Hey all,

I've decided to pursue my game making hobby, I'm as green as they come when it comes to coding/programming.
I've bought PICO-8 and Picotron, I'll be tipping my toes making games with PICO-8 to wrap my head around programming, and my initial end goal is to make a memorable 2D metroidvania game in Picotron.

I'm honestly not sure where to start though, I know there are free content I could watch on YouTube or read on websites, but I'm trying to find the foundational content/book(s) I can cling to and learn from, so I get a good grasp what it takes to be a decent beginner and eventually an independent intermediate game programmer.

Y'all are more than welcome to make some suggestions, I'll do my best to interact with the comments below.

I wish y'all a good day!

• 84ggy

My honest suggestion: start with the pico-8 manual's lua primer, then alternate to your taste and motivation between testing out all of pico-8's functions (as in, literally all of them) one at a time and reading any section of the lua 5.2 reference manual that sounds like something you aren't familiar with. Just don't bother with the standard and auxiliary lua libraries, since pico-8 doesn't use them. Do that and you'll probably understand pico-8 better than most of the userbase.

Link to the primer in the manual:
https://www.lexaloffle.com/dl/docs/pico-8_manual.html#Lua_Syntax_Primer

Link to the lua 5.2 reference:
https://www.lua.org/manual/5.2/

Besides that, you'll want to get a good understanding of how tables work, especially which syntax and organizations you're most comfortable with so that you know how to use tables to represent all your game objects (and probably levels, cutscenes etc. depending on your favored genres).

Thanks for taking your time to reply I appreciate it. I'll definitely take my time to read and learn as much as I can on the links you've provided.

hi @84ggy,
I was in the same boat about a year ago and still very much enjoy Pico-8. Its a very cheap and fun hobby. It takes up a lot of my time learning things. I find myself thinking about it all the time. As long as your goals are very long term you'll be fine. I would focus on just screwing around in Pico's text editor and hitting ctrl-R and getting it to do something... ANYTHING. Make little scenes with no game in mind. Print words on the screen in different places and different colors. Make stuff you'll throw away. Just for fun (and you really should enjoy this) sit with the manual open in one tab and pico in the other and try out the functions and see if you can understand what it is explaining. Play with different variations and try them in different ways. Because the manual is actually quite good once you understand how to read it.

If you are actually completely green when it comes to coding, try to understand tables; what they are and how to manipulate them. They are called "arrays" in other languages and most of the ideas are the same between languages. Because tables are like EVERYTHING you do. Going through the youtube tutorials are definitely worth it also, but they will be deceptive in what you can then do on your own. Those guys are really good and know it inside and out. You have to start with the total basics of learning the structure of functions and loops and be happy with every little insight.
I too got pico-8 and picotron. I keep my Picotron updated and have future hopes but recommend pico-8 for now. Picotron is a different and more complicated structure. Its also still in Alpha. So not really noob friendly. It's better to learn to code and then carry that knowledge over once picotron is more fleshed out.

Also, keep trying even in a slump. I wrote some ridiculously tortured code that worked but did it the ignorant way in one of my carts. It was the only way I could figure and I plugged along, making it work. But someone on this forum was kind enough to look through it without me asking and taught me a cool trick that saved me a ton after that. People seem to be pretty nice on here. I'm happy to help you with any noob questions btw.

thanks for taking your time to post @camp39 - I actually thought about doing trial and error but wanted to see if there was another approach to learning the language of pico-8, but the more I think about it, the more I'm reminded of a thought experiment where there's a person who can't see colors and has all the knowledge to understand it. So tinkering might be one of, if not the best approach when starting out to unknown territory.