PICO-8
Community
8_ENTRIES- Slack Team
PICO-8 Slack chat.
- Discord Server
PICO-8 Discord chat.
DemoScene
4_ENTRIESResources
5_ENTRIES- Official Manual
Placeholder dump of pico-8.txt! (Proper manual coming soon).
- PicoZine #1
, #2, #3 and #4 - PICO-8 Zine is a 48-page fanzine made by and for PICO-8 users.
- Going from Lua 5.2 to PICO-8's Lua
This document is here to help folks with a proficiency in Lua understand the limitations and discrepencies between Lua and PICO-8's Lua.
- Cheat Sheet (printable)
A reduced cheat sheet in a printable format. German and English version available.
- Cheat Sheet (wallpaper)
An enhancement of the printable cheat sheet for use as a desktop wallpaper.
Tutorials
9_ENTRIES- Music Tracker Tutorial Series
Making audio with PICO-8.
- Tron Lightcycle game from scratch
A quick introduction to PICO-8 writing a game from scratch.
- A PICO-8 Spaceshooter in 16 GIFs
Screencaptures of writing a Spaceshooter game step by step.
- Token optimization
tips&tricks for saving tokens.
- Tweetjam, BBS thread
cards which code fits in a tweet (really useful to learn some fun techniques).
- Sample code on the BBS
the search is not 100% accurate, but some of those cards features some nice tricks you can re-use in your future code.
- Newgrounds Medals Tutorial
a little tutorial to add Newgrounds Medals to PICO-8 games.
- Binary save system
Custom game save system that supports various data types
- Lazy Devs Breakout
step-by-step videos for roguelikes, shmups, and more
Tools
26_ENTRIES- 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.
- P8Coder
A programming tool that replaces the lua code in pico-8 cartridges (p8) with the code you write in P8Coder.
- 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.
- 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.
Libraries
9_ENTRIES- 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.
- Pico-Kit
An opinionated collection of Pico-8 helpers that make it easier to get going. Adds OOP, better debugging, and physics.
- PICO-Tween
A small library of tweening/easing functions for use in the PICO-8 fantasy console, inspired by Robert Penner's easing functions.
- parens-8
Bypass the Lua token limit with a tiny lisp interpreter/compiler.
- p8-canvas
A high performance infinite canvas/texture library.
- pico8-physics
Pico8 implementation of Box2d with 8 demos.
- SCUMM-8
De-make of the SCUMM engine for making point-and-click classic adventures.
Assets
1_ENTRIES- midilib
Custom SFX instruments
Text Editors Language Support
5_ENTRIES- Visual Studio Code / NeoVim / JetBrains / OthersοΌ pico8-definitions - An add-on for sumneko/lua to provide PICO-8 language support.
- Visual Studio Code
Visual Studio Code: pico8-ls - PICO-8 Language Server, providing full language support for the PICO-8 dialect of Lua.
- Atom
Atom: language-pico8
- Sublime
Sublime: Sublime PICO-8 - PICO-8 plugin for the Sublime Text editor (color scheme, font, build system, code completion, snippets...).
- Vim
Vim: vim-pico8-syntax
- Emacs
Emacs: pico8-mode
Hacks - undocumented PICO-8 features
4_ENTRIES- 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
2_ENTRIES- 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
1_ENTRIES- Indie Retro News
A great introduction to PICO-8 by @ABrugsch.
Talks
1_ENTRIES- Sharing the love
Making games with PICO-8. linux conf au 2017 - Hobart, Australia
Clones
7_ENTRIES- TIC-80 by Nesbox
Tiny Computer, available on HTML 5, Windows, Linux 32/64bit, Android & MacOSX
- PicoLove
Pico-8 Reimplementation in LΓVE.
- LIKO-12
An open source fantasy computer made using LΓVE 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)
- BeetPx
A TypeScript framework for pixel art browser games. Heavily inspired by PICO-8.