I really like this talk, especially zep's list of "target moments" that inspired him when making PICO-8.

bravo!
I enjoyed this so much <3

PICO-8 has been in my peripheral vision for quite some time but I never got past reading the specs of the console. After seeing this talk and testing the platform, I feel I could belong here.

25:55 ZEP, why did you not include RED in the explanation of color choices ?

I'm trying to take this whole video in, not just as a simple understanding, but a bigger view of the world in which you developed.

• Player framing ?

• I know you mentioned you wrote PICO-16 to remind yourself not to write something like this - is it PICO-8 compatible - and what are some of the differences in it that you think PICO-8 presented better ?

• Fairies ?

All programmers would like to ask you this. After all, in many ways you are like the God that created the paradise for us programming mortals. What do you, ZEP, think of their main cartridge - as a program built entirely in your world ?

Like with me, the key cartridge was Haunted House.
https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=27999

One other thing. What draws me to PICO-8 ? It's not because it's cute, and yes it is. It is a very cute language. No, I'm drawn to it because of these reasons, and not all of these may not be the reasons you wrote it for:

[1] It works right out of the box. No need to run extra libraries or installation.

[2] It's fast. Really fast. No compilation time, no chomping up my hard drive. About the time you get your finger off the ENTER key from typing RUN, your program is already going.

[3] Games others have written. Now this is a tricky one. I looked a good long time before I plonked down to purchase PICO-8 and I did so because I saw what COULD be done and what WAS done already in it. Not a cheap platformer editor like most other game-making languages but a full-blown object-oriented, true programming language that can do incredible 3-dimensional graphics, fragment explosions, and animations.

[4] Portability. I can write something and unlike RPG Maker which requires you to have installed a 100mb library, you can post your game as an IMAGE, a real image of a cartridge, and is loaded played just as easily.

[5] SPLORE. Who wouldn't want a programming language that not only lets you write great games and mind teasers but has an Online connection to a world of software written by other talented programmers and lets you look directly at their source to increase your own knowledge of game and engine design.

[6] Community. It's one thing to talk about a programming language but to actually just post a sample cartridge as a .PNG picture for an example - ready to run right then, that is far far better than other forum where you must copy/paste and hope there aren't any extra data files not included in the example like images and audio. It's all self-contained.

[7] Speed. When I first wrote Fireball I realized right then and there this language is fast, really fast.

https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=27955

And I like that, a lot. There's a great many interesting things you can do with graphics when you can literally update every single individual pixel at 30fps or better.

[8] Onboard sprite, map, audio, and music editor. No need to run a separate program. No need to use cut/paste between programs. It's all there - and when you save your program, all your media work is saved as well.

[9] I can program "badly" in it. Let me explain. Most programming languages today FORCE you to use and type code in system functions like update() and so on. Yours does not. If it did ? I wouldn't be here. As it is it does not and I can certainly program in it the way i'm used to. Spah-ghetti code with no thought at all to object-oriented programming ! :D

Did I leave out anything ? I would like to emphasize again, [3] from above. We programmers are a shrewd lot. By seeing the incredible carts others have already written in a language and the promise that we can do this ourselves or even better, is more than enough lure to attract people to the CUTE but certainly powerful PICO fantasy operating system.

As you have shared, so shall I. You're not the only one who had planned a fantasy console. Years ago when I was dabbling on the Gameboy Advance, I was going to make a legendary (at least to me) programming language that would allow Gameboy users to create unique and original tile-based games and applications all stored neatly within 64k of SRAM.

This is one picture from my deep archive of what is now my nostalgic picture collection of unfinished programs. Converted from 4-bit bitmap w custom palette to here, 24-bit .png. Doodled about 15 years ago. Likely you have a similar cache of unfinished project templates, ZEP. :)

@zep
Thanks for the presentation (and for PICO-8!). It was very interesting and it resonated with me :-)

Would you like to share the presentation cart?

Amazing, what a great guy.