PICO-8 Easier development with Visual Studio - imogiagames /

see also

• Develop on Pico-8

Extensions

• PICO-8 Language Server
  • Full language support for the PICO-8 dialect of Lua. - (goto definion, etc)
  • View docs on hover, then auto-complete

• pico8-simple-outline - for *.p8 files: display a list of all the functions in your project, and acces their definition by clicking on them.

• pico8-theme - color theme in the style of the PICO-8 fantasy console by lexaloffle - you can keep the regular fonts as is.
  • configure it so it’s only applied on Pico8 project

# .vscode/settings.json
{
  "workbench.colorTheme": "PICO-8"
}

• PICO-8 Runner - launch dev cart from IDE (Ctrl+Shift+8)

Alternatives

• pico8vscodeeditor - facilities for editing Pico-8 p8 files in VSCode.
  • Pico-8 API snippets - (Ctrl+Space)
• pico8-vscode - editing and running pico8 files.

see also

• Getting Started with Local Development for Pico-8 and VS Code
• Using VS Code with PICO-8
• Pico-8 and external IDE

VS Code with PICO-8

Using VSCode with PICO-8. As well as other Using External Tools

# include

put all of your code in a separate file and using #include you can use individual tabs from carts by going #include cartname.p8:2 which would include any code on the second tab inside the cart.

#INCLUDE can be used for things like:

• Sharing code between cartridge (libraries or common multi-cart code)
• Using an external code editor without needing to edit the .p8 file directly.
• Treating a cartridge as a data file that loads a PICO-8 editing tool to modify it.
• Loading and storing data generated by an external (non-PICO-8) tool.

Debug

printh

the printh function to output text to the terminal.

see also

• redirecting all print call

Tokens

• use info to have token count

Alternative way of doing things:

• Using VS Code with PICO-8 - edit cart directly ?

Doc

• Pico-8 API Cheatsheet

• compiler
• Picotool - a suite of tools and a Python library for manipulating PICO-8 cartridges.
• decoding Pico-8 cartridges
• pico8-imgtools
• P8Coder (windows) / github - pico-8 programming tool