fennel-pico-8-example

KO | EN

gitlite — search

#ai #android #rust #linux #docker #java #windows #cli #kubernetes #vue #security #ios #mcp #openai

fennel-pico-8-example

(★ 12)

An example of building pico 8 games with the fennel programming language

fennel-pico-8-example Latest Version Download

Download Latest Version (.zip)

// repository documentation

Was this content helpful?

★ 0 (0 ratings)

# Fennel PICO-8

An example [Fennel](https://fennel-lang.org/) project for targeting [PICO-8](https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php).

## Setup

Symlink the projects games directory to the PICO-8 carts directory. In my case on OSX this would be:

```
ln -s ~/projects/fennel-pico-8-example/games '~/Library/Application Support/pico-8/carts/games'
```

Install Lua:

```
brew install lua
```

This project vendors Fennel as a git submodule.

The `fennel` directory is there, but empty. You must run the following commands to initialise your local configuration file, and to fetch all the data from that project:

```
git submodule init
git submodule update
```

Build the `fennel` script and make it executable:

```
cd fennel
make
chmod +x fennel
cd ..
```

## Compiling Fennel game code to Lua

```
make
```

## Load the code in PICO-8

Launch PICO-8 then at the PICO-8 prompt:

```
load games/squashy.p8
```

## Run the code in PICO-8

At the PICO-8 prompt:

```
run
```

## Tips & Tricks

### View limits

Because we are using `#includes` and an external editor the token, chars and compressed limits won't display properly. In order to view their correct values type `info` at the PICO-8 prompt.

### What counts to token limit?

One of the stricter limits PICO-8 places on its carts' code is that they must contain no more than 8192 tokens.

A token is one of:

- A literal value, such as `nil`, `false`, `true`, any number (e.g. `123`, `0xff.ff`, `-3`, `~1e4`), or any string (of any size).
- A variable or operator
- An opening bracket `([{`
- A keyword, with the exception of `end` and `local`

In particular, the following are not counted as tokens:

- The comma `,`, semicolon `;`, period `.`, colon `:`, and double-colon `::`
- Closing brackets `)]}`
- The `end` and `local` keywords
- The unary minus `-` and complement `~` operators when applied on a numeric literal

The important one for code generated by fennel is that `local` does not count to the token limit.

### Macros

By defining things as a macro they don't exist at run time unless used. This means macros don't contribute to your token limit unless used.

However, because macros expand into code, macros can use up more tokens than functions if called multiple times.

## Useful links

- [Fennel docs](https://fennel-lang.org/)
- [Antifennel](https://git.sr.ht/~technomancy/antifennel)
- [PICO 8 User Manual](https://www.lexaloffle.com/dl/docs/pico-8_manual.html#PICO_8_User_Manua)
- [PICO-8 Token Optimizations](https://github.com/seleb/PICO-8-Token-Optimizations)
- [Going from Lua 5.2 to PICO-8's Lua](https://gist.github.com/josefnpat/bfe4aaa5bbb44f572cd0)

fennel-pico-8-example

fennel-pico-8-example Latest Version Download

Today's picks

Was this content helpful?

Recent Feedback

fennel-pico-8-example

fennel-pico-8-example Latest Version Download

Today's picks

Was this content helpful?

Recent Feedback

Download README