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Creating objects in Pico-8 using tables to imitate classes

After a while, it becomes necessary to use objects in your program.  That is, you create a class of object (let’s say a bullet) which can control its own update and draw routines and keeps track of its…

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First Steps in PICO-8: Easy Collisions with Map Tiles

In an earlier post I looked at colliding with other objects in PICO-8 using a hitbox function.  In this post I look at colliding with tiles that are draw to the map.  The advantage of this system is…

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First Steps in PICO-8: Scrolling backgrounds

Having a scrolling background and a static player can be a very simple way of giving the illusion of movement.  If you add into that parallax scrolling, you can add the idea of depth to your game.  Luckily,…

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First Steps in PICO-8: Moving a character on screen

As soon as you have started PICO-8 you will want to get an object to move around the screen.  In this post, I look at getting a character to move around the screen and get that character to…

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Collisions between objects using line intersection

Collisions are always one of the more difficult aspects of computer game programming.  One very useful method of determining whether one object has hit another is to check whether two lines cross each other. As an example, consider…

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First Steps in PICO-8: Set up a new PICO-8 project

PICO-8 enables you to become a computer games programmer without the distractions of a cumbersome IDE or a complex set of libraries and hardware compatibility issues. This series of posts will take you through various challenges that you…

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Responding to Buttons using Bitwise Addition in PICO-8

It is possible to respond to each button press in PICO-8 by using conditional statements like this: if btn(0) then vx=-1 end if btn(1) then vx=1 end if btn(2) then vy=-1 end if btn(3) then vy=1 end But…

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Gravity in PICO-8

Gravity turns an unrealistic game into something much more pleasing to the eye. The brain is very good at spotting movement that doesn’t seem real and gravity is one area where this is apparent. PICO-8 has no in…

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Orbital motion in PICO-8

Modelling gravity is a lot of fun and a great excuse for a hours PICO-8 programming.  In this post I will take you through a very simple orbit model that uses Newton’s inverse square law of gravitation to…

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Screen Shake in PICO-8

  Here is a simple screen shake function which can easily be added to your PICO-8 projects. The principle uses the camera which is well explained here.  In essence, the camera moves a window around the draw area…

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