PX8 – A PICO-8 compatible fantasy console written in Rust (opens in new tab)

To understand why some people (including myself) are going nuts about Pico-8, here's one random feature: when you save your virtual cartridge as 'mygame.p8.png' it automatically generates a neat cartridge png representation with the screenshot of your choice from the game. Like so: http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/cposts/1/10022.p8.png.

Big deal you say! well, check this out: this png IS the game. It embeds the executable written in LUA. Try it for yourself - take the png I posted above, load it in pico8 then press escape: voila, full source code, sprite sheet, tracker data, etc. Type "RUN" and the game plays.

Pico8 (and its cousin voxatron) also contain an online cartridge browser that lets you discover and learn from everyone who contributed a cartridge.

Pico-8 is choke-full of these incredible little details that make all the difference. Unfortunately it's not open source itself, which some find a bit odd considering it encourages the open sourcing of the cartridge written for it. Good to see some projects such as TIC-80, LIKO-12 and now PX8 mixing things up a bit, that said it's still a nascent environment and let's not forget it's very much the arbitrary, sometimes amusing limitations imposed by the lead dev that makes these things fun.

Just a quick heads up. Ludum Dare 38 is happening this weekend (theme: "a small world"). And I've certainly noticed an uptick in gamedevs targeting PICO-8 and SCUMM-8 platforms. Rather apropos given the theme, no?

A few Gifs of WIPs:

https://twitter.com/Huginn18/status/855857089960345600

https://twitter.com/quaIiaa/status/855878802563633152

https://twitter.com/topkeki69/status/855743127616970752

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dISx_dR6kLI

Wow, I've never heard of the PICO-8 before, but it's fantastic! This is exactly what I've always wanted, some ultra-simplified game console/emulator that's easy to create content for and easy to distribute that content. People have even built cool demoscene-esque content for it![2] And some of the games people have made are fantastic, and you can play them in your browser here: http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?mode=carts&cat=7&sub=2&orderb...

Also, I was a bit confused by the term "fantasy console" so here's what I've been able to learn with some reading: it seems the PICO-8 is a kind of ultra-simple game VM with it's original implementation being in HTML/JS with access being sold by the creator[0]. At some point, the PICO-8 vm was ported by its creator to work on the CHIP computer, and now the PICO-8 VM is pre-installed on all CHIP computers[1].

What the OP link is for is an open source implementation of the PICO-8 VM in Rust. This isn't the only open source implementation of PICO-8.

[0] - http://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

[1] - https://getchip.com/pages/chip

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTvnYkmtleI

My first thought is that such a focused environment for the code to run in might make this a helpful tool to teach kids programming in a fun and engaging way. I sincerely believe that game creation is the single best vector to get children interested in programming, and this seems like a cool possible vector. (Python is a great beginning language!)

Be sure to get the PICO-8 bundled with Voxatron for only a few bucks more!

In case anyone is interested in learning more about PICO-8 and it's "clones", I started one of those 'awesome lists' for that last year.

https://github.com/felipebueno/awesome-PICO-8/

I'm reminded of Intellivision for some reason. LibGDX is awesome for 2d mucking around too.