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> I also totally understand why virtual consoles almost all use BASIC or lua, but (for me, not for my kids) I wish there were an option with static types. The c

> I also totally understand why virtual consoles almost all use BASIC or lua, but (for me, not for my kids) I wish there were an option with static types. The combination of not being able to see much code on the screen at once plus no static type checking is pretty uncomfortable for me At some point the question becomes why not just use Unity, BFXR, Bosca Ceoil and ASE Sprite if you want no constraints and better tools with a similar Pico-8-ish aesthetic? That question is outside of the scope of the original post, but as I piece together your ideal fantasy console, it seems like not really a fantasy console but a simple general purpose game IDE with a statically typed language. Edit: Btw, if what you want is a simple general purpose game IDE with a statically typed language that is somewhere in-between Unity and Pico-8 I suggest you make it or at least spec out your needs more formally! I'm definitely a fan of more people making game creation tools (and software development tools in general) that fit their needs\use cases.

jpfed 8y ago
The all-in-one nature of most fantasy consoles is really appealing. They are also not terribly opinionated, which can be nice. When I tried Unity its 2d story was not good and I kind of struggled with its opinions. I've heard that its 2d has improved, but haven't had the time to explore it since. I actually do like reasonably low resolutions in-game rather than in the code editor. When I play with my kids I want it to feel like good graphics aren't too far out of reach, and low-res makes it easier to get to something in the range of acceptable. My own kids appreciate their own pixel art more than anything they do in Scratch, for example. I also think I might be slightly younger than most fantasy console fans, maybe? When I was very young I had an Apple IIc, which was good for booting straight to BASIC, but most of my childhood programming occurred in the era that spanned from CGA cards to VGA, and then I left programming for a while when 3d acceleration became a thing. One quirk of this era was that tradeoffs between color depth and resolution were just a normal thing. So for me, it would be a natural thing for a retro game dev environment that simulated a fixed framebuffer size to support, say, a 256x192 256 color mode and a 512x384 4 color mode. An editor in that higher-resolution, low-color mode would be way more comfortable than in low-res. (Pico-8 does have an alternate resolution, but it's 64x64 and still 16 color- somewhat evocative of the old 40x40 mode that Apples had). TIC-80 does almost, um, tic all my boxes. I mostly just want a higher-resolution code editing mode (for both me and my kids) and a static language (for me; my kids don't really have a notion of types (yet)). So obviously the solution is to fork TIC-80 and see what I can make it do...
- jpfed 8y ago
  Ha! Hi-res editor mode is on the roadmap: https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/issues/723#issuecomment-419699952 https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/issues/723#issuecomment-419...

jpfed 8y ago

The all-in-one nature of most fantasy consoles is really appealing. They are also not terribly opinionated, which can be nice. When I tried Unity its 2d story was not good and I kind of struggled with its opinions. I've heard that its 2d has improved, but haven't had the time to explore it since. I actually do like reasonably low resolutions in-game rather than in the code editor. When I play with my kids I want it to feel like good graphics aren't too far out of reach, and low-res makes it easier to get to something in the range of acceptable. My own kids appreciate their own pixel art more than anything they do in Scratch, for example. I also think I might be slightly younger than most fantasy console fans, maybe? When I was very young I had an Apple IIc, which was good for booting straight to BASIC, but most of my childhood programming occurred in the era that spanned from CGA cards to VGA, and then I left programming for a while when 3d acceleration became a thing. One quirk of this era was that tradeoffs between color depth and resolution were just a normal thing. So for me, it would be a natural thing for a retro game dev environment that simulated a fixed framebuffer size to support, say, a 256x192 256 color mode and a 512x384 4 color mode. An editor in that higher-resolution, low-color mode would be way more comfortable than in low-res. (Pico-8 does have an alternate resolution, but it's 64x64 and still 16 color- somewhat evocative of the old 40x40 mode that Apples had). TIC-80 does almost, um, tic all my boxes. I mostly just want a higher-resolution code editing mode (for both me and my kids) and a static language (for me; my kids don't really have a notion of types (yet)). So obviously the solution is to fork TIC-80 and see what I can make it do...

jpfed 8y ago
Ha! Hi-res editor mode is on the roadmap: https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/issues/723#issuecomment-419699952 https://github.com/nesbox/TIC-80/issues/723#issuecomment-419...