Retronator [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

24 hours (LDJAM44)

Mon, 29 Apr 2019 01:27:08 UTC

24 hours

by Retronator

[Click to Play]

The only thing equal to all is the 24 hours we get at the start of each day. How will you spend yours?

up/down: switch between activities
left/right: change allotted time
z/x/c/v: confirm, continue through screens

Physics Engine + non-game

Mon, 23 May 2016 07:08:08 UTC

Very cryptic final prototype:

Physics Engine v0.4 non-game

by Retronator

[Click to Play]

up/down = change category
left/right = select item
z/c = drop item into water
x/v = item description

It's all placeholders. :x

Earlier version that is a bit more obvious as to the chain reaction theme:

Physics Engine v0.3

by Retronator

[Click to Play]

any key = drop item into water

Hm, so, I kind of suck at jams because I spend a whole day preparing the architecture and stuff. So far I've figured out:

symbolic link the cart from my git repo
shell script that concatenates all my source files together into the cart
setup webstorm with lua support (only works kind-of ok since I have code in a lot of separate files and because of next bullet point)
figured out how to do an object-oriented architecture (hackish, but it seems to work for now)
wrote a 2D vector class
created an OO aggregation arhitecture for scene items and engine parts
started implementing a physics engine

Result: two circles moving across the screen that don't even collide.

2 days down, 7 to go.

Some highlights from the code:

And the all mighty:

I'm really struggling style-wise. This code is all I stand against (short variable names, multiple statements per line, no new lines) but I read all the zines and it kind of got me scared that I'll run out of space and I should conserve as much as possible. No idea if that's true or not, but it's my first real cart, so I have almost zero experience with this.

Pixel Art Academy collaboration

Sat, 09 Apr 2016 19:07:21 UTC

Hi guys, I'm a new, but huge fan of Pico-8!

I'm also making a video game for learning how to draw, called Pixel Art Academy:
https://pixelart.academy

It's set in this futuristic looking skyscraper city and I thought it would be absolutely wonderful to have Pico-8 as a (virtual) console in my (virtual) world.

In the game you play as an art student, so for example, a game development student would come up to you and ask you to draw a spaceship for their game. You would then draw the spaceship and the other student would come back and show you the spaceship in the game. But even better, you can also test and play the game, since this would be an actual Pico-8 cartridge!

So in the background of course the game would need to be pre-made with just the art assets missing. I haven't dug too deep into cartridge memory setup, but I believe it should be easy enough to import graphics into the cartridge from code. Then I can use the html embed to show the game in-game (oh god, game inception).

Also, does anyone have any suggestions of available cartridges that would be a good start for beginners to start customizing the sprites? I only played with Jelpi so far, but I'm looking more for something like space invaders, where there're not so many sprites/tiles and someone can draw it out from start to finish. And it would need to be CC-BY-SA so derivatives are allowed.

I might quickly code some new mini-games to test the concept out, but I'm short on time, so if there's any available ones already for proof-of-concept, it could help speed things up. Or if anyone here would like to make in-game pico-8 games specifically for Pixel Art Academy, let me know.

I leave you with some mockups for the game (the main game, not the in-game game XD):