PIXEL ART WITH PICO8

Today a twitter friend from Italy shared a montage of Pico8 code art and games and I needed to at least try this software.

I spent many hours today making new code art and refactoring old code I've written on open processing.

The interface reminds me of my first programming language BASIC. It is very primitive, but you get the feeling anything is possible (not exactly true! I've crashed it with some recursive tests).

I enjoyed making an infinite pattern generator in pico8. I have done something similar on open processing, but this is the first time I allow users to control the speed of the brush using arrows. Left arrow clears the screen to restart and another unreleased version allows users to cycle through colors. The organic movement of the brush is due to an old function I wrote that calculates the difference of two random numbers.

Pico8 is $15 and absolutely worth it if you like making code based art. If you are a gamer, get it to take a trip down memory lane. There are so many outstanding games for pico8. I won't spoil it at all, because part of the wonder is exploring for yourself.

https://www.lexaloffle.com/

Shared on twitter.