RhythmLynx [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Curious Fishing - an aquatic puzzle game inspired by PICO-8

Thu, 08 Sep 2022 17:46:21 UTC

Curious Fishing is an aquatic puzzle game where you move a fishing hook around in a grid, trying to catch a variety of sea creatures which each embody different puzzle mechanics. Sort of Fishing + Sokoban.

The game started way back in 2016 as a jam game on the PICO-8 called Hook, Line and Thinker. In the full game I'm still using the lovely 16-color palette and 128x128 resolution, and all the game's audio was made in PICO-8 and then exported!

It's a free browser game that works on both desktop and mobile. You can check it out here:
https://rhythmlynx.itch.io/curious-fishing

The game is designed to be approachable and stress-free, so there are simple controls (including support for mouse, keyboard, gamepad and mobile touchscreen), no timers, you have an unlimited undo, and you can try the levels in almost any order so you won’t get stuck.

I thought I'd share in case anyone was interested. I hope you like it :)

RPGs Done Quick

Sun, 22 Apr 2018 21:06:52 UTC

RPGs Done Quick

by RhythmLynx

[Click to Play]

You are at a speedrun event. You're trying to complete an RPG as quickly as possible, skipping as much as you can.

Made solo from scratch in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 41 based on the theme 'Combine 2 Incompatible Genres'.

Ludum Dare entry page

Tweet thread

itch.io page

Timelapse:

Complicity Inc.

Mon, 04 Dec 2017 14:35:31 UTC

Complicity Inc.

by RhythmLynx

[Click to Play]

Greetings Employee #452783. You have a lot of work to do.

Made solo from scratch in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 40 based on the theme
The more you have, the worse it is.

NOTE: Unfortunately dragging with the mouse often causes issues with the web player used here on the forum. This has been fixed on the itch.io page courtesy of ultrabrite (https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=30380).

Ludum Dare page
itch.io
Employee recruitment homepage

As part of your induction please enjoy this educational video on the history of Complicity Inc.

Hook, Line and Thinker case designs

Mon, 18 Sep 2017 08:19:28 UTC

I'm making a fishing puzzle game called Hook, Line and Thinker. I started it on PICO-8 in a game jam and have since ported it to Defold so I can release it on Android and iOS. I've just done some variations on the case and I'm curious what people think! What's your favorite? What would you change? Original tweet.

If you're curious here's an overview of my progress on the game so far. Original tweet.

How to know the current music pattern?

Sat, 17 Dec 2016 12:22:49 UTC

I'm working on a game with separate menu music and in-game music. What I'd like to do is cache what the current music pattern is and resume each song from there, rather than constantly starting each song from the beginning.

I know I can see what SFX are currently playing on each of the channels using stat(16)-stat(19). I could cache that then peek through the music memory for a pattern with the right SFX on the right channels, but that is obviously not guaranteed to resume at the right point (or even the right song) if that set of SFX are used together in the same way in multiple patterns.

I checked all the values of stat() from 0-127 in case it was there but none of them corresponded to the music pattern.

I could manually track the pattern since I know what pattern I start the music from. With a combination of stat(16)-stat(19) for SFX and stat(20)-stat(23) for notes I should be able to tell whenever the pattern changes. If I know how many patterns long my song is (or just check for the loop flags in memory) I'll know when to reset the tracker back to the start of the song.

I say should because while it would be straightforward to write something like this that works for most music, it might be quite tricky in cases where the same SFX are used in consecutive patterns and use looping instead of a full 32 notes. It's doable but it just seems like a lot of work for what I was expecting to be a simple stat() call.

The Museum

Sun, 28 Aug 2016 21:02:27 UTC

The Museum

by RhythmLynx

[Click to Play]

It's your first day at the museum and your boss is sick. Guess you'll have to improvise!

