Pico-8 - Fascinating fantasy console

When the existing machines no longer inspire you, it is time to switch to imaginary ones.

This article was originally published at Skrolli 2016.1E – International Edition.

This article in Finnish: Pico-8 – Fantasiakonsolin pauloissa

During their careers, many computer hobbyists have tried countless device and software platforms. Some have even surveyed them intentionally in order to play their games or use them to create art. This sort of exploration also creates an understanding of the features that make a platform comfortable or interesting to work with. The fantasy console Pico-8 is one idea of an interesting platform.

The Pico-8 is probably best described as an emulator for a system that does not exist. Its overall spirit is very 8-bit and you might envision it as a handheld console like the Game Boy Color. The screen offers a resolution of 128 × 128 pixels at 16 colours and there are four chiptune channels for sound.

However, this is not merely an exercise in alternative history; the design of the Pico had very different starting points than devices that might seem similar on the surface. Instead of trying to make the most out of a limited amount of logic, it offers a small set of building blocks that are as fun to play with as possible. The developer hopes that, over time, the technical framework of the Pico-8 would give rise to a unique aesthetic that would be expressive in spite of its minimalism.

First glance

The Pico-8 appears slightly schizophrenic. After start-up, it enters a mode that is more reminiscent of a home computer with a keyboard and mouse than a game console. The command interpreter allows for loading software and typing in print commands, for example. By pressing Esc, you can enter an editor that has dedicated sections for code, graphics and sound. However, only the internal applications can access the keyboard, mouse or all parts of the file system – to external applications, the Pico is a game console with ROM cartridges and a two-button pad controller.

Pico speaks Lua, a limited but fairly expressive language that was originally designed for game scripting. In other words, the Pico virtual machine does not emulate any processor in itself – not even one that executes bytecode. Everything is written in Lua, and this is the lowest level a programmer can access.

There are two main formats for distributing games and other software. The cartridges, or carts, are PNG pictures that have the appearance of a physical cartridge and sticker, but whose lower bits store the program code and graphics and sound data like a watermark. Software exported to HTML5 format can be run on modern Web browsers without the actual Pico-8 software.

Sprite-editorilla piirretään paitsi spritet, myös isokokoisemmat pikselitaiteet.

Bounds and limitations

The most visible technical feature of the Pico is the 128 × 128 pixel screen with a fixed 16-colour palette. The palette has a fairly personal and easily identifiable choice of colours, and its designer has clearly had more of an eye for colour than the average engineer.

Although Pico games typically use background maps consisting of 8 × 8 pixel blocks, and 8 × 8 pixel sprites on top of them, this is not a limitation. The graphics mode is a pure pixel buffer that can be used to draw anything – and the machine is also fast enough to run 1990s demo effects smoothly. However, the platform encourages the use of 8 × 8 pixel blocks by offering functions for drawing maps and sprites that are faster than using your own code to do the same pixel by pixel.

The cart can hold 15,360 bytes of compressed code. The maximum length in the editor is 65,536 characters or 8,192 tokens in tokenised form. These limits are not easily met – even many of the best games are clearly below these figures. On the other hand, the existence of this limit encourages simplicity and linearity, as there is no room for enormous game engines and multi-layered abstractions.

The cart has 12,544 bytes reserved for graphics and 4,608 bytes for sound. Of course, these data areas can be used for other purposes – the memory handling commands allow it to be accessed at the byte level. Upon program start-up, the contents of the cartridge’s data side are copied into user RAM where the program can modify it, if necessary. User RAM also includes slightly under 7 kilobytes of space reserved for the user and 8 kilobytes of video memory.

The graphics data consists of 8 × 8 pixel sprites where the entire colour palette can be used freely. The maximum number of sprites is 256 and the map consists of 128 × 32 sprites. It is possible to double the size of the map by settling for 128 sprites.

Karttaeditori.

