There are many resources available for that, and also schools if you want to go professional. I was doing web programming before, but I started working on standalone games 10 years ago with resources like Game From Scratch (https://www.youtube.com/c/gamefromscratch/) and later, Brackeys (https://www.youtube.com/c/Brackeys/). I’m on the code side of things but you can find your own field(s) of speciality. But more importantly, stay with the community: in the case of PICO-8, looking at other devs’ work and talking with them about how they do it is very instructional.
I definitely can, with the EXPORT command. The Windows, OSX and Linux executables you see have been produced like that.
In reality, they are just a common PICO-8 runtime executable (+ some shared library e.g. DLL depending on the platform) + a .dat file which contains the compressed Lua script + assets data.
So it’s just the .dat file that characterizes the game, while the pico8 runtime binary is just a common file for all games exported on a given platform, with a certain version of PICO-8.
WOAW your demake is so fantastic, i love it :) But i'm really so sad ... i can't play it with my real PICO8 engine on my Batocera PC :( If i understand fine i must use your modified version, but i can't ... i can only use the real engine :( Is it really impossible to make a version working fine on the real engine please ? Thanks a lot
(Note: some technical stuff below, I don’t know if you’re a PICO-8 programmer or just using it from the player side, but I put them in case you’re interested)
Ah, an enthusiast!
Let’s see… The biggest issue is the token limit. The most direct way to cut that is to remove all the backgrounds and foregrounds… I can try, but I’m fearing for the visuals.
The second issue is the “fast reload” patch. Unlike the token limit, it will not prevent you from running the game, but the game will freeze for up to 1s every time you change region (128x32 tiles). A true fix would be to store all the regions in Lua tables, and copy them myself instead of relying on PICO-8 reload. I believe it would be faster, not because of the implementation (Lua iteration may be slower than the engine’s C code even adding I/O operations).
An alternative could be to make a special reduced version of the level for vanilla PICO-8. This would fix the complex background code and the region loading issue (Bonevolt did it on Sonic 2.5 so I know it can be done, with the slight difference that my OOP code tends to be bigger).
For better results and in the spirit of PICO-8 I’d go with the second solution. Unfortunately I’m working 1 day/week on the project now (spending other days on new projects), mainly to complete the intro sequence, so I don’t think I’ll be able to make that happen any time soon.
Ah, sorry for the long explanation then. I can’t guarantee an update after the last things I was already planning, but I’ll see if I find a nice solution!
OK! I cannot give you an exact license since it’s already fan art; just credit me and notify me when the game is out (consider it a kind of CC-BY-NC as mentioned in the itch game metadata, except that it only applies to my work of adaptation).
I don’t know if they will work in 4 colors though, you’ll have to try. If it fails, you can always ask pixel artists for help (I’m not 100% satisfied of my sprites, so if you find one maybe they can make nice sprites specifically for this color palette).
To extract the sprites:
download the cartridge release (.p8.zip) and extract it
open data_stage_sonic.p8 in PICO-8
check the spritesheet and run export sonic_spritesheet.png
If you don’t have PICO-8 I can upload it directly on this page too.
Yes, actually I’ve noticed that the exported spritesheet from PICO-8 misses one foot in the fall sprite due to it sticking out.
So I’ve uploaded the arranged spritesheet with the fixed foot as “picosonic sonic spritesheet (arranged) - pink background v6.0.png” (mostly useful for PICO-8 users; they should set transparency color to pink) and a variant “… transparent background v6.0.png” with a transparent BG (you’ll probably want that considering you’re gonna change the colors anyway).
Which platform are you using? Where are you stuck?
Basically if you press C 3 times on the keyboard, you should immediately show the menu, start the Start Cinematic and then skip it to immediately start the level.
For web only: make sure to enable Javascript. I removed the need to click on Run Game, the game is now automatically loaded on page load, so you just need to click on the embedded game with the Play icon.
It was planned initially, unfortunately, after a year or two I realized it was getting out of budget… (not just time but also code size limitations of PICO-8)
Maybe one day, someone will redemake it in Pixel Vision or something and go even farther… ?
Yes, they are in the downloadable files, in pico-sonic-png.zip. It’s a multi-cartridge game so it’s actually a set of many cartridges (for code and data).
However, to run the game you need a patched version of PICO-8, because I went overboard and the ingame cartridge has more tokens than allowed. The patch would extend the number of tokens allowed (and also doing fast reload of data to avoid a short freeze each time you change level region). That’s cheating in a sense, but I’m still following the (compressed) characters / cartridge size restriction.
