Well, THIS was a surprising side of myself to find coming to life while messing with PICO-8. Little as I've been able to really sit down and focus, I've actually started getting more into hardware and Linux now as a result of my exposure to it! I've already built a "Picade Console unit," and got that loaded up with some games... for some weird reason, Emulation Station still having trouble launching PICO-8, even though it can see the games there for it. I've done the "sudo chmod +rwx pico8" thing too. But nevertheless, the controller/unit was FUN to build, and that's something I really haven't done in a good ten years now. I'm up and playing a bunch of cool classics with it, too! I'm probably gonna get a full Picade Cabinet kit when they become available again, too! :D

Also, after MUCH delibration, my PocketCHIP finally shipped as well! It's only been a day now, and I had to do some calibration to the touch screen, but developing for PICO with it is still fun and solid! The somewhat nonstandard punctuation is a little tricky at first; but once you get acquainted a bit, it's pretty solid. I didn't have as much trouble hitting diagonals as I expected to have, from what I've heard here - but getting my right thumb back on the 0/+ keys (the Pocket edition equivalent of o/x or z/x) usually involved me looking away from the screen for the placement. It also felt weird trying to compose sound with "Q 2 W 3 E 4 R T 6 Y 7 U" since the number keys THEMSELVES were in a piano-like arrangement at the top of the screen (that might be one version difference worth considering); but once I popped up an octave and stuck to "Z S X D C F V B H N J M," it wasn't so bad. Then if I needed the top octave, I'd just change that bit in the tracker view. Editing sprites, maps, and even code felt natural as feck, though. And it's kind of a neat touch that it boots in Splore mode... but I can understand why the regular version doesn't do that.

It also feels REAL DAMN GOOD to have my first entire weekend off since June. T.T But I suppose without that intense grind, I wouldn't be swimming in all the cool nerdy wares I have going on now! And it's all 100% thanks to the PICO-8 community.