Updated Jan 25 2020
Original post
Hello folks! I just picked up the Voxatron + PICO-8 bundle a few days ago.
After a few hurdles and temper tantrums, I accepted my current limitations and finally have the early makings of a tangible game! Basically only the title screen functions.
It's called Listra's Folly for now. It'll be an adventure puzzle game similar to Chip's Challenge or Toad's Treasure Tracker. It's not going to be the full vision I had for this game (at least not in the near future) because I'm not yet one of those procedural-generating geniuses, so the limitations are currently quite limiting for me. I'm aware that PICO-8 basically lets users rewrite the entire map and/or sprite sheet on the fly, but I'll worry about that later.
I'm not sure how this BBS thing works, except that you can't post those cheeky super-carts that load data from more than one cart. I don't really mind if my code or sprites are visible from this embed, but peeking at the sprites might be spoilers because I've drawn A LOT more things than I've implemented. Also you'll laugh at my cruddy sprite work.
If you DO look at the code, well, it might seem a bit overblown for what content is currently here, but hopefully it'll pay off later because I fooled Lua into thinking it had classes.
Neat things to do:
- Down + A to toggle collision visibility
- Walk off of the level
- Walk off of the title screen
- Pause, RESTART LEVEL (not available on title screen)
There aren't any other actors yet, but when I add them, they SHOULD freeze when Listra dies by any means. Maybe. We'll see what happens.
My biggest complaint about PICO-8 right now is how lousy the music editor is... but since PICO-8 games can write to cart data, maybe somebody's made a better music editor for it. If not, I'll have to put one together later.
New version!
Content stuff:
- Can switch X/O on controller
- Can change Listra's shirt color
- Keys and doors
- Ladders (jumping from them does not work yet)
- Block can be poush'd
- Goblin does nothing but you die if you touch him
Debug stuff:
- Down+X to toggle collision/debug visibility
- Down+O to toggle the iris fade
The bad news: I made a minor mistake and now everything lags terribly when objects fall. (Not depicted in most recent upload.)
The good news: I thought this was because of the large number of individual platform actors with their own collision boxes all being checked, and now all adjacent platforms auto-fuse together into a single collision box.
Did I mention I'm working on adding platforms??? Like, that you can jump through and drop through? One of the most frustrating things to add in a platformer game is the darn platforms.
So, once I fix this mystical lag issue which is probably due to accidental recursion thanks to my bad habit of typos and rushed or inefficient coding, the platforms ought not to contribute too much to any lag that remains.
I did more things.
Content
- The "how2pushblock" level is now a larger testing level.
- Bastard platforms have been added after much headache. Listra can drop through them with DOWN+JUMP.
- Ladders have been improved. Listra can jump on them properly now. Because they are now intertwined with platforms, Listra can simply walk off of a ladder without being forced to do a little hop.
Petty Stuff
- Title screen's GRAB / JUMP has been moved just in case I place blocks there later on.
- There is a short delay between fade-out and fade-in.
- Keys now make annoying sounds when you throw them around.
- The blue key now uses a palette swap trick so that it can use black-indigo-blue for its shades. The closed blue door does this too - the open blue door doesn't yet.
Invisible Stuff
- The reason the platforms were such a headache is because adjacent platforms fuse together at room load so less collision boxes are checked.
- General reworking of game physics and method tree to lower bugs, improve performance, and make adding new things easier & less token-hungry.
- Reordering of game map in preparation for procedural generation.
- Mucking around with SFX placement in preparation for stuffing in music. (Some sounds may have to be combined together to make space...)
Debug & Other
- It is now DOWN + UP + JUMP to toggle the debug view. This is probably not going to ever be accidentally hit in gameplay (and I'll disable it eventually anyway.)
- The debug view now highlights the platform Listra is standing on. (This was to verify the fusion was working properly.)
- There is no longer an input to toggle the fade.
[Please log in to post a comment]
