Dear all, do you have any experience with handheld devices for playing Pico-8 games? Not there yet, but I was already thinking a few times about buying something. There are a lot of articles and posts on the internet, but I must admit - none of them convinced me to go and buy something. And also, are there any "ready-to-play-pico-8" or do all of them need to have some additional app/OS to be installed? Cheers, Marko 🎮

Hi community - I want to take both paid courses on offer but I'm wondering if there is a facility to pay with PayPal at the moment?

I made something I think is fun - a lightning library. What I like about lightning is that it doesn't have to be perfect. I was thinking of using svntax's version, but I really liked the idea of creating forks. I found an algorithm on GameDev stack exchange and thought I'd give it a crack! In the demo code, I have made it possible to add a white flash (not seen in the demo video because I want people to be aware that more than flashes can cause siezures, so please use with care!!!) From the Game accessibility guidelines: There is always a chance of seizure from any game, even a game that avoids all common triggers. So the term ‘epilepsy safe’ must never be used. If you include a setting called ‘epilepsy safe mode’, you risk harming players and risk legal action being brought against yourself. Instead, describe what the setting relates to – ‘screen flash effects’, ‘effects intensity’, etc.

Here's a challenge for you. Set a timer for 15 minutes and try and make some kind of game or piece of a game. It doesn't have to be good. It doesn't have to make sense. It's just for practice. Bonus points if there's something to look at, though. :) Take 15 minutes and mess around and post what you make as a reply to this post! ---- Here's my entry.... WEENER SHOOTER (lol) So this isn't so much a game as a beginning of a game or a component of a game. Basically, there is a gun that you can move back and forth that floats on the bottom of the screen, and it shoots hot dogs towards the top of the screen. This is kind of in preparation for something like a Space Invaders type of game. Pretty much how it works is during the init function, there is a table called dogs that's made, and that's what holds all of the bullets. Every time I press the X button, it spawns a new particle inside of the table. Each particle has an X, a Y, and a speed property. If I had more time, I would add some kind of variance to the speed. The particle starts in the same X position as the gun and it has a constant speed going up. When the particles leave the screen at the top, they disappear. Basically, they're just deleted from the table if their y-value is less than negative 8. I was just about to make a enemy system when I ran out of time. Definitely a fun exercise. Highly recommend this 15 minute challenge.

I'm unbelievably bad with challenges ... as I can't focus, not even for 15 min 🤣 to finish what I was challenged for 🙄 I wanted to centre text, and as we know, you need to start it with the left pixel, and then it extends to the right. I believe that solutions are already available on the internet, but I want to share my own solution, as it was a valuable learning experience. Known is: - The width of the screen is 128px ... 128 - The character/letter (and a space!) takes up 4px, 3px for the letter, and 1px for a gap ... 4 - The length of text or the number of letters (and spaces!) in text/string ... N - Print statement ... PRINT(STR, X, Y, [COL]) ... searching for X Formula: X = (128 - N * 4) / 2 ... or shorter ... X = 64 - 2 * N (this one you can do in your head). Then, soon, I find out that I don't want to count the number of letters in "SpaceCat's Game Dev Heroes!" (27 if you wonder 😉). It's time for a function()! function print_centered(text,top,col_id) local left = 64 - 2 * #text print(text,left,top,col_id) end And I use it like this: print_centered("SpaceCat's Game Dev Heroes!",100,11) So, instead of finishing the challenge, I spent time on this ... cheers, Marko 🎮