krajzeg [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Easter Egg

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 23:55:20 UTC

Easter Egg

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

Literally an easter egg.

Pick up a paintbrush, paint an egg for the #picotron community and post it here in the thread!

Happy #picotron Easter, everyone :)

Sandotron!

Thu, 14 Mar 2024 23:03:19 UTC

Sandotron!

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

First tiny catridge for the Picotron!
Drop some celebratory sand into your tiny window and shake it around, why not? :)

Shoot Rock (PICO-1k)

Sun, 18 Sep 2022 10:53:28 UTC

shootrock

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

This is an entry for PICO-1K Jam 2022. The whole game fits in exactly 1024 bytes of compressed PICO-8 code.

Hold Z to charge laser. When laser charged, release Z to shoot rock.

When you shoot rock, gem fall out. Get gem. More gem got without shoot = more combo point.

Get 10000 point to become master of shoot rock.

Low Knight

Thu, 12 Mar 2020 19:44:13 UTC

Low Knight

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

For some reason, I forgot to post this cartridge when it was originally made during the 2018 Demake Jam. Well, here it is now! This is the minified version, but the .p8 source is available on the itch.io page: https://krajzeg.itch.io/low-knight.

The game is a demake of and a homage to Hollow Knight. It was made in 6 days, so it's kind of rough around the edges, and the difficulty level is over the top. It is what it is, though, and still happy with how well it holds up given its development time :)

Pieces of Cake

Mon, 26 Nov 2018 16:24:51 UTC

Pieces of Cake

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

EDIT: Updated version now supports mouse controls (and touch controls, but it won't work too well on the BBS - try the itch.io version to play on your phone!)

You're baking cakes for the Winter holidays! You do this by putting ingredients into a tray and trying to score the most points by assembling the longest combos possible!

This is an entry in the 2018 PICO-8 Advent Calendar - day #10.

How to play
The easiest way to learn is the "how to play" option in-game, but here is the gist:

You make cakes by playing tiles into the tray. When the tray fills up, the cake is baked and scored.
You get a recipe for each cake. The total score on tiles with a given ingredient has to at least match the number in the top-left corner.
Tiles with the same ingredients fuse together when placed next to each other.
Tiles with different ingredients interact through links. There are colored knobs on the sides of tiles. A red knob means that a tile will link with a red tile in this direction (the color of the score tag matters). Tiles earn bonus points when linked (equal to the lowest score already on them) and swap places.
You can use all that swapping to make combos, which score extra points to all the tiles in your tray.
Every link or fuse that you make earns you an extra tile to use.

SlipWays

Tue, 20 Mar 2018 13:55:09 UTC

Slipways 1.1.2

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

Slipways is now part of the PICO-8-gone-commercial club! You can find the grown-up version of Slipways on Itch or Steam!

So, here is the final PICO-8 version of SlipWays!

Mouse is kind-of-required for this one. You can drag the map around with the right mouse button, but that doesn't work on the BBS (since the browser's context menu will pop up). You won't have this problem when playing on itch.io or inside PICO-8. Alternatively, you can scroll around with SDFE or arrow keys.

Phew. Oh, wait, so you'd like to know how to actually play the game? There is an animated quickstart guide, but here is the shortest possible text summary:

Drag the map around using the right mouse button or the SDFE keys. Click to drop a wormhole that will become your starting point. Then click and drag to find some planets, which you can colonize with your chosen industry type. Drag from planet to planet to connect them with a slipway. Try to connect planets that make stuff with planets that need it. Buy structures by dragging them from the bottom-right corner. Research technologies from the top-left corner. Click the heart symbol to check your score.

Make the biggest, baddest, most prosperous empire possible! And do post your scores in the thread! :)

Merry Xmas, everyone!

Sat, 23 Dec 2017 13:28:18 UTC

White Christmas 1.0

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

Best wishes to everyone in the community for the coming Christmas, Winter Solstice Festival, Yule, or a random December weekend that has no special meaning to you!

Here's to another fine year for PICO-8! :)

Depth in games - article on PICO-8 and game design

Sun, 26 Nov 2017 12:49:20 UTC

Hey everyone,

I wrote an article that might be of interest to the community.

It's mainly about depth and breadth in game design, how they differ in my understanding, and how depth can be achieved in small PICO-8 games in order to make them engaging despite their small size.

Here's a link: https://medium.com/@krajzeg/depth-in-games-an-in-depth-look-d94a04ce581a

Enjoy and do let me know if you liked it! :)

Platformer Starter Kit

Tue, 21 Nov 2017 12:34:56 UTC

Platformer Starter Kit 1.01

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

Updated to 1.01: fixed a bug where levels starting at coordinates other than 0,0 had wonky collisions

Hey everyone!

