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How big of a game can I make with Pico-8 (plus pluggins/etc)

Speertorin · 2020-05-15T21:31:22Z

Hey, so I'm new to game making and coding (like a month in), and I found out about Pico-8 a week ago through celeste thinking it was just the name of the prototype. I actually found out what it is yesterday. I know most projects are made for a singular cartridge, but how much content can I get out if I do that with the 16 cartdrige release (and I'm pretty sure it doesnt but I'm pretty sure it doesn't combine them, right? Just releases them as 16 seperate files). Like I know I can make a cartridge that has all the code and assets that's shared between all levels, then I can use that to get to work actually generating playable content, but like is that viable? Is it possible that I could get like 4 hours of content out of 16 carts? I'm not expecting to do that anytime soon, but 4 hours of content is what I consider to be the minimum length a game can be (and it has to be a cheap indie game) and really be a legitimate release. I also just really love games with lots of content. I don't wanna play a fuck ton of games, I want to be really into one or two games. so Pico-8 is great for learning but due to the small maximum size for a single cart, it's great for learning, prototyping, game jams, but the only reason reason I'm really interested in any of this is as a develeper. Purely as a gamer, I have very little interest such short projects. EDIT: There seems to be a bit of confusion about what I meant. So, I don't know exactly how it works but there is a function mentioned on the website about releasing up to 16 carts together as a singular package, tho it doesn't actually stitches them together into one file. Still, I can indicate the level order through various methods. I basically want to create a level 1, when it's done, duplicate it, and use it to create a source cart. Delete everything but the code and assets that are shared between levels. Copy that into the level carts, build the levels around that. That way I can utilize all the bennifits of PICO without the issue of the very minimal max game length. Also I've checked the forum and I have my answer, very capable. And Zep did say in a forum post that there is functionality for one cart to send you to another or for them to check and send data to eachother. So I can't turn them into one file but by adding a main menu cart I can more or less get around that. Plus if I really wanted to I'm sure there's some other game development program I could export them into and actually rewrite bits of the code to stitch them together as one file, add extra functionality, etc. I'm actually pretty sure I could just use Voxatron lol. It's their 3D engine (still in Alpha) and it has functionality to port PICO cart into it. Shouldn't be that hard to make a level select through it. Could basically treat Voxatron as the game and PICO-as the levels. It's file size limit is 1MB which is waaaaaaayyy past PICO's

A topic by Deleted Account created May 15, 2020 Views: 1,702 Replies: 5

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Deleted account5 years ago

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firecat5 years ago

it's possible, older older games before Super Mario bro was created, you had games almost what you are asking about. Examples are:

- Missile Command

- Pac-Man

- Defender

- Asteroids Breakout

- Gran Trak 10

So if someone can make a pixel race game with one color can make many tracks so can Pico-8 engine with 4 hours.

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Deleted account5 years ago

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firecat5 years ago

I looked into Pico 8 doc and there is a limit on Code size image png or png file for the code, it is 15,360 bytes. The number of lines for the code is 8,921. SO to answer your question of how big your game can be, i say somewhere between NES using the same sprites and gameboy games that last long like pokemon.

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Deleted account5 years ago

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Dan Cooke5 years ago

I have the same issue and just deleted thread. When asking question about pico8. I think the best thing is to read through all the forum on the pico8 site. That is what I am going to do now do get the understanding of it all as I have come so far on my game but stuck else where. Maybe we can be newbies together and work out what we need to do lol

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