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You pay for the console, and the games are open by design. You can load any pico game into the console, go into edit mode, and see / edit assets, music, levels.
by blindluke 5y ago
You pay for the console, and the games are open by design. You can load any pico game into the console, go into edit mode, and see / edit assets, music, levels. The console only supports lua, which gives you the advantage that every game you open to see the source code will be written in the same language. A wonderful little thing. I used it to introduce kids to game development with good results.
- shakna 5y agoTo add to this - each game is stored self contained into a png image file [0], where the assets and code take up predictable sections. Each image is the entire game. It's pretty easy to build your own tools to generate the format, if you were inclined to build an IDE or something along those lines. [0] https://pico-8.fandom.com/wiki/P8PNGFileFormat https://pico-8.fandom.com/wiki/P8PNGFileFormat
- kzrdude 5y agoThe data is hidden in the image data itself, it seems(!) Does this mean that an accurate screenshot can be used to clone the cartridge? For fun, of course.
- shakna 5y agoUnfortunately, no, I don't think that's possible. There's a few null bytes used here and there, like marking the Lua offset, and your screenshot can't capture those, no matter how accurate the rendering of the actual bytes is.
- nacs 5y agoYes all the data (source, sprites, sound) is encoded in the PNG. You can simply copy the PNG to clone it (screenshot won't work though): https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/cposts/un/undune2-3.p8.png https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/cposts/un/undune2-3.p8.png Also note that there is a "Code" button under the game window which shows the full source code.