This is the second public domain tileset I'd like to share with everybody (after the top-down tileset released a few weeks ago). Like the one before, it was originally created for my PICO-8-based game design workshop, but it would be a shame to limit its use to only the workshop participants. So I made it a little bit more universal, bundled it with the engine code I used for the workshop, and released it here!

The tileset contains heads and bodies for a variety of characters, enemies, obstacles, three terrain types, lots of stuff to climb on, some random items and a few additional things no platformer should go without. As far as I'm concerned, this is all public domain, so feel free to use all of it or parts of it in your platformer projects, and feel free to remix or alter it in any way you want.

The cartridge is commented as heavily as the PICO-8 compressed size limit would allow, but I'm happy to answer any additional questions you might have.

Hope this comes in useful, and do let me know if you make anything with it! Have fun!

This tileset would not exist without the support of the generous folks on my Patreon, especially my top-tier supporters: Ryan Malm, Thorsten Schleinzer and Roy Fielding. Thank you!

Top-Down Starter Tileset

Thu, 26 Oct 2017 15:30:17 UTC

Top-Down Starter Tileset 1.0

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

So, I've been doing a PICO-8 game development workshop for a while now. One of the ideas for the workshop that ultimately didn't pan out was for me to make a top-down tileset that would allow us to make a game during the workshop quickly.

The workshop went a different way, but a good tileset is a sad thing to waste - so I finished it, and I'm hereby releasing it to the PICO-8 community. The CC tag on the cartridge is not a coincidence - as far as I'm concerned, this tileset is public domain and you can use it and abuse it however you wish!

Wanted to make a PICO-8 medieval tactics game? A Heroes of Might and Magic demake? A Harvest Moon rip-off? A strategy game of some sort? This should help you at least a little bit :)

There is 64 empty tiles left to be filled. If you actually start a project and make some headway, I'd be happy to do a few tiles specific to your game, time permitting.

Lastly, the biggest reason I could spend the time to finish this tileset instead of working on $$$ projects is the people on my Patreon - so a big thank you to the guys and gals supporting me there :)

Noodle Engine

Mon, 18 Sep 2017 11:38:54 UTC

Noodle Engine 1.01

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

EDIT: Updated version 1.01 for better precision in matrix calculations, so that shapes don't degenerate too quickly. Thanks @adge_francis for pointing this out on Twitter!

Controls: left, right, (O) - change pictures (X) - restart current picture, down - hide/show info bar

This is the first public release of the Noodle Engine, a PICO-8 thingamajig for making generative 3D art!

This example cart includes a few pictures I made, but the true purpose of releasing the engine is to enable everybody who is not me to make even cooler pictures with it!

It's easy to define new shapes with one or two screenfuls of code. Just load the cart up inside PICO-8 and scroll below the "pictures go here" line. You can play with the examples in there, or add completely new pictures. There is documentation available that walks you through the concepts and explains everything needed to make it all work.

If you're interested in how the engine itself and its renderer works, I have a Patreon where the full, unobfuscated source code is available to all $5+ patrons!

Feel free to share anything you make with the engine in any form, as carts, GIFs or otherwise. Hope it's as fun to play with as it was to make! :)

A Billion Pale Dots 1.0

Wed, 16 Aug 2017 15:09:19 UTC

A Billion Pale Dots 1.0

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

2019 edit: Since the Patreon page is no longer up, there was no way to get the readable source code - so I decided to update the cart here to the fully readable, commented version.

This Sunday, I finally did the Patreon $100 stream - and the topic was procedurally-generated pixelart planets. The results were very fun, so I decided to flesh it out a bit more and make a small demo out of it.

The controls are pretty simple, since this is a highly advanced spacecraft simulation: press X to warp to the next planet.

The full source code, as usual, is available on my Patreon - if you'd like to know how the sausage is made, that's the perfect place to do it. You can also watch the stream, which explains (I hope) most of the ideas behind it.

Enjoy! :)

Dank Tomb is out!

Tue, 25 Jul 2017 13:01:12 UTC

Dank Tomb 1.1b

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

At long last, the game is finally done!

Before you play: Dank Tomb is a pay-what-you-want title, which means that if you prefer to play it for free, it's perfectly okay to do so. But I'd really appreciate it a lot if you choose to pay for it through itch.io, or support my future work on Patreon! Supporters get bonus stuff as a thank-you from me: an expedition journal with additional story for Dank Tomb and access to unminified PICO-8 source code for the game ($5+).

