Pico-8 and Server Updates 2018-12-20 9:22pm Have any of you played with Pico-8 at all? For those that do not know, Pico-8 is a "virtual video game console". Games are coded in Lua within the application. Sprite and music creation tools are included with the software as well. Sadly, it is not an open source project. So while the games themselves can be open source they are created in a closed source environment. Despite that flaw, I have enjoyed it as a platform for the past year or two. People have made some awesome and amazing games for it. Some of them push the capbilities of the system (which are kept intentio- nally low), others are wildly creative. I cannot say that my games fall into either of those camps, but I have had a lot of fun making them! I have completed around six: Isola - A port of the board game Isolation Super Battle Arena Tank Fighter Plus - A vector tank game The Lost Gems - Adventure Time themed technical platformer Proxima-B - Space shooter with three levels and two bosses Alley Cat - Arcade platformer created in 6 hours for a game jam Crazy Climber - Donkey Kong-esque arcade game The games can be exported as binaries or js, but the really cool distribution method is via gif files! All of the game data can be exported as a gif file that looks like a game cartridge, but can be laoded into the Pico-8 application (the binary and js versions do not need the Pico-8 application to run). If any of you have made games and want to share carts, let me know. I can post them to my gopherspace for download. I have not worked on one for a spell now, but every now and then it is a fun project. I have had a lot of fun plugging in a SNES controller and playing The Lost Gems with friends. - - - - - I have made a number of cool upgrades to the software over at colorfield.space: chalk, the line based text editor, now has the ability to truly edit a line. Previously to go back and edit a line that was already written a user would be presented with the old text above a prompt that was blank and you'd have to retype the whole line, even if you only needed to change a simple spelling mistake. Now I got the line buffering working better and you can go back and edit a row by putting its contents into the buffer and editing them. cspc, the message baord, now lets you know which topics/posts have been added since the last time you launched the application. gab, one of the two interfaces to the chat, has been rewritten to provide a much improved output style. The command 'gab' with no other arguments now does the same thing as 'gab -l' (outputs the last 5 messages to the screen). You can still use 'gab -l' and pass an integer to get more or fewer messages. The help also prints properly now. Thanks so much to tfurrows and cmccabe for all their help testing everything and playing around on the system. It has been a huge help! - - - - - Man, I am tired. It has been a long week. I'm glad it is almost the weekend! The holiday promises to be really busy: four family parties in two days (two per day...my family on christmas eve and my wife's on christmas day). Lots of driving. It will be ncie to see everyone though! I imagine I will write another phlog entry by then, but if not: happy holidays (whichever, if any, you celebrate)!