2019 edit: my Patreon page is no longer up, so there is no point in having only the minified version here. Since there was no way to get the source code anyway, I updated the cart here to the readable, fully commented version.
Hey, everyone! This is the final version of my spinning Earth PICO-8 demo, now called Blue Marble.
It comes with two mostly accurate 3D textured spheres, lighting, realtime shadows and even some inspirational quotes that you can toggle by pressing the PICO-8 buttons :).
It's also able to do all this in 60 FPS, because well, why not?
If you're interested in how it's done, please check out my Patreon page - the commented, annotated source code for this demo is available there as we speak!
I might do a write-up later on the inner workings of this - at least if there is some interest?
This is so unbelievably cool. It is simultaneously amazing, depressing, humbling, and inspiring. I see the work you've been doing on this and Dank Tomb and I'm like, mumbleI... I made Snake...mumble :D Very nice work.
Thanks, but no reason to be depressed! As long as you had fun making snake, we both got the same thing from the experience! :)
Nobody is totally immune from this kind of... developer envy, I guess? There are times when I look at stuff other people have done and my first thought is "Oh my, I wish this project was MINE!" (gollum face ;). "Why am I not as cool as this?"
Then I realize this doesn't make any sense - but getting inspired by others and learning from what they do makes a lot! So that's what I do now. I ask myself: "how can I become a step closer to making stuff as cool as this? what ideas can I incorporate into my own stuff?"
I hope I didn't come of as preachy. If so, sorry - I just hate the idea that my work could make somebody sad about themselves, especially because I know that feeling all too well.
Haha, no worries! :) I totally know what you mean. I'd say it's Imposter Syndrome more than anything. I've been a developer for as long as I've used computers, and one of the reasons I love it so much is that I feel like there's always more to learn in so many areas. Occasionally that can seem daunting, like seeing the amazing stuff you've done with this and Dank Tomb, but more often it just drives me to learn even more.
And lastly I'd say that when I said it's "depressing", I really only meant it in a fleeting way in the sense that I look at how long it'd take me to make something like Blue Marble and I know I could be much better, but my very next thought is recognizing that I'm already at a point where I made a super fun, polished game from scratch just last weekend on a sunny afternoon. So it's only that flash of, "Wow, I could be so much better," which leads directly into, "Okay, now how can I get better?" :)
What I love about Pico-8 is how excited it has got me about math again, beautiful demos like this are no exception and I love I can just check out the code whenever I want.
Well, no source code this time around, due to the deal I have with my patrons... But I will be writing up an explanation of how the texturing trick works at some point :).
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