Enjoy the game, and let me know what you think! A lot of blood, sweat, tears and elbow grease went into making this game, so I hope you'll have as much fun playing it as I had making it!

If you'd like to put the game down and return to it later, the game features a special room where you can save your progress. Once you see the "progress saved" message, it's safe to close the browser/console. To delete your progress (to get 100% completion on a new playthrough, maybe?), press Enter and select "delete progress" from the in-game menu. Warning: irreversible!

EDIT: updated to 1.1 - now with more generous jumps!

Blue Marble

Tue, 11 Jul 2017 13:21:53 UTC

Blue Marble 1.0

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

2019 edit: my Patreon page is no longer up, so there is no point in having only the minified version here. Since there was no way to get the source code anyway, I updated the cart here to the readable, fully commented version.

Hey, everyone! This is the final version of my spinning Earth PICO-8 demo, now called Blue Marble.

It comes with two mostly accurate 3D textured spheres, lighting, realtime shadows and even some inspirational quotes that you can toggle by pressing the PICO-8 buttons :).

It's also able to do all this in 60 FPS, because well, why not?

If you're interested in how it's done, please check out my Patreon page - the commented, annotated source code for this demo is available there as we speak!

I might do a write-up later on the inner workings of this - at least if there is some interest?

Lightsaber Simulator

Thu, 04 May 2017 14:47:36 UTC

Lightsaber Simulator 0.504

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

It's May the 4th, otherwise known as Star Wars Day - so I made a little something :).

Swing away, and may the gamedev force be with us all! :)

Dank Tombs Tech Demo (with full write-up!)

Thu, 02 Feb 2017 12:57:03 UTC

Dank Tombs Tech Demo 1.01

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

EDIT: All articles are now up, see below for links!

So, I've been working on a game again (which now has a name: Dank Tombs), and it includes a really swanky real-time lighting engine. Working on it was a blast and I learned a lot of good stuff when optimizing it, so I decided to clean up the code, share it here and write a series of posts on it so that others can benefit as well :).

Here is part 1,part 2, part 3 and part 4 of the write-up - if you have an hour, you can read them all in one go :).

This is just a demo, so most of the cart is showing off the tech.
Controls: (O)/(X) change the light radius, d-pad walks around

If you want to explore the cartridge for yourself, the best place to start from is probably _draw() - it references all the interesting stuff and clearly shows what order things happen in.

The code is under a CC-BY-SA license, so feel free to repurpose stuff :).

Add gamepad support to your web export

Sun, 21 Aug 2016 19:57:38 UTC

Hey everybody,

I was sad that gamepads don't work in PICO-8 games exported for the browser. Fortunately, you can control PICO's inputs from JS, so I created a drop-in script that uses the HTML5 Gamepad API to add this :).

Github: https://github.com/krajzeg/pico8gamepad/
Direct download for JS: https://github.com/krajzeg/pico8gamepad/raw/master/pico8gamepad.js

Just drop this script in the same directory as your HTML page, add "<script src="pico8gamepad.js"></script>" somewhere above the 'yourgame.js' line, and done!

EDIT: Now updated with pause support and multiplayer support as per ultrabrite's edits in this thread :)

The Lair - now at a silky smooth 60 fps!

Sat, 13 Aug 2016 13:21:03 UTC

The Lair

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

Edit for 2017: The Lair has now been updated with 60 fps support and new pixelart, making it look and feel even better! I also tweaked the combo mechanics so it's easier and more fun to rack up big combos. Have fun!

If you'd like to support me and the game, you can also play and donate at on itch.io!

Controls: Arrow keys - for moving around, O - for stabbing things and controlling menus, X - for blocking things that try to stab you, hold O - for a super-charged attack, double tap direction - for dashing to safety.

So, this is The Lair, a PICO-8 fantasy beat'em up that I've been working on and tweeting about since forever. Try it and let me know what you think!

The whole game was made by two people: @gruber_music, who provided (you guessed it) the audio parts, and me, who provided... everything else ;).

Have fun!

Postcard from Crete

Tue, 02 Aug 2016 08:57:11 UTC

Postcard from Crete 1.0

by krajzeg

[Click to Play]

Just got back from Crete, and had a hankering for some PICO-8. Made you all a postcard to get back in the programming groove :).

The Lair Beta - playtesting

Sun, 17 Jul 2016 10:52:14 UTC

Hi guys,

The Lair is almost ready for public consumption, but I'd like to playtest it for a while as a closed beta, to ferret out bugs and improve the gameplay as much as possible. This is how it looks like right now:

If you're interested in playing the game and helping out, drop me a line at [email protected] and I'll fire you back a link :)