I've thrown together a tool that lets me build pico-8 games using multiple files, and include them with an @import "something" syntax.

Wanted to share this with folks here, but after I built it I thought to myself.. what if its is baked in and I just missed it? :O

Heres what this tool allows for:

Inside my carts folder I have a folder called apps, with a folder for each project

The folder structure for mygame, and code is as follows

mygame/_main.lua

@import "foo"
@import "bar"
print("hello from _main.lua!")

mygame/foo.lua

print("hello from foo.lua!")

mygame/bar.lua

print("hello from bar.lua!")

The tool replaces any @import statement with the contents of the file mentioned.

It watches for changes across any file in the mygame directory

replaces the __lua__ portion of the mygame.p8 file with the resulting code, and rebuilds mygame.p8

mygame.p8

print("hello from foo.lua!")
print("hello from bar.lua!")
print("hello from _main.lua!")

You still use the sprite, map, sfx, and music tabs of PICO-8, but you have to forfeit the code tab and use an external editor. I use Sublime Text 3.

The tool is written in nodejs (since im a javascript developer by trade) so you will need that to run.

Let me know if I've totally reinvented the wheel on this, or if you guys are interested in helping me test/distribute this :)

Thanks