ELMO-8

A Simple Game Library Inspired by the Excellent PICO-8

The goal of the library is to offer a small, simple game development environment which aspires to be as charming as PICO-8.

There are deliberate limitations to keep things simpler and to encourage the 8-bit aesthetic.

Aspirational specs:

  • Display: 128x128 16 colours
  • Sprites: 128 8x8 sprites
  • Map: 128x32 cels
  • Controls: 2 6-button joysticks

Goals

  • Be a nice little playground
  • Be a simple teaching tool
  • Be a nice way to write small games

Using

Install from http://package.elm-lang.org/packages/micktwomey/elmo-8/latest

  1. elm package install micktwomey/elmo-8
  2. Edit Hello.elm
  3. Download examples/birdwatching.png
  4. elm reactor
  5. Go to http://localhost:8000/Hello.elm

Hello.elm: ```elm import Elmo8.Console as Console import Elmo8.Pico8 as Pico8

type alias Model = {}

draw : Model -> List Console.Command draw model = [ Console.putPixel 10 10 Pico8.peach , Console.print “Hello World” 10 50 Pico8.orange , Console.sprite 0 60 90 ]

update : Model -> Model update model = model

main : Program Never main = Console.boot { draw = draw , init = {} , update = update , spritesUri = “birdwatching.png” } ```

The result should look like this:

Basic Example

Examples

To play with the examples in this repo:

  1. git clone
  2. elm package install (not required but useful to check dependencies)
  3. elm reactor
  4. Look in http://localhost:8000/examples/

Posts

  • http://www.twoistoomany.com/blog/2016/10/19/working-on-elmo-8
  • http://www.twoistoomany.com/blog/2016/10/20/elmo-8-now-with-fonts