Efektieditorin tämä moodi sopii parhaiten musiikille. Varsinaiset ääniefektit on mukavampi piirtää käppyröinä.

On the sound side, the equivalent of a “sprite” is a sound effect (sfx) that consists of 32 note locations. Each note location contains the note and the waveform, volume and effect; there are 8 different types of each of these. The playback speed can be altered; lower speeds are better suited for music than sound effects.

Similarly to tracker music, a song consists of patterns that define which sound effect is played on each of the four channels. There is space for 64 patterns, which can hold several songs when loops and pattern end flags are used.

While the graphics side allows everything to be built from individual pixels, the user cannot access the “registers” of the sound system. In theory, you could build a player routine by modifying the sound data in real time, but the limits of the virtual machine’s timing might not allow this. However, you can easily create different experimental soundscapes by writing random data in the sound effect memory.

In addition to the program code, data RAM and cartridge ROM, the Pico offers 256 kilobytes of space for the Lua interpreter. This is a relatively large amount when compared to the Pico’s other memory spaces, but it will fill up easily with large tables, for example. One element of a number table takes up eight bytes, half of which is taken up by the actual data. Each number consists of a 16-bit integer part and a 16-bit fraction, which means that bit arithmetic operations can be used to compress them.

When running low on space, Pico can also read data from other ROM cartridges and even write to them. Program code has a strict limit, however; it can only be executed from the original cartridge. Lua in itself includes the possibility to execute data as code, but it has been removed in the Pico-8. This means that those requiring more code space will need to build their own virtual machine.

The Pico-8 does not execute Lua code as quickly as the computer’s processor allows. Execution times have been defined for the different functions. This speed limit will rarely lead to problems during the development of typical Pico software, but it standardises the limits of the platform and prevents spiralling hardware requirements. According to the authors, a first-generation Raspberry Pi is enough for running even the most demanding Pico software at full speed.

Musiikkieditorissa yhdistetään kuviot musiikkikappaleiksi tracker-tyyliin.

Jos koodieditori tuntuu turhan rajalliselta, voi .p8-tiedostot toki ladata myös ulkoiseen tekstieditoriin.

How to code on it

Lua is written in all capitals and is, therefore, reminiscent of BASIC. For example, many people will remember the BASIC version of the following infinite text printout loop:

::START::
PRINT ”HELLO”
GOTO START

Instead of the Lua standard library, Pico offers a fairly limited selection of BASIC-type functions: drawing commands, a couple of sound commands, controller input functions and a few functions for memory handling, mathematics, bit arithmetic and string handling.

The basic drawing commands can be used to draw pixels, rectangles, lines, circles, text, sprites and background maps. The palette colours can be switched for the drawing commands and you can also make colours transparent in terms of the sprites and background graphics.

Drawing moving graphics is more reminiscent of a PC than the 8-bit home computers. The Pico has no “hardware sprites” or “hardware scrolling”. Instead, the display is usually redrawn for each refresh: clear the screen, draw the background and then draw the necessary sprites.

There are two functions available for drawing sprites: spr() draws an individual 8 × 8 pixel sprite at the provided coordinates, whereas sspr() draws an arbitrary area from a sprite sheet at arbitrary scaling. The scaling function enables a number of tricks that are fairly costly on most classic hardware, such as Doom-type texture mapping.

The programmer may place drawing commands in an endless loop, but a more elegant solution is to define a function called _draw() and call it at every screen refresh, i.e. 30 times per second. The earlier example would appear as follows:

FUNCTION _DRAW()
PRINT ”TERVEHDYS”
END

The game controller is read with the function btn() that accepts the button number as a parameter and returns whether the button is pressed. A program that moves sprite number 0 to the left and right might look like this:

X=64
FUNCTION _DRAW()
CLS()
SPR(0,X,112)
IF BTN(0) THEN X=X-1 END
IF BTN(1) THEN X=X+1 END
END

In order to display anything on the screen, you of course need to draw something for sprite 0 in the sprite editor.