Unfortunately that prevents me from posting the game as a proper cartridge on the BBS, and you from playing the game from your player… Sorry for the inconvenience.
Note: there are more info on patching on https://github.com/hsandt/sonic-pico8#releases but it’s still incomplete (missing patches for Windows editor, etc.), and I don’t expect people to go to that length either. So the binaries are still the definitive version for this game.
You can get the background image in Firefox with right-click > View Background Image, but with Chrome you’d have to check the page source code. So I uploaded it along the game executables as “picosonic itch.io page background 4x.gif” to make it easier. Enjoy!
Thank you! I didn’t do anything special to support DS4 (I tested Xbox-like controllers though) so I guess the PICO-8 web template was just good enough. Reminds me of InfernoPlus saying he can’t play most games on Steam with DS4, but he managed to make Mario Royale work with it. Maybe web tech has just something that makes it easier (that said, I managed to use all of my controllers including DS4 on PC when using Steam Big Picture)
this.. isnt too playable, but the movement doesnt feel that bad. also you can "fix" the lag by making the base game 30 FPS 'w ' (that is, if thats possible to do)
Were you playing on the web version, or did you have issues on standalone too? Web version definitely has audio lag, but I didn’t feel control lag (time between input and character motion), so what made it hard for you to play?
Otherwise, targetting 30 FPS would make it more stable indeed, but I’ll try to fix my inefficient physics and heavy background rendering first, I really want to have steady 60 FPS like the original games.
just wanted to point out that those two details are just default pico-8 things (not to say that this game isn’t incredible, but those two things weren’t really added as details)
This is so awesome!!! The control is so fluid and the plataforming is better than a lot of Official Sega Games, and I really loved it. Congratulations, it was a great experience :D
I remember playing a lot of Sonic 3 on Sega Genesis. It was a sensational game. And now I see more proof of competence on the part of the fans, with this project. It is already impressive in itself due to the context surrounding Pico-8. Congratulations on this incredible work.
One mistake: You say its Pico island, but the game says Angle Island. DUDE THIS IS AWESOMMMMEEEEEEEE! Is this based on a specific Sonic game? Because I had one a long time ago that had the same trampoline in tree setup in the beginning to the top left above the start with a secret.
If you decide to put a ton more effort into this, you could add a coin globe and tails too! Although I dont think there is a reason you would, since its just a bunch of effort and minimal outcome
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Comments
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Wow I didn't know you could make something this cool in PICO-8 !! Amazing work!
Thank you!
Wow, this is so freaking impressive!
I love it. Amazing job
Thanks!
i wanna do games like you... but looks like i will never be able to make a game...
There are many resources available for that, and also schools if you want to go professional. I was doing web programming before, but I started working on standalone games 10 years ago with resources like Game From Scratch (https://www.youtube.com/c/gamefromscratch/) and later, Brackeys (https://www.youtube.com/c/Brackeys/). I’m on the code side of things but you can find your own field(s) of speciality. But more importantly, stay with the community: in the case of PICO-8, looking at other devs’ work and talking with them about how they do it is very instructional.
thank you!
1: no badnik
2: masterpiece
I LOVE IT. I really hope for a fully fledged game. :)
i wanna die.
Ummmmm ok?
Impressive.
Thanks!
You can't release pico games as executable ? right ?
I definitely can, with the EXPORT command. The Windows, OSX and Linux executables you see have been produced like that.
In reality, they are just a common PICO-8 runtime executable (+ some shared library e.g. DLL depending on the platform) + a .dat file which contains the compressed Lua script + assets data.
So it’s just the .dat file that characterizes the game, while the pico8 runtime binary is just a common file for all games exported on a given platform, with a certain version of PICO-8.
Nice work.
WOAW your demake is so fantastic, i love it :)
But i'm really so sad ... i can't play it with my real PICO8 engine on my Batocera PC :(
If i understand fine i must use your modified version, but i can't ... i can only use the real engine :(
Is it really impossible to make a version working fine on the real engine please ?
Thanks a lot
(Note: some technical stuff below, I don’t know if you’re a PICO-8 programmer or just using it from the player side, but I put them in case you’re interested)
Ah, an enthusiast!
Let’s see… The biggest issue is the token limit. The most direct way to cut that is to remove all the backgrounds and foregrounds… I can try, but I’m fearing for the visuals.
