Daniel / Caaz

However many you're thinking, probably more. Here's a quick brows of the pico-8 screenshots, most of em are pong, some of em are other projects. This isn't even accounting for the actual screenshots/screen recording folders of other projects.

Good news I realized I did my math way wrong here's how it's supposed to look when done correctly

Been playing around with some title screen stuff! Who's that pokemon?! Lots of the gameplay scenes are planned out now, and I'm starting to implement them!

I'm planning on making battle and travel seamless, the character will just run forward until they reach the next event! The parallax layers will shift to take up more of the screen when the battle UI isn't there.

After trying a few different options, the palette has changed again! Removed a green so that I can guarantee a white regardless of scene. This allows for better contrast with ui elements. The parallax system before was drawing unseen tiles, so I decided to add treetops and not draw over the sky!

I've been hard at work implementing the mockup in pico-8 today, this meant I made a tileset and set up parallax scrolling! I also had to plan out the colors really meticulously. A clever eye might've noticed I removed quite a few colors from the mock, compared to previous posts. I had to!

You know what, this didn't take long at all actually. #pokemon #pixelart

#PKMNDFECT Progress update! I've got all the sprites in, and I've wrote up the code for displaying them! Only problem is, now I have to go in and create the palettes manually. Not too terrible to set up though, just gonna need to go through this 150 more times!

This week's #FragmentFriday, Tactics RPG! I didn't really have a plan here, but this is again one of my earliest dips into shading, I made the tileset and wanted to make the water edges look nice, and then I figured I could make reflections as well! #godot #gamedev #pixelart

Good news, the user no longer has to sit there for ages. I sped up the algorithm by like, not being an idiot.

I have been doing unspeakable things to #pico8 in order to load up the first 151 pokemon with palettes and movesets. #gamedev #pokemon

Time for #FragmentFriday! Where I dig out another project I never finished (the ride will never end) Here's an old roguelike I was doing in #pico8! It was also my first attempt making lighting system, which is very similar to how PONG DFECT's lighting works!

So back in my early gamedev days I explained a process for layering sprite data in pico-8. I still get credited for this every now and then in carts and it always makes me happy to see how people put it to use, since I've never actually used it myself! #gamedev #pico8

For everyone in the middle, you can set up games as chaotic as you want! Anyway, I still need to figure out music so that's gonna be the major blocker before release, but everything else is basically shippable!

I'm at this point in development where I'm basically trying to fill out all the configuration options, which will allow me to set up presets you can quickly load up and play. For those that just want a normal pong, that can be arranged! No lights, no ball spin, no lanes, no dfect.

Finishing up some configurable options, including field colors! Despite the limited palette, I was able to pull this one off! #pride #pong #pico-8 #screenshotsaturday #gamedev

I missed #FragmentFriday cause being a parent as hard so have one a day late (I missed last week too... sooo...) Anyway! A long while ago I wanted to recreate r-type in pico-8. I got exactly this far. It looks pretty, though!

I've been getting closer to complete with PONG DFECT! Today, I've been implementing the custom game menu. There's a LOT of options that are modifiable! I've gotta give some of these values human-readable names, and add a game starting animation, but it's all hooked up! #pico-8 #gamedev

I wanted to make a lowpoly rat but it has too many polys so I'm just gonna roll with it

As soon as I stop scope creeping! And optimizing, but I wanted at least 3 lights to be playable with so I had to go and refactor my whole vector library for more performance.

Of course I post that right before making it considerably more performant and responsive. Anyway here's what it looks like when the tiles are updated in order, making them super hella quick and less jittery

The people have spoken, so it shall stay in! Spent a little more time on it, now it has 6 shade values and... normal mapping?!

I made an entire lighting system in #pico-8 just so that I can make this effect and I have no idea if I should keep it or if it's too distracting. Guess I could dim it a little bit, though.

Latest work on PONG DFECT! Been working on a logo! I've also been tweaking the physics of it a bit, now the curving effect is strong at high speeds, but low speeds are closer to standard pong! I've still got an button free for another mechanic... #pico-8 #gamedev #pong #atari

To pair this with a rotary input wouldn't be too crazy though, you'd basically just convert that input to a pwm-like input for up and down. That's how the bots control the game, actually! They have a value that controls how many frames they wait before "pressing buttons", higher lets them go slower.

Oh it's nothing that fancy. It looks that way because there's an acceleration to movement, so the longer you hold the faster you'll go! There's really only a few controls though, up, down, brake (for slower, more controlled movement), and left/right, to shift between lanes.

Judging by the reaction to all of this I suppose I'll have to go ahead and finish it! I've basically just got to implement the menu and settings, and perhaps proper multiplayer controller support, I'm thinking up to 4 players is probably reasonable here.

Everyone's said this and all I'm doing is drawing a bunch of black circles instead of clearing the screen lmao I feel like I can take no credit for how it looks because of this

I got distracted building pong and I think it's looking pretty good. Do I start a series of classic games like this for pico-8? Maybe. PONG DFECT? If anyone wants to make some music for this feel free to reach out, I don't have music skills nor do I really grasp how to use pico-8's editor for it.

Ah! It's friday, #FragmentFriday, a game I started and never completed! I wanted to make a platform fighter in pico-8, and that's where I wound up with this! I ran out of sprite space before I had anything really playable, but it was really fun to put together a moveset and effects for it!

There's also this shadow mode, where you can only see your played pieces when they're in front of particles! It's spooky, but fun!

If I ever get back to it, I might fix those rotations, but for now, this is it! PS. There's a multiplayer mode., or two handed mode if you're insane. Not sure I ever tested if those score values will overlap the other player's.

There's loads of settings to change the visuals, but they all involve an obscene amount of particles on screen. One thing I regret is that rotations don't exactly match the official style, so hardcore Tetris players weren't a big fan, so that kind of hurt my motivation.

#FragmentFriday! I bring to you... a game I didn't quite finish, but gamedev is an art, and is art ever finished? Tetris was one of the first #pico8 games I ever tried making, and after playing Tetris Effect, I made it into this! I never released it... until today! caaz.itch.io/tetris-dfect

With Principled BSDF you can get away with this, but it's got all the Principled BSDF stuff, so fancy lighting and all. if you're shooting for flat shading with transparency, I think you've gotta do something special yeah.

#FragmentFriday - Another game I abandoned! This one was heavily inspired by bitGenerations: dotstream! This one's built in pico-8 and unlike dotstream there are no lanes, this made it kind of difficult to control, so I learned why they wound up doing that. I added boosters and NPC opponents!

A while back someone asked me how to do this sorta sword trail vfx (for a specific arc attack) but it'd be neat to see this done with like trail mesh thing so that it's not so static.

Update I grabbed a second one AND THERE'S NO FORTUNE IN IT EITHER?

Originally, I was working with a 64x88 canvas, and about 8 layers or so... With this new rendering method, I've got a 128x88 canvas, with 64 layers! This upgrade lets me hide interesting things to the side of the card art that only tilting it will show! Also, more depth allows for a better 3D look!

Working on recreating "The Birds" horror card with this new voxel workflow. It's not quite where I'd like it to be yet, but the workflow is proving useful! #godot #vfx #shader #gamedev #indiedev

It's still a bit rough, but that's due to the renderer, there's a tiny bug where it can jump through voxels that's more apparent here because voxels behind others may be colored differently. That's a code issue that I get to solve!

I had hoped to lean more into the paint aesthetic, adding more tile types and making it more slippery, and adding more puzzle elements, but the motivation kind of died out. Still, it was an interesting concept. Also the paint in this drips a lot more like paint, which is neat.