All my focus goups say that the world is crying out for a 'weird fish plays underwater snooker' game. #picotron #pico8 #gamedev

1.0 release of Pac Rescue, my tribute to Magic Garden I suck at my own game, can you rescue 200? I can only get to 130... www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=156... #picotron #gamedev #pico8 #magicgarden #ufo50

The larger grid size doesn't work for Magic Garden, it removes all the tension. I've kept the wrap around and increased speed. Been pouring over wikis and forums to work out the scoring and potion mechanics. #picotron #pico8 #ufo50 #magicgarden #gamedev

Well, it's **something**. #picotron #pico8

A splash of polish, changing drop zones, scoring, different potions, multipliers all in. Still need to do that thing that pops into my head every play test that I forget to right down. Probably important. #picotron #pico8 #gamedev #ufo50 #magicgarden

Coming along..it's funny what you miss studying someone else's game frame by frame. It's a different kind of fun. The original is tense due to the likelihood of making a mistake. This version feels more exhilarating - but might become dull quickly. #picotron #pico8 #gamedev #ufo50 #magicgarden

Taking a mini-break from Seaside Drive to go back to my Magic Garden remake. I want to answer a few questions about fun. Is it more fun if: 1) it's faster, 2) there's no wall, and 3) the map is bigger. #picotron #pico8 #ufo50 #magicgarden #gamedev

Added a bit more polish. Where we are going we are definately going to need two roads. #picotron #ufo50 #gamedev #downwell #pico8

Well, that works suprisingly well. We now have a max_bullets that are recharged when we flip up/down. Enemies can now be stomped from above/below. #ufo50 #picotron #pico8 #gamedev #downwell

The question on nobody's lips - "what is Seaside Drive really was Sidewell?". I am determined to find out. It seems to work as an idea, but the player needs incentive to leap between floor and ceiling. #picotron #pico8 #ufo50 #gamedev #seasidedrive #downwell

Playable WIP released. I've got a bit more tidy up to do but then I'll call it quits as this is just a POC. I want to experiment with turning this into the real 1-bit Sidewell. www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=188... #pico8 #picotron #gamedev

The makings of a complete level. Janky as heck but getting there. I'm going frame by frame from the original to work out what is happening - much like early 8-bit arcade conversion teams. Would be more authentic if I had a VHS tape. #picotron #gamedev #ufo50 #pico8

One of the benefits of using a single entity, behaviour components and factories is that is can be very easy to spin up new enemies in the game. I've got 75% of this boss working in about 20 minutes. Naturally the remaining 25% will take days... #picotron #gamedev #pico8 #ufo50

Most sytems are in place now, just need scoring, the boss battle and lots of number tweaking. Oh, and everything else. #picotron #ufo50 #pico8 #gamedev

The Seaside Drive / Star Waspir mashup nobody asked for. Making good progress. #ufo50 #pico8 #picotron #gamedev

Token anxiety got the better of me and I converted my Seaside Drive demake to Picotron. Having to render to a 384x216 screenbuffer to support ripped UFO50 sprites (they look too small at 480x270 and don't look well scaled). #pico8 #picotron #gamedev #ufo50

Starting to flesh out waves. The funny thing about this demake is that it's taken me until now to realise that Seaside Drive is just a single screen locked yaxis Shmup. The horiztonal scrolling of the background tricks your brain into thinking it is something different. #pico8 #gamedev #ufo50

Is anyone else on this infinite loop? #pico8 (too constrained, I'm worried about tokens, I know, I'll use) -> #picotron (well, I'm might as well use) -> #love2d (now I'm obsessing over architectural correctness and graphics, I know, I'll use) -> Pico-8...and so on. #gamedev

Adding a bit of that outrun feel. Also added spatial partioning so I can fire a ton of bullets and maintain 13%CPU at 60fps. #pico8 #seasidedrive #ufo50

Wrapped up my first #pico8 game "Artefacts of Atlantis"! It's a systems driven submarine "simulator" where the first challenge is to figure out how to drive the damn thing.. Please check it out at www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=156... if this kind of thing appeals to you :]

Working on a spatial partioning test for my Sunset Drive demake. Strangely cathartic and more importantly, quite performant with 200 entities + bullets at 60fps. #pico8 #gamedev