Made in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 36 based on the theme 'Ancient Technology'.
Timelapse
LD entry page

PICO-8.ttf + variants

Sun, 03 Jul 2016 11:44:56 UTC

Based on feedback I've created several variants of the unofficial PICO-8 font file. Please note, I do not claim any copyright - I used FontStruct to make these and it automatically inserts your username for copyright purposes.

PICO-8 mono
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0B97Um39fHXlcN0xLMWxkSUdlNFE&resourcekey=0-66wLfWyB7-YBce08y9sgqg
A monospaced font which includes punctuation, uppercase and lowercase letters.

PICO-8 mono upper
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0B97Um39fHXlcRWowOXB0Zko5dkk&resourcekey=0-7fJImsUrevG_99_pf4YOEA
A monospaced font which includes punctuation and uppercase letters. Lowercase letters are replaced with uppercase.

PICO-8 mono reversed
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0B97Um39fHXlcQnlFNnRKVC1wc28&resourcekey=0-gheBygTpIzOwdeLUppUpNw
A monospaced font which includes punctuation, uppercase and lowercase letters. The uppercase and lowercase letters have been swapped around.

PICO-8 wide
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0B97Um39fHXlcR3hWT1JwWUtXbGc&resourcekey=0-ywYaagztNH6Wh7t5ZoP5Ag
A variable-width font which includes punctuation, uppercase letters, lowercase letters and wide characters.

PICO-8 wide upper
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0B97Um39fHXlcbXhaWEdfbjFVelU&resourcekey=0-80t-HzGtrbJjKQt1r-ouhw
A variable-width font which includes punctuation, uppercase letters and wide characters. Lowercase letters are replaced with uppercase.

PICO-8 wide reversed
https://drive.google.com/uc?export=download&id=0B97Um39fHXlcdmwyMGZLWGs0Ymc&resourcekey=0-yfFO10YWTUZUxqaT9uJSig
A variable-width font which includes punctuation, uppercase letters, lowercase letters and wide characters. The uppercase and lowercase letters have been swapped around.

For the wide characters I decided to pack them into the following unicode characters U+00C0 to U+00D9: ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙ

So for example this:

Becomes this:

Original post:

Block placement algorithm

Mon, 20 Jun 2016 18:40:09 UTC

I decided to do a write-up of a little recursive algorithm I made for finding every configuration of a set of blocks in a line. While I was doing that I figured I might as well make a PICO-8 cartridge and do a little rendering.

Left and right to change the rendering size, up and down to scroll. To change the number and size of the blocks, the size of the line and the minimum number of spaces between blocks just change the appropriate values in _init().

Block placement algorithm

by RhythmLynx

[Click to Play]

Algorithm (full code in cartridge)

One Hour Game Jam

Sun, 19 Jun 2016 11:46:11 UTC

There is a onehourgamejam every Saturday at 20:00 UTC. Feel free to post your own entries here too!

60th jam (18 June 2016). The theme was Castle.
This was my first 1HGJ. I worked feverishly on the first idea that came into my head: archery. I was in such a rush that I spelled castle wrong in the title graphic! Didn't realise until after submission that you can just hold down fire to win.

Castle

by RhythmLynx

[Click to Play]

Micro Pico

Sun, 17 Apr 2016 17:33:01 UTC

Micro Pico 0.5

by RhythmLynx

[Click to Play]

I made this game for Low Rez Jam 2016 where the goal was to make a 64x64 game. I figured that was too many pixels so I made a collection of 20x20 microgames instead! I made one game a day for two weeks, April 1st - 14th. Here's the itch.io page for the game.

Games get harder with each level and unfortunately a lot of them will become impossibly difficult - balancing 14 games is pretty time consuming! I used 6590/8192 tokens and a decent chunk of the spritesheets (though a lot of what's there wasn't used). The screen mode hack found by sta64 forces the resolution from 128x128 to 64x64.

Things I'd like to add when I have time:

Menu music
Level win/fail music
In-game music which speeds up with the gameplay
Sound effects for all the games
Practice mode for trying each game

Secret smaller font!