Sometimes, _draw() will contain so many tasks that it cannot be run at every screen refresh. In this case, the programmer should move the updating of the game state to the _update() function that is – theoretically – called 30 times per second. Theoretically, because it is not a timer interrupt; if _draw() takes longer, it is called several times in a row.

Double-buffering is not a concern, as the changes to the video memory will only appear after _draw() has been completed. On the other hand, the user RAM could only fit a full-screen double buffer if some of the sound effects were cleared out of the way.

The sound side offers the functions sfx() and music(). The former plays the sound effect given as a parameter on the first available sound channel, the latter starts playing music from the pattern number given as a parameter.

Makers of small 2D games need not concern themselves with the speed of the commands, but it will become an issue when testing the limits of the platform. The function pset() refreshes all the pixels on the screen approximately one and a half times during one screen refresh. Writing directly into video memory with the poke() function is about three times faster. However, using the memcpy() and memset() functions is up to ten times faster, and the background graphics drawing command map() is equally fast.

Matt Thorsonin ja Noel Berryn Celeste on nopeasti vaikeutuva tasohyppelypeli. — Celeste

Duangle-ryhmässä vaikuttava Paniq on eräs Picosta innostuneista demoskenereistä. — Duangle

Josh Millardin Ennuigi on pikemminkin minimalistinen taide-elokuva kuin peli. Kyseessä on viipyilevän melankolinen tulkinta Super Mario Bros -pelin tarinasta. — Ennuigi

Blocks are fun to play with

Pico contains many features that are reminiscent of 1980s home computers. Instead of sticking to traditional or technological realism, it emphasises the fun of creating and block aesthetics. Those who are bothered by this should consider the fantasy nature of the platform: fantasy worlds do not always make a lot of sense, but they provide the setting for interesting events and fuel the imagination.

If we had to summarise the spirit of the Pico-8 into one word, it would probably be “straightforward”. Some of this stems from the 8-bit computers and their BASIC: you can start writing your program immediately after “powering on” and never need to think about OS requirements, APIs or different execution environments. Things are simple and tangible: specific bits in a specific memory location will always mean a block of a specific colour in a specific place on the screen.

The concept goes further than that, however: there is no counting of clock cycles and raster lines, no colour cell boundaries, no juggling back and forth with utilities and files. The limits of the platform prevent arduous and time-consuming fine-tuning. Since there are no adjustable palettes, sample systems or machine code instructions, you do not need to tune them. And the small number of pixels ensures that not even a perfectionist can spend very long with the anti-aliasing.

There are some technical challenges and brain puzzles on offer for those who desire them, but it is hard to imagine that success in the Pico-8 scene could ever require extreme attention to detail. Pico programs are easy and quick to write, and an author who is familiar with the basics of the platform can create a fairly polished game in a single evening.

At the time of writing this, the Pico is still an alpha version, and this is apparent in some parts of the development environment, at least. The code editor will not automatically skip to the line that contains an error and the keyboard cannot be used for drawing pixels. The software does not assist the user sufficiently; instead, the user needs to read separate documents and discover that the Esc key opens the editor, for example. The map editor can be initially frustrating, since it does not in any way indicate that the zero sprite is always empty in terms of the map.

Despite a few problems, we can recommend the Pico even to beginning programmers – at least those who are attracted to 8-bit block aesthetics and not afraid to read instructions from text files. Lua has no major drawbacks, and the simplicity of Pico’s interface encourages doing things yourself instead of looking for ready-made solutions. For the more experienced, Pico offers an easy and fun pastime, and the results are way above simple doodling with watercolours.

