Happy New Year all!

Please excuse my ignorance and do stop me if this has all been done before.

I'm thinking of bringing together a large collaborative game for Pico-8, based on the concept used in Lazy Jones for the C64:

https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Lazy_Jones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7DyoDJCqac

Basically Lazy Jones was the first example I know of, of a game that features lots of minigames (18 I think). In Lazy Jones, you walk round a hotel avoiding enemies etc, and opening doors, and behind each door is a timed minigame. The aim of the game was to play all of the games and get the highest total score.

I wouldn't be looking to replicate Lazy Jones exactly, rather it would use the same general idea - an overarching "meta" game with as many minigames as possible. Naturally I'd be looking for the different games to come from you guys!

Done on the C64 this was quite the technical feat, but done on the Pico-8 with all the Tweetjam skillz I've seen on here, this could be awesome. We only have half as much RAM available, but a lot of the C64 code would have been hardware stuff that is handled automatically by the Pico-8, so maybe a fairly level playing field?

In order to try to get as many games as possible we'd have to impose a few restrictions (yay!):

> Maybe some kind of token/char limit - we'd need to strike the right balance between number of games and the scope of those games.
> Each game has some kind of final score and some kind of timer/lives system, to feed into the "meta" score.
> Screen space restrictions, to allow for general HUD stuff etc.
> Light on sprites and SFX usage - maybe share assets between games or come up with a master asset list for all games and try to optimise?
> Global music same for all games, maybe each game can decide to play it or not.

Obviously this is all very early ideas, and I'd very much welcome feedback - and as much help as possible - in shaping the final thing!

Let me know what you think :)

Neil

Hi Neil,

Happy New Year! :D

A similar project, "Pico8-Collab16" (LINK) has been done before, but don't let that put you off. Not least because it's been quite a while since the last one.

For that project (run by @josefnpat), we each had a set quota of max tokens, chars, sprite allocation, etc., similar to what you are proposing. That approach worked well, as far as I could tell (I only took part in the 1st one). I believe one nice aspect was that, if some ppl didn't use their full "quota", then they could be offered up first-come-first-serve to anyone who needs a bit more.

Either way, sounds like a good idea. I hope you get a lot of interest! :D

I wrote a small tweetjam-ish fishing minigame. I'd be happy to contribute something like that.

You may want to reach out to people on the Discord or twitter? Get a hashtag going, etc.

This sounds like a lot of fun. As someone just getting into PICO-8, i like the sounds of contributing something small and manageable to this.

Thanks for the comments guys,

@Liquidream Thanks for pointing this out, I never would have found it alone. @josefnpat's approach seems very logical (although for the 2nd cart I have no idea what that snippet of function pointer code does!). Seems like a lot more work than I'd previously envisaged - I was thinking of a much more rough and ready approach, but I now realise it needs to be a bit more structured, especially if I'm aiming for incorporating the "meta" game that I mentioned earlier. Food for thought. Thanks!

@enargy I'd definitely be interested in something like that, sounds good. But maybe don't start yet until we've definitely worked out if/how it's going ahead - wouldn't want to waste your time.

@chowyunbrent All would be welcome, regardless of experience - I'd run it on a first-to-submit basis.

Neil