Moving along nicely. Sunset Drive is one of my favourite ufo50 games. One of the few games in the collection that is deceptively easy - once you realise that waggling left/right is the way to keep charge at 100%. #pico8 #ufo50 #gamedev #sunsetdrive

The beginnings of a Sunset Drive demake, charging and firing is done. #pico8 #gamedev #ufo50 #sunsetdrive

Trying to learn batching graphics with userdata in #picotron. Massive performance difference compared to a more traditional AoS approach. I can shift 2000 sprites with < %50 CPU. #picotron #pico8 #gamedev

Having fun making things interactable. Papers Please? #picotron #gamedev #pico8

Continuing experiments with new UFO50 mechanics. What if Kick Club had multi-ball and aiming assist? #ufo50 #kickblub #gamedev #picotron #pico8

Mac users looking to try out 868-Hack for the @secretlivesofgames.bsky.social series can ignore the 32-bit steam warning. It runs fine on my M2 Mac mini.

Increased the verbs for Bounder. Bounder can now dash, is forced to roll over some surfaces and can be launched like a rocket. Now I need to fix my collisions again... #pico8 #picotron #gamedev

More Bounder progress: slightly improved tileset, added collisions with "high" tiles and other entities. Player now respawns after death. Recreated the first level from the original (with one extra jump tile for testing because I still can't play this game). #pico8 #picotron #gamedev

More progress on Bounder, moved to Pictotron for an easier time of things. Added patrolling enemies. Movement doesn't feel quite right yet. Need to build some levels, new enemy types, and make it look about 100x less ugly. #picotron #pico8 #gamedev

Made some progress on Bounder. Our first enemy (a dart that fires at you) and our first special tile (an acceleration tile). I've come this far and realised I'm going to have to figure out how to get around Pico 8's vertical map height limit. #pico8 #gamedev

Bounder was one of my favourite games growing up. I was never any good at it. The ball animation needs a bit of work, but it's not bad, seeing as I manually recreated it frame by frame from a Bounder ZX Spectrum YouTube walkthrough. #pico8 #gamedev

Why not make a bouncing bucket that collects snow? Seems like a reasonable thing to do... #pico8

An attempt to find out whether Magic Garden is better with wrapping rather than walls. Answer...I'm going to have to implement everything to find out... #pico8 #picotron #gamedev #ufo50 #magicgarden

I'm realising that my goal here is to make a version of Velgress that I could actually be good at. #picotron #pico8 #ufo50 #gamedev

Charity shop find in a Dublin Oxfam.

Getting there...not perfect, but floating blocks can now be ridden. Blocks have mass, and enemies now patrol and can be jumped on. credit for player sprite: x.com/LuizGdeMelo #pico8 #picotron #gamedev

Ginger cat energy... #pico8 #gamedev

Figuring out block pushing and stacking was "fun". As in not very much fun at all really. #gamedev #pico8

Patrolling enemies taken down from above. #pico8 #gamedev

Dashes, wall slides, and rudimentary water physics. Credit ‪@achiegamedev.bsky.social‬ for tileset gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/44... - for water physics #pico8 #gamedev

For no good reason, spent the day converting Celeste's map collision (and some physics) into an entity componet system for Pico8 #pico8 #gamedev

For no real reason: nervous, inquisitive, flocking birds versus an Arc Laser. #pico8 #picotron #gamedev

Flocking fun. Birds flock towards the player, but if they get too close, they will back away. They hate bullets.. Credit to this excellent tutorial. (converted from Java to love2d, then to Picotron). www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5l_... #gamedev #picotron #pico8

Inadvertently remaking Brotato while testing Picotron collision optimisation. #gamedev #pico8 #picotron

An endless runner prototype inspired by those dumb AI tests. #picotron #pico8 #gamedev

Media should spend the next month referring to Musk as president Musk. It will accelerate the inevitable fall out between the two.

Ported to Pictotron for a bit of every oomph... (sprite may or may not have been borrowed from Lotus Turbo Challenge) #pico8 #picotron #gamedev

It begins and probably ends around this point (where my brain doesn't understand the math). #pico8 #gamedev

Working on a Pico8 MCP server that can write and run Pico8 carts via Claude. Next, I'll integrate screenshot-taking so the AI can figure out if it did what was asked and make necessary adjustments. Not the worst snow globe in the world... #pico8 #gamedev #mcp #claude