happy-ferret / pico-go

Virtual retro videogame console in go

pico-go

Written by @telecoda

Pico-go is virtual console inspired by pico8

The plan is to build something similar to pico8 but where the games can be coded in Go instead of Lua.

** NOTE:- development on pico-go is currently suspended (see sdl_2_ebiten branch for more details)

Therefore with a heavy heart I'm deciding to suspend development on pico-go for now. The effort to continue developing a tool with a very limited (maybe non-existent) userbase is not worthwhile, but it was a fun ride.

See TODO for current implementation status.

Building

go get github.com/telecoda/pico-go

First fetch all the dependencies:

go get -u -v

You will also need to install the SDL2 dependencies for your platform. See the go-sdl README for details

go install

More docs will be added as I progress..

Dependencies

This project is dependent on the github.com/veandco/go-sdl2 project for SDL support.

TODO: document installation options thoroughly

Getting started

This section describes how to get started using pico-go

Creating a new project

To create a new project

pico-go new <project-name>

Run this command in the directory where you would like your new project created. The command will create a new directory matching your project name containing all the required asset.

Running the project

Once you have created your pico-go project you can run the code immediately.

cd <project-name>
pico-go run

The generated project contains a simple code example that renders animated text on the screen.

Hot reloading

The pico-go run command monitors the filesystem for file changes. If you amend any files in the code directory your project will be restarted. (Only if the code compiles successfully)

You can also run the project by directly calling the go run main.go command but the code will not be automatically restarted.

References

PICO8 font by RhythmLynx TIC-80 font by nesbox ZX Spectrum font http://style64.org/release/c64-truetype-v1.2-style#attachments