Sophie Houldenin tunnelmallinen Dusk Child yhdistää seikkailua ja ongelmanratkontaa tasohyppelyyn. — Dusk Child

Picoracer2048 on viivavektoripohjainen kilpa-ajopeli, jota valitettavasti voi pelata vain yksin. — Picoracer2048

J-Fryn Hyperspace osoittaa, että Pico-8 pystyy myös pehmeään pinnoitettuun 3D-grafiikkaan. Peliä siinä ei juuri ole. — Hyperspace

Community and creativity

The development of the Pico-8 was crowdfunded, which ensured a large group of enthusiastic fans already at the time of publication. At the time of writing, the forum of the developer, Lexaloffle Games, has over 250 cartridges with games and other software. A substantial portion of these are platformers and other traditional 2D action games, but you can occasionally encounter some more experimental ones. There are even a few demoscene productions for the Pico.

The forum is the central community for developing and publishing on the Pico, and for the time being, at least, it has a very enthusiastic, warm and encouraging atmosphere. Beginners are also welcomed in a friendly and helpful manner. The Pico development team often participates in the discussion, which also makes the forum the best place to ask about the Pico’s technical details.

Pico-8 also has its own fanzine, the Pico-8 Fanzine, which also receives input from Lexaloffle’s main developer “zep”. The creator of the indie platformer adventure VVVVVV, Terry Cavanagh, is one of the more famous writers. The fanzine is written by fans for fans, and three issues have been published at the time of writing. The zine contains instructions for making games, interviews, reviews and different technical articles for Pico-8 programming – and fan art, of course.

Pico-8 Zine on aika paljon Skrollia ohuempi mutta on sen tapaan saatavilla sekä paperilla että PDF:nä. — Pico-8 Zine

By now, many of our readers will surely be convinced that a software toy with such a warm-hearted spirit and an open development culture must be free and possibly even open source. This is not the case, however. The Pico-8 is a commercial product that currently costs around $20 to download. The binaries are available for the three most important x86 operating systems: Windows, Mac OS and Linux. Many have requested a physical Pico-8 console, but for the moment, it can only be implemented by using the runtime environment that can run the program binary.

Of course, the Pico is a simple platform, which makes it easy to reverse engineer, and the Lua interpreter it uses is already open source. However, the project is currently surrounded by such an aura of sympathy that not many hackers would have the audacity to produce an open and free Pico variant. Instead, we can hope that Lexaloffle itself will release the source code for the Pico when the paying customers start losing interest. This would make the Pico an interesting niche option for game development, and perhaps even education, after the community wanes and active development ceases.

Benjamin Souln Hybris on japanilaistyyppistä avaruusräiskintää ihmisruumiin sisällä. — Hybris

The future of fantasy platforms

Fantasy consoles like the Pico-8 are a relatively new phenomenon. Although the Chip-8 virtual machine in 1970s hobbyist microcomputers can be considered its predecessor, and many educational software suites use simplified machines, the Pico is made exceptional by its “creativity first” approach. As such, its only predecessor is Lexaloffle’s earlier Voxatron fantasy console.

It is quite possible that even more small, easily approachable fantasy platforms will start to appear in the wake of the Pico. And the motive does not need to be related to competition or contrast – curiosity towards other options will suffice.

The Pico’s features encourage fun, cute and nostalgic creations, but a different selection of features could create an entirely different spirit and aesthetic. For example, it would be fun to see an “evil twin” of the Pico that emphasises the gloomy and rough corners of the universe of opportunities. Of course, this is a well-known phenomenon from the world of historical computing platforms, but a subculture that creates experimental fantasy platforms might offer interesting laboratory conditions for studying it.

Regardless of the future, the Pico-8 remains an interesting development environment that offers a more casual alternative for the classic home computers and consoles. It combines the inspiring 8-bit limitations with a modern design philosophy that emphasises ease of use and simplicity. Those who are even the least bit interested in coding and fascinated by large square pixels will find years of entertainment in the Pico.

This article in Finnish: Pico-8 – Fantasiakonsolin pauloissa

Text: Visa-Valtteri Pimiä, Ville-Matias Heikkilä

Pictures: Laura Pesola, Ville-Matias Heikkilä