5 ms·

I wish the platform would've been more open, but I know there are many other similar platforms now.

by th0ma5 6y ago

Teever 6y ago
Can you list some of these other platforms so that I can check them out?
- badjeans 6y ago
  https://tic80.com/ https://tic80.com/ (lua, open source - you can pay for the binaries or build it yourself) https://liko-12.github.io/ https://liko-12.github.io/ (lua, open source, I haven't used this much, but it seems nice) https://github.com/ftsf/nico https://github.com/ftsf/nico (nim, open source. Not quite the same as the others, there's no IDE, etc. But it's a library with an API similar to PICO)
  - harryvederci 6y ago
    Nice thing about TIC-80: it has built-in support for Fennel[0], so you can develop games for it in a lisp-like language. [0] https://fennel-lang.org/ https://fennel-lang.org/
    - boogies 6y ago
      (and Moonscript (coffee-script inspired whitespace-significant Lua variant, https://moonscript.org/ https://moonscript.org/), Wren (https://wren.io/ https://wren.io/), and JavaScript (unfortunately): https://tic80.com/learn https://tic80.com/learn §Specification)
- tonetheman 6y ago
  Another one in Python. Also cool: https://github.com/kitao/pyxel https://github.com/kitao/pyxel
systemvoltage 6y ago
Sometimes I feel like... I am glad the developer is getting paid to do what he does best. Earning a living wage from it. Please appreciate what they've done. Not everything closed is evil oracle megacorp endeavor. I am 100% ok with Pico-8 being closed. It's a fucking game engine, not a crypto library. I am a fan of FOSS, but I often see people demand and feel entitled for free stuff. This is wrong. Once in a while, sit back and enjoy what people create without a slightest bit of dissapointment, entitlement, itch to make mods and hack it, etc. It will bring happiness and peace. Look at it from a different way - it's someone's unadulterated, unbikeshedded vision of what a tiny game engine should be. No PR drama, he doesn't need to answer hundreds of angry assholes on Github, ... I think its beautiful.
- simias 6y ago
  I do find the closed nature of the project problematic, but not for the reason you list: if I invest many hours into making games on the platform I want to be sure that I'll still be able to run them easily 10 years from now. Hopefully if the author ever decides to stop working on the project they'll release the source code for the community to keep it alive.
  - bzzzt 6y ago
    Even if the author released sources you would not get any guarantee the games can run easily. There needs to be a community that is familiar with the source and keeps maintaining it. There are a lot of game engine like projects on Github with full code available that are anything but easily runnable on modern operating systems.
    - simias 6y ago
      It wouldn't be a silver bullet but it would at least make it possible. See Flash for instance: I'm sure there would be enough interest to maintain a FLOSS fork of the Flash player but it's not possible without reverse-engineering it and reimplementing it from scratch.
- zem 6y ago
mrspeaker 6y ago
For Pico-8, closed-ness is a feature: the author is known to hide secret easter-egg features in updates eventually get discovered and unearthed over time. Parts of the memory map are still unknown, and people will figure out new "pokes" that will save you some tokens or cycles... then someone takes that and does something nuts with the undocumented features. If it were open source, and community-driven then by now Pico8 would just be a regular old game framework: features would get added and added until it was just like any other game library. As it stands, the secret-ness of the code is a big part of the fun. Figuring out how to push the limitations and looking for sneaky ways to do new things. It feels like exploring and trying to master the early 8bit computers back in the day. That's the "fantasy" part! That's why I call Pico-8 a fantasy console, and the knock-offs are just "feature-limited game libraries"!
patrec 6y ago
If you'd like the platform to be more open, it's pretty easy to do something about it, just contribute missing bits to existing open source implementations like https://github.com/picolove/picolove https://github.com/picolove/picolove. The overall system is pretty simple, so completing a decent open emulator should be be doable in a reasonable time frame. Personally, I'd both like to see and open-source way to play back pico-8 cartridges and lexaloffle continuing to be financially rewarded for building a pretty cool (and cheap!) platform, so I hope the graphics and sound editors won't be included in free clones anytime soon.