The second issue is the “fast reload” patch. Unlike the token limit, it will not prevent you from running the game, but the game will freeze for up to 1s every time you change region (128x32 tiles). A true fix would be to store all the regions in Lua tables, and copy them myself instead of relying on PICO-8 reload. I believe it would be faster, not because of the implementation (Lua iteration may be slower than the engine’s C code even adding I/O operations).
An alternative could be to make a special reduced version of the level for vanilla PICO-8. This would fix the complex background code and the region loading issue (Bonevolt did it on Sonic 2.5 so I know it can be done, with the slight difference that my OOP code tends to be bigger).
For better results and in the spirit of PICO-8 I’d go with the second solution. Unfortunately I’m working 1 day/week on the project now (spending other days on new projects), mainly to complete the intro sequence, so I don’t think I’ll be able to make that happen any time soon.
Thanks a lot for your answer. I m not a développer. But i will stand for your update. Take your Time ... 😉
Ah, sorry for the long explanation then. I can’t guarantee an update after the last things I was already planning, but I’ll see if I find a nice solution!
Ok thanks a lot for the answer :)
hey can i use the sprites in my gameboy sonic game?
OK! I cannot give you an exact license since it’s already fan art; just credit me and notify me when the game is out (consider it a kind of CC-BY-NC as mentioned in the itch game metadata, except that it only applies to my work of adaptation).
I don’t know if they will work in 4 colors though, you’ll have to try. If it fails, you can always ask pixel artists for help (I’m not 100% satisfied of my sprites, so if you find one maybe they can make nice sprites specifically for this color palette).
To extract the sprites:
export sonic_spritesheet.pngIf you don’t have PICO-8 I can upload it directly on this page too.
could you upload it please? thanks
Yes, actually I’ve noticed that the exported spritesheet from PICO-8 misses one foot in the fall sprite due to it sticking out.
So I’ve uploaded the arranged spritesheet with the fixed foot as “picosonic sonic spritesheet (arranged) - pink background v6.0.png” (mostly useful for PICO-8 users; they should set transparency color to pink) and a variant “… transparent background v6.0.png” with a transparent BG (you’ll probably want that considering you’re gonna change the colors anyway).
From my 4 year old son:
Thank for making this. I liked how you can go really fast most.
Cheers, mate. Cracking job. Between us we got all the Emeralds. 🥳
Good job!
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh i cant start
Which platform are you using? Where are you stuck?
Basically if you press C 3 times on the keyboard, you should immediately show the menu, start the Start Cinematic and then skip it to immediately start the level.
For web only: make sure to enable Javascript. I removed the need to click on Run Game, the game is now automatically loaded on page load, so you just need to click on the embedded game with the Play icon.
windows 10
operating system dosent help much
Windows binary should be working. Does the app start? Are you stuck on title menu?
Send me a screenshot/GIF of what you see and tell me what you’ve tried.
nvm i got it
you will need hydro city and super sonic (if you collect the all)
It was planned initially, unfortunately, after a year or two I realized it was getting out of budget… (not just time but also code size limitations of PICO-8)
Maybe one day, someone will redemake it in Pixel Vision or something and go even farther… ?
It's an impressive work and has a very nice graphic design, it really looks like an official game! ;D
Thanks!
very cool game, didn't know Pico-8 is capable of such games! great pixel art too
Found this through SAGE. This is great!
Even got all the emeralds!
Thanks, and congrats!
Do you have the cartridge image? If so, just reply with the image. (for P8 Player)
Yes, they are in the downloadable files, in pico-sonic-png.zip. It’s a multi-cartridge game so it’s actually a set of many cartridges (for code and data).
However, to run the game you need a patched version of PICO-8, because I went overboard and the ingame cartridge has more tokens than allowed. The patch would extend the number of tokens allowed (and also doing fast reload of data to avoid a short freeze each time you change level region). That’s cheating in a sense, but I’m still following the (compressed) characters / cartridge size restriction.
Unfortunately that prevents me from posting the game as a proper cartridge on the BBS, and you from playing the game from your player… Sorry for the inconvenience.
Note: there are more info on patching on https://github.com/hsandt/sonic-pico8#releases but it’s still incomplete (missing patches for Windows editor, etc.), and I don’t expect people to go to that length either. So the binaries are still the definitive version for this game.
i tought this was pico, from new grounds....Im stupid
bro they took pico as an 8 year old and mad him make this game
pico 8 is a software and not a character
Ah, I got it! pico must be a character on newgrounds, and jasons_itch made a joke about the possible confusion: “this game was made with pico (8)”
nice
but i clipped into ground
Was it in a slope like the first curve, or inside a loop?
