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PICO-8

Awesome PICO-8 Awesome

PICO-8 tools code

A curated list of PICO-8 resources, tutorials, tools and more. Inspired by the awesome list thing. You might also like awesome-lua and awesome-love2d.

PICO-8 is a fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs. When you turn it on, the machine greets you with a shell for typing in a subset of Lua commands and provides simple built-in tools for creating your own cartridges.

Community

DemoScene

Resources

Tutorials

Tools

  • Sprite Editor - Keyboard only 8x8 pixel art tool.
  • pico2png - Spritesheet extraction written in perl.
  • Spritesheets and tools for the PICO-8 Palette - Compilation of works assest and tools using the PICO-8 palette.
  • Pico8Utils - Compilation of lua scripts based on the unix philosophy for working with .p8 files.
  • picotool - Tools and Python libraries for manipulating Pico-8 game files.
  • p8dl - Carts Downloader - Python - Downloads cartridges into the correct folder (looks at your config.txt).
  • Pico-8 Carts Downloader - Bash - Downloads cartridge from the BBS (single cart, whole index or dump your favourited entries) & rename them according to their metadata.
  • p8 responsive webplayer transform - Python script that makes your HTML export page responsive.
  • Color Palette - Hex and RGB colors codes for web.
  • PICO-8 font - by RhythmLynx.
  • pico-test - PICO-8 testing framework.
  • Lib-Pico8 - A Pico-8 library of useful common functions.
  • pico8-missing-builtins - Provides Lua built-in functions to pico8.
  • P8Coder - A programming tool that replaces the lua code in pico-8 cartridges (p8) with the code you write in P8Coder.
  • Pico-Kit - An opinionated collection of Pico-8 helpers that make it easier to get going. Adds OOP, better debugging, and physics.
  • picoDeploy - Deploy Pico-8 carts as standalone applications on desktop (Electron) and mobile (Ionic).
  • pico8Grunt - A build system for pico8 games, using gruntjs.
  • PICO-EC - A tiny scene-entity-component library created for the PICO-8 fantasty console.
  • PICO-Tween - A small library of tweening/easing functions for use in the PICO-8 fantasy console, inspired by Robert Penner's easing functions.
  • p8 - A dependency manager and build tool. Lets you share code/sprites, require() dependencies, and auto-reload carts on save. Works with any external code editor and supports MoonScript.
  • MIDI to PICO-8 - A tool to convert MIDI files to PICO-8 music.
  • midi2pico - A MIDI to PICO-8 converter.
  • Denote - Converts MIDI files into SFX data-- interactive and web based.
  • Custom template - A simple and clean template, that fixes issues with fullscreen, mouse and just looks nice.
  • Fillp Tool - A simple helper tool for generating fillp patterns.
  • Depict - Converts image into a dithered image using PICO-8 colors and reduces it to a maximum size of 128 x 128.
  • picoCAD - A PICO-8 program to build and texture lowpoly 3D models.
  • pico8-deploy - An easy way to export and deploy PICO-8 projects to itch.io
  • yap8b - Build tool for creating pico carts from multiple source files.
  • TS-PICO-8 - Create PICO-8 games using TypeScript.
  • Shrinko8 - A minifier that aggressively shrinks Pico-8 code size. Also includes a linter and other tools.
  • parens-8 - Bypass the Lua token limit with a tiny lisp interpreter/compiler.

Assets

Text Editors Language Support

  • Visual Studio Code: pico8-ls - PICO-8 Language Server, providing full language support for the PICO-8 dialect of Lua.
  • Atom: language-pico8
  • Sublime: Sublime PICO-8 - PICO-8 plugin for the Sublime Text editor (color scheme, font, build system, code completion, snippets...).
  • Vim: vim-pico8-syntax
  • Emacs: pico8-mode

Programming Fonts

You might be interested to install pico-8 programming fonts they support the pico-8 custom characters as well as various fonts (bitmap and regular anti-aliased fonts). Check the BBS thread here.

How to install the font(s):

  • Linux: copy the files on ~/.fonts and sudo fc-cache -f -v
  • Windows: copy the files on c:/windows/fonts/

Hacks - undocumented PICO-8 features

  • Mouse - How to retrieve mouse coordinates (with demo).
  • p8keyboard.js - Javascript "keyboard adapter" for the Pico-8. Send ASCII characters to a Pico-8 program running in a browser.
  • SFX Modifications - Four effects that can only be applied by modifying memory (with demo).
  • Tracker State/Audio Memory Locations - How to access and modify audio data as it is playing.

Hardware

  • GameShell - A modular handheld game console that allows you to play & modify retro games and DIY new devices. Check the GameShell Docs for how to run PICO-8 on the GameShell.
  • PocketChip - A handheld designed for playing and coding anywhere. Officially supported by pico-8. PoketChip version of pico-8

Articles & Posts

Talks

  • Sharing the love - Making games with PICO-8. linux conf au 2017 - Hobart, Australia

Clones

  • TIC-80 by Nesbox - Tiny Computer, available on HTML 5, Windows, Linux 32/64bit, Android & MacOSX
  • PicoLove - Pico-8 Reimplementation in LÖVE.
  • LIKO-12 - An open source fantasy computer made using LÖVE with 96kb RAM.
  • Pikuseru - Open Source Fantasy Console in pure Rust [Core].
  • tac08 - tac08 is an emulation of the runtime part of the Pico-8 fantasy console, running on RG350 handheld game console.
  • LowRes NX - Fantasy Console available on IOS, MacOS, Windows, Linux, and GameShell (BASIC code support)

I Want to Contribute!

Great! 😃

Please, read the contribution guidelines first.

License

CC0

To the extent possible under law, Felipe Bueno has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to this work.

See https://github.com/pico-8/awesome-PICO-8/blob/master/LICENSE for more information.