Game Off 2018 Update - Part II

It’s only been a few days since the last update, but I’ve decided to go ahead and comment on the overall status of this project and where I see it heading.

Since my last update I’ve added a basic attack mechanic (the ability to ‘consume’ souls, because demons), basic enemy collision, as well as health and soul tracking. My awesome wife also had a helping hand in putting together some additional enemy and environment sprites in preparation for the final push to completion.

In the days following it dawned on me that, for the elements I still had remaining on my to-do list, I didn’t see myself being able to complete this project in a timely enough manner. Rather than submit what would feel like an ‘incomplete’ project I’ve decided to make other plans for it instead.

To implement and smooth out the remaining elements we would really need to dig into the memory managment aspects of the PICO-8 in order to achieve the results we wanted to see. Currently the world map is incapable of spanning more than one transition in any direction, and given that sprite and map data share the same space in memory, deciding on and creating the environment assets we wanted to implement also became a challenge that we would need to spend more time evaluating.

Ultimately my ambitions were bigger than my limitations - something to keep in mind for the next game jam: keep it simple.

Having said that I am happy with the overall mechanics that are in place - and this is all in the spirit of open source - so I’ve decided to go ahead and make the source code for this project publically available in it’s current state for anyone interested to expand upon or pull from. The only condition is that any future iterations of the project remain open source and that sprites are not copied for use in other projects outside of this one.

The project source can be found here and I also have intentions on uploading the cartridge to lexaloffle later this week for easy access. I’ll update this post once that’s done.

I’m pleased with what I have been able to learn regarding the PICO-8 over the course of the past three weeks, and I’ve had a blast getting up to speed with how one might approach the creation of their own top-down adventure using the PICO-8.

Perhaps we’ll get the opportunity to see this vision through more completely in the future, with an expanded color palette and fewer limitations, but in the mean time this has served as a great prototype of what may come.

Update: You can preview the cartridge uploaded to lexaloffle below:

• 2021 1
• 2018 6