Woah, that is odd. I doubt the game can crash your computer from within the very restrained environment PICO-8 uses, in fact, the game is limited to work with only 2MiB of RAM. Did the error appear on the game itself, a pop-up Windows message, or a BSoD? Could there have been another program in your system that caused the crash? And did you run the game from the browser, or a downloadable version?
Hello, I would like to report a race condition regarding the cart data and cartridge restarts.
Consider the following code
value = 0
frame = 0
function _init()
cartdata("race_condition")
value = dget(0)
dset(0,0) -- set value to 0 for next reload with ctrl+r
end
function _update()
if btnp(5) then
dset(0, (value+1)%10) -- increase value by 1
run() -- reset cartridge
end
frame += 1
end
function _draw()
cls()
print("current value: "..value, value+1)
print("frame: "..frame)
end
If you look at it, the expected behavior would be that:
If you press X, the stored value should increase by 1 (modulus 10) and then the cartridge should restart and load that value.
If you reset with Ctrl+R, no value is set so it should be reset to 0 because of the dset(0, 0) at the end of the init.
Notice however, that if you run the cartridge and press X, there are 3 possible outcomes:
Value gets reset to 0.
Value stays the same.
Value increases by 1 as intended, but this only seems to happen if the cartridge ran for more than 60 frames.
So my belief is that there is a race condition between the dset() calls of the different times the cartridge is reset, and they fight to write in the cartdata,
Took me a while to figure out the mechanics, but after that was pretty fun. The plot twist at the "end" was cool! Seemingly at random the game launched me into the void but that didn't affect the gameplay too much.
I liked the game, It made me say "that was close" before I escaped! The graphics and music are excellent! I had to do 4 attempts, but I fell inside the planet on 2 of them, which seems like a small bug.
I didn't invest much time in creating a lore, but you made me write a head canon: This character, "the Antimage" wants to stop an organization of evil wizards that have the monopoly of the magic and use it for evil things, like... building parking lots. So, they had to learn to absorb the magic and use it against them. His primal objective is to close all the portals from where the magic flows to the world.
I picked the music from incompetech.com, it was made by Kevin MacLeod.
I find this game remarkable. The classical mechanics of the escape games are reduced to its fundamentals, which (together with nice graphics) results in a comfy gameplay. It seems you have achieved an elegant model that can be used to develop larger adventures easily. Also, I think it fits perfectly the theme of the jam. The contradictory nature of the ending made me think there was another one, but that's just nitpicking.
Albeit it requires intuition from the player, the gameplay is super innovative and relaxing. It showcases a high level of programming skills. I liked all the levels (except for 06, which required the rule from 08 and took me some time and trial and error to figure out).