Fri, 15 Apr 2016 16:54:08 UTC

So if you have caps lock on or hold shift and start typing in the search bar it uses a 3x4 font! I'm guessing zep tried out other font sizes or tried having 3x5 for uppercase and 3x4 for lowercase or something, and some weird loophole means it accidentally uses the small font for uppercase characters but only in the search bar.

PicoPalette

Sun, 14 Feb 2016 19:08:09 UTC

PicoPalette

by RhythmLynx

[Click to Play]

A simple tool to make playing around with the PICO-8 palette easier.
Arrow keys to change selection, Z or X or to pause/unpause the fade animation.
Fade charts and function by @cap_colors

TinyText + MiniText + 3Text

Thu, 11 Feb 2016 15:27:00 UTC

I've made a series of fonts for the PICO-8. Each font uses as few sprites and as little code as possible. An 'LS' version of a font uses Less Sprites at the expense of longer code.

TinyText: a lowercase font meant for use alongside the uppercase system font. Each character is just 3x4 pixels and aligns to the bottom of the system font, meaning lines of text are still 5 pixels tall and 3-pixel monospaced. The whole font uses just 5 sprites. Can fit 21 lines of text on-screen (the same as the system font).

TinyTextLS: the same font as TinyText but with just 4 sprites!

MiniText: a prettier lowercase font also meant for use alongside the uppercase system font. Character size varies and can hang below the writing line, meaning lines of text are now 7 pixels tall (but are still 3-pixel monospaced). The code is a bit longer, but the font still only uses 5 sprites. Can fit 16 lines of text on-screen.

MiniTextLS: the same font as MiniText but with just 3 sprites! [deprecated, see LRP's Mini]

LRP's Mini: the same font as MiniText but packed into just 2 sprites by LRP!! It also uses less code than MiniTextLS, so it's all-round better - use this one instead of MiniTextLS! Find it in the comments.

These fonts come with 3 text rendering functions, plus there's the system print, so we have:

print(str [x y [col]]) the system print function, which "PRINTS IN ALL CAPS".
printlower(str x y [col]) which "prints in all lowercase".
printfirst(str x y [col]) which "Capitalizes just the first word".
printevery(str x y [col]) which "Capitalizes Every Word".

3Text: this is a standalone font that replaces the system font for printing. Every character is just 3x3 pixels and the code is very short, but it uses 10 sprites and is the hardest one to read. Can fit 32 lines of text on-screen.

print3(str x y [col])

[b]SPRITES USED:       TOKENS USED:         LINES ON-SCREEN:[/b]
LRP's Mini   2      3Text       164      3Text       32
MiniTextLS   3      TinyText    245      TinyText    21
TinyTextLS   4      TinyTextLS  410      TinyTextLS  21
TinyText     5      MiniText    411      MiniText    16
MiniText     5      LRP's Mini  590      LRP's Mini  16
3Text       10      MiniTextLS  676      MiniTextLS  16

TinyText 1.1

by RhythmLynx

[Click to Play]

TinyTextLS

by RhythmLynx

[Click to Play]

MiniText 1.1

by RhythmLynx

[Click to Play]

MiniTextLS

by RhythmLynx

[Click to Play]

3Text

by RhythmLynx

[Click to Play]

License:

Pictures:

How the 'LS' versions work:

Old versions:

Need For Seed: Undergrowth v1.1

Sun, 13 Dec 2015 18:48:53 UTC

Need For Seed: Undergrowth 1.1

by RhythmLynx

[Click to Play]

Direct the growth of vines to avoid lawnmowers. If you run out of seeds, fly the bee to lots of flowers to pollinate them for more. Try to survive as long as possible!

I originally made this game in 48 hours for Ludum Dare 34 with the dual themes of 'Growing' and 'Two Button Controls'. There's a timelapse of that here. This is an updated version of the game with lots of improvements based on feedback from the LD community.

===Changelog 1.1

Original LD version:

Need For Seed: Undergrowth

by RhythmLynx

[Click to Play]