I wish the platform would've been more open, but I know there are many other similar platforms now.

by th0ma5 6y ago

I wish the platform would've been more open, but I know there are many other similar platforms now.

Teever 6y ago

Can you list some of these other platforms so that I can check them out?

badjeans 6y ago
https://tic80.com/ https://tic80.com/ (lua, open source - you can pay for the binaries or build it yourself) https://liko-12.github.io/ https://liko-12.github.io/ (lua, open source, I haven't used this much, but it seems nice) https://github.com/ftsf/nico https://github.com/ftsf/nico (nim, open source. Not quite the same as the others, there's no IDE, etc. But it's a library with an API similar to PICO)
- harryvederci 6y ago
  Nice thing about TIC-80: it has built-in support for Fennel[0], so you can develop games for it in a lisp-like language. [0] https://fennel-lang.org/ https://fennel-lang.org/
  - boogies 6y ago
    (and Moonscript (coffee-script inspired whitespace-significant Lua variant, https://moonscript.org/ https://moonscript.org/), Wren (https://wren.io/ https://wren.io/), and JavaScript (unfortunately): https://tic80.com/learn https://tic80.com/learn §Specification)
tonetheman 6y ago
Another one in Python. Also cool: https://github.com/kitao/pyxel https://github.com/kitao/pyxel

systemvoltage 6y ago

Sometimes I feel like... I am glad the developer is getting paid to do what he does best. Earning a living wage from it. Please appreciate what they've done. Not everything closed is evil oracle megacorp endeavor. I am 100% ok with Pico-8 being closed. It's a fucking game engine, not a crypto library. I am a fan of FOSS, but I often see people demand and feel entitled for free stuff. This is wrong. Once in a while, sit back and enjoy what people create without a slightest bit of dissapointment, entitlement, itch to make mods and hack it, etc. It will bring happiness and peace. Look at it from a different way - it's someone's unadulterated, unbikeshedded vision of what a tiny game engine should be. No PR drama, he doesn't need to answer hundreds of angry assholes on Github, ... I think its beautiful.

simias 6y ago
I do find the closed nature of the project problematic, but not for the reason you list: if I invest many hours into making games on the platform I want to be sure that I'll still be able to run them easily 10 years from now. Hopefully if the author ever decides to stop working on the project they'll release the source code for the community to keep it alive.
- bzzzt 6y ago
  Even if the author released sources you would not get any guarantee the games can run easily. There needs to be a community that is familiar with the source and keeps maintaining it. There are a lot of game engine like projects on Github with full code available that are anything but easily runnable on modern operating systems.
  - simias 6y ago
    It wouldn't be a silver bullet but it would at least make it possible. See Flash for instance: I'm sure there would be enough interest to maintain a FLOSS fork of the Flash player but it's not possible without reverse-engineering it and reimplementing it from scratch.
zem 6y ago

mrspeaker 6y ago

For Pico-8, closed-ness is a feature: the author is known to hide secret easter-egg features in updates eventually get discovered and unearthed over time. Parts of the memory map are still unknown, and people will figure out new "pokes" that will save you some tokens or cycles... then someone takes that and does something nuts with the undocumented features. If it were open source, and community-driven then by now Pico8 would just be a regular old game framework: features would get added and added until it was just like any other game library. As it stands, the secret-ness of the code is a big part of the fun. Figuring out how to push the limitations and looking for sneaky ways to do new things. It feels like exploring and trying to master the early 8bit computers back in the day. That's the "fantasy" part! That's why I call Pico-8 a fantasy console, and the knock-offs are just "feature-limited game libraries"!

patrec 6y ago

If you'd like the platform to be more open, it's pretty easy to do something about it, just contribute missing bits to existing open source implementations like https://github.com/picolove/picolove https://github.com/picolove/picolove. The overall system is pretty simple, so completing a decent open emulator should be be doable in a reasonable time frame. Personally, I'd both like to see and open-source way to play back pico-8 cartridges and lexaloffle continuing to be financially rewarded for building a pretty cool (and cheap!) platform, so I hope the graphics and sound editors won't be included in free clones anytime soon.