Fast and simple. Just like me. - the author
Don't make me take my hands off the home row! This is a toolchain I use to make pico-8 dev a little faster and more flexible.
setup lets you configure the current folder for pico-tools.(you can have different settings per folder)
build will load your cart in pico-8, and auto-play automatically.
watch will detect changes to your .p8 file and run another build.
add_vscode_tasks will copy over a .vscode/tasks.json file which let you do the same, but from a hotkey.
- An installed copy of pico-8
- requires nodejs and npm
Yeah, yeah, calm down.
# install pico-tools with
npm install -g pico-toolspico-tools uses an environment variable to know where your pico-8 executable is.
There are many ways to do that, but we've included an easy way for beginners:
Simply create a .env file at the root of your project folder with one of the following: ( Your setup may differ slightly. )
# Typical Windows setup
PICO8=c:\Users\nicho\Desktop\pico-8_win32\pico8.exe
# Typical MacOS setup
PICO8 = /Applications/PICO-8/PICO-8.app/Contents/MacOS/pico8# run a cartridge in pico-8 and have it auto-play.
pico-tools build path/to/cartridge.p8# watch a specific file for changes, and then reload automatically.
pico-tools watch path/to/cartridge.p8WARNING If you use the watch command, please note that when the tools trigger a reload, you will lose any unsaved changes in the pico editor. This goes for sprites and music too! Keep that in mind so you don't lose work!
# This will create `.vscode/tasks.json` in your current directory. This lets me hit `cntrl+shift+b` and activate one of the tools.
pico-tools vscode_tasks# will open the pico-tools github page
pico-tools home# will open the pico-8 bbs in your browser
pico-tools bbs# This will echo the Pico-8 Documentation to the terminal.
# Combine this with other tools like less or grep!
# example: pico-tools man | less
pico-tools man