Low Mem Sky: L A S T
You awake to find yourself on an alien planet, with the desire to achieve one thing... reach the centre of the galaxy!
Made in PICO-8 for #DemakeJam 2018, where the original build came 3rd Place.
FEATURES:
- Around 180,383,121,450 unique star systems... (I think!)
- Each system with...
- Up to 8 procedurally-generated planets
- Space Station for trading resources, components and ship upgrades
(all at system-varying prices)
- Each planet with unique...
- Continuous procedural terrain generation
- Climate-specific resources and collectables
- Seven base alien species (land, water and air-based) + Sentinels
- Five different ship classes - all with different specs (speed, capacity, warp range)
- Auto-save & Restore of progress
- ...all within a single PICO-8 cart!
Planned Features: NONE (No more room!)
CONTROLS:
On Foot:
- ARROWS = Walk around
- Z = Run (Hold)
- X = Collect Item / Take-off (when close enough)
- ENTER = Quick Menu, with options to
- "Call Ship" to current location
- (Also an option to delete save/progress - use with caution!)
Space Flight:
- LEFT / RIGHT = Rotate
- UP = <Unmapped>
- DOWN = Open Galactic Map
- Z = Engage Pulse Engine boost (Hold)
- X = Land / Dock (when close to planet / station)
CREDITS & THANKS:
Code , Art:
- Paul Nicholas -@Liquidream (Twitter)
Music:
- Chris Donnelly -@Gruber (Twitter)
Additional code snippets that I used/adapted:
- PICO-8 port of Open Simplex by Felice Enellen
- Rotate Sprite snippet + Marching Squares by Frederic Souchu
- Pico World by @Gamax92
RELEASE HISTORY:
I want to like this game. But so far it's a bit repetitive. The creatures don't have any purpose for being there. You just land, strip the most valuable resources you can find (skip oxygen, kiddies, it just fills up your inventory for next to nothing), buy the warp pods you can (if you didn't find any) and warp to the furthest towards the core. My finger got tired of holding down the run button. Why not just make that the default speed and make that button the "slow down" button for warping? I'd love some way to check my inventory besides picking something up or selling, and I'd really love a way to drop stuff that I decided I didn't want while still on the surface of a planet.
This is absolutely incredible technically. The use of procedural generation to make such a vast universe in a small cartridge reminds me of Elite. I love it.
@thattomhall Thank you Sir.
@hwd2002 Glad u enjoyed the flying around!
@joealarson Thanks for playing and for the feedback.
I agree, it's somewhat repetitive. However, I've reached the limit of a single PICO-8 cart & therefore have no plans for future updates.
@PicoLate Thank you SO MUCH! :D
I am a huge fan of the Elite franchise (especially Frontier: Elite II) - I'd always marvelled at what David Braben achieved back in the day - particularly how he fit most of it onto a single floppy. That was my goal with this project - to push as MUCH as I could get into a single PICO-8 cart.
I'm so glad someone appreciated what I was shooting for - thanks again! :D
@tommyrocks06 Sorry to hear that. Is that happening on this BBS page?
If so, please try deleting your browser cache.
Failing that, which browser/OS are you using - as I've not seen that be a problem here.
@Liquidream thanks for this wonderful cart! Makes me want to make some kind of procedural terrain exploration experience. Wasn't able to fit that into Heliopause.
Ah ! This is an interesting idea to handle data. Is there an end to it though ? Went to planet, picked flowers, found a flower shop (the spinning triangle), sold them there, rinse and repeat ?
Someone above may have mentioned this earlier, needs something to impede the player's progress, failing this the game is ZEN.
Thx @dw817
Nope, no end state (only the extent of ProcGen, which you'll likely NEVER reach!).
But yeah, no baddies (ran out of Tokens) - so, think of it as a relaxing galactic walking/flying/warping simulator 😉
Okay. Zen it is. Still a marvel of code for such small space. You have my star and appreciation.
@Liquidream I got a glitch where after I sold something my money went into the negatives.
Hope this bug can be fixed. ;)
When i try to play, it gets stuck in the load page. (I play on mobile) i hope you could fix it
Hey, I've been playing this a lot along with Snow and I think they are the best of Pico-8. Really thank you for this, my life was already wasted, but I just found what to do while I wait for death xD
This is the biggest game on pico 8, and see why. It is repetitive, but i don’t really mind. All in all, this is AMAZING!
The game is fantastic, to become a definitive game a few additions would be enough. Interaction with the animals of the planets should be included, energy of the character who can therefore die...
If there is anyone who wants to implement the game, so be it. I am not able to high and I would have done it myself!
love this game, I always set it up on my clockwork Pi GameShell, (or anytime I set up Pico-8 on a system) im also a big fan of No Mans Sky since it came out.. I wondered if the team at Hello Games saw this and if the liked it or anything?
@jbach50 Thank you for the kind words. 😊
Yeah, the team at Hello Games have been extremely cool about this project (which was a lovely surprise).
They retweeted some WIP videos on Twitter and even included a gameplay recording in one of the their newsletters!
Though, perhaps the coolest thing that happened was Sean Murray when actually RT'd a tweet of my physical release! 😱
I'm truly grateful for Sean and the team at Hello Games for embracing fan-generated content, rather than squashing them with DCMA's (like some companies do! 😅).
Alas, I doubt my Dune II demake (#UnDUNE2) will be met with such open arms, given the recent movie popularity, big studio, etc. 😬 (my fault for taking almost 3 years to finish it! 🤦♂️)
[Please log in to post a comment]