If so, that is a known issue although hard to reproduce, I will add it to the list of known issues and try to fix it in a future patch.
If it was in another place though, please tell me where so I make sure to fix this location too.
slope
ok
i cant find the first emerald
but this is good
Ok for find The red emerald (first emerald) go to The part what in Sonic 3 are speed monitor AND ring monitor upper (only in sonic 3 AND pico Sonic)
nice dude i beat it
I can never find that white emerald.... I got all the rest.
It’s well hidden, but follows some logic… I’m considering adding better visual cues in a future update, though.
jogo top adoro jogos do sonic marco infacia de todos sempre marcara
completed the demo!
This is a great game! kinda short, but collecting the emeralds proves timeworthy
Also I like the background gif on the page, and I was wondering if you could post it
Thanks!
You can get the background image in Firefox with right-click > View Background Image, but with Chrome you’d have to check the page source code. So I uploaded it along the game executables as “picosonic itch.io page background 4x.gif” to make it easier. Enjoy!
I think I found it
We just discussed your game on our podcast! Come check us out!
Episode 34: Works in Progress
http://scrachingtheitch.libsyn.com/
I finally got some time to listen to it. Thanks for taking the time to cover it!
The two other games you covered on this episode also caught my interest, I’ll check them out!
I like this and the thing I really like is that it is Dualshock 4 compatible!
Thank you! I didn’t do anything special to support DS4 (I tested Xbox-like controllers though) so I guess the PICO-8 web template was just good enough. Reminds me of InfernoPlus saying he can’t play most games on Steam with DS4, but he managed to make Mario Royale work with it. Maybe web tech has just something that makes it easier (that said, I managed to use all of my controllers including DS4 on PC when using Steam Big Picture)
Super cool work! The movement feels so good, and I like the Chaos Emeralds being scattered around (reminds me of Sonic 1 on Master System). Great job!
Pretty cool demo! I'm impressed!
this.. isnt too playable, but the movement doesnt feel that bad. also you can "fix" the lag by making the base game 30 FPS 'w ' (that is, if thats possible to do)
Were you playing on the web version, or did you have issues on standalone too? Web version definitely has audio lag, but I didn’t feel control lag (time between input and character motion), so what made it hard for you to play?
Otherwise, targetting 30 FPS would make it more stable indeed, but I’ll try to fix my inefficient physics and heavy background rendering first, I really want to have steady 60 FPS like the original games.
web. good luck optimizing!
This game better be good
I really appreciate the smaller details, like the loading cartridge screen and the game saving icon. Great job man
just wanted to point out that those two details are just default pico-8 things (not to say that this game isn’t incredible, but those two things weren’t really added as details)
which buton is the start buton reply plz im on keybord
Nevermind its c
This is incredible! having a more exploration-focused game like Sonic CD works incredibly well for the Pico-8!
This is so cute!
This is so awesome!!! The control is so fluid and the plataforming is better than a lot of Official Sega Games, and I really loved it. Congratulations, it was a great experience :D
I remember playing a lot of Sonic 3 on Sega Genesis. It was a sensational game. And now I see more proof of competence on the part of the fans, with this project. It is already impressive in itself due to the context surrounding Pico-8. Congratulations on this incredible work.
Thank you! I didn’t have time to edit a video, so thanks for yours too!
I’ll try to bring some updates in the incoming weeks.
[Reply]I played sonic 2 on the Xbox360 (dose anyone played(or even remenberd that port))
really nice, feels just like old sonic
Thank you!
how do u play
never mind i got it
One mistake: You say its Pico island, but the game says Angle Island. DUDE THIS IS AWESOMMMMEEEEEEEE! Is this based on a specific Sonic game? Because I had one a long time ago that had the same trampoline in tree setup in the beginning to the top left above the start with a secret.
I feel the level it's based on Sonic 3 (yup, Angel Island Zone) , and the controls based from Sonic 1
Yeah! Thats the one I had! Thanks!
Exactly! Although I didn’t add spin dash due to lack of time and hope to add it at some point.
Thanks! And good catch, I’ll fix the “Angel Island” in the stage result.
If you decide to put a ton more effort into this, you could add a coin globe and tails too! Although I dont think there is a reason you would, since its just a bunch of effort and minimal outcome
That was neat! I can't get that damn yellow emerald though, it seems too high!
you need to use momentum there is a ramp to the left of it