write to a file or the host clipboard
Added: Editor tool information and tips shown on mouseover
Added: Set desktop path with -desktop (screenshots and gifs are saved here)
Added: Warning on saving .p8 when compressed code size exceeds .p8.png limit
Added: Alternative editor colours // config.txt: gui_theme 1
Added: Dotted line every 8 rows in song view
Added: -screenshot_scale (default: 3) and -gif_scale (default: 2)
Added: Can use ctrl-up, ctrl-down to jump to start and end of code
Added: CTRL-M to mute/unmute sound
Added: HTML5-exported carts support 60fps
Added: Timeout switch for splore downloads: -timeout
Changed: Glyph characters typed with alt + a..z
Changed: stat(0) does not include allocations waiting to be garbage collected
Changed: Unfiltered screen stretching at integer scales by default
Changed: Removed -aspect and -scale settings (use draw_rect instead)
Fixed: -home has no effect under Windows
Fixed: Sometimes frame skipping starts before CPU useage has reached 100%
Fixed: Double-speed BTNP() timing in 60fps mode
Fixed: Exported HTML fails when _update60 is used instead of _update
Fixed: Can't copy and paste button glyphs
Fixed: Lines containing glyphs do not scroll far enough horizontally
Fixed: Loading .p8 renamed as .p8.png from splore freezes
Fixed: Bucketfill in map doesn't sync to shared memory
Fixed: fset fails when de-setting flags
Fixed: Syntax error when beginning with the form: IF (..) [OR|AND]\n
Fixed: cls() costs twice as much cpu as it should
Fixed: wav file exporter missing some data / writing truncated buffers
Fixed: Entering new notes in song view doesn't observe current volume, instrument
Fixed: alt-tab sometimes generates alt character text entry event
Fixed: Resuming a cancelled download in splore causes crash
Fixed: Controller attributes in log.txt always shown as -1

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Awesome, zep - thank you!



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Great job as always, thanks a lot!


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Nice!



Very nice! Thanks!


Resizing the window too small crashes PICO-8 with "Floating point exception"


Very cool
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May be a graphics section on the web site soon ? Thanks
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I updated the wiki with some of these changes, as appropriate. I'm looking forward to trying out the RaspPi GPIO stuff next week (and eventually PocketCHIP).


:D :D :D
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lovely work as usual zep!
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Oops found a problem: resizing the window too small makes Pico-8 crash on Windows. :x


Yay ! My first update. THIS is the main reason I bought PICO ...

UPDATES ! This marvelous little game programming language can only get better over time !

I was going to mention that if you make a BATCH command with PICO thus:

"pico8-engine.exe" -scale 5

You will scale up to the next pixel level as default on my computer and likely yours, it is 4.

It appears, however, this is now covered with PIXEL PERFECT scaling.

Looking forward to further future updates, ZEP !


C.H.I.P. should get GPIO support, also @zep you didn't mention wide characters in code.
But still, great update! Can't wait for the PocketC.H.I.P. release.

edit: alt glyphs don't work on my computer


Those are amazing additions!!

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Woo! Flags can be unset programmatically.

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I asked over on the Next Thing Co forums about this, but maybe here's a good place too:

Would it be possible to add a command-line option to Pico-8 that skips the "Press 0 (zero) to start" splash screen on the PocketC.H.I.P. version?

I want to use the PocketC.H.I.P. to display a series of Pico-8 carts as desktop eye-candy. I have a script that runs through carts in a directory, starts & stops Pico-8. But, it won't work automatically because I have to manually press the button to start.


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Love the new graphics export feature


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This is awesome! :D Thank you!


@lmorchard If you could send a keyboard signal with the script, you could make it send 0 after PICO-8 starts and it should boot into PICO-8 fine, though you might need a delay since PICO-8 will take some time to start.

EDIT: Try this:

sudo apt-get install xdotool


and in the bash script

run pico-8 with eyecandy p8 files on this line

xdotool key 0

EDIT2: Testing this now.
EDIT3: apparently it dosen't work because pico-8 seizes up any other command, trying it with xdotool at the top.
EDIT4: dosen't work either way trying this: pico8 | xdotool key 0
EDIT5: it will need a delay to run at the launch of the PICO-8 window, i'm not that experienced in bash so I can't figure out the rest. xdotool does work though.


seconding funrezy: can't enter glyphs on my mac now; no alt key


Glyphs don't seem to work over here on Windows 10.


I think zep broke the glyphs when he added the alt key.


funzrey: Oh, I haven't played with xdotool before! Got my little script working with that, and updated my thread over on the PocketCHIP forums. Rotating nicely though the carts, now!


It's not possible to post cartridges from the clipboard into the carts categories. On the instructions page, clicking the links to create a new thread in one of the four subcategories just redirects back to the same page.


Heh this is a nice way to show off sprites and share them, nice thinking.
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@zep You may also want to consider adding "LOAD/SAVE @CLIP" to the HELP command reference?
I couldn't remember the exact command and my first thought was to run HELP... but it didn't! ;)


Cartridge pasting is so convenient! (at least for the tiny carts I've tried it with so far)


almost a side effect, you can copy/paste gfx between instances of pico-8! neat!

how about also copying screenshots to the clipboard?

is the label also copied when you paste a cart ?
speaking of which, import/export of labels would be great, and/or saving it to .p8


\o/


<3


Now if we can add copy current screen to HEX clipboard, then we won't need to save off a file and upload each time.

(during program)
Press SHIFT F6
Message: "Current screen copied to clipboard."

In BBS message, press CTRL-V.

Mass of hex data appears.

Save message. Clipboard image appears.


Looking forward to the android port :B
I wanna make games on my tablet damn it!



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