I’ve been working on this and it’s starting to look like something real… a resume of how it’s been until now:

DAY 1 Took me quite some time on the first day to decide… I had a few mock-ups of old projects for pico (at 128x128 resolutions) that I thought I could put into 64x64. I pick one of those… a Flipull clone and start working on a new gfx set and putting up a micro-prototype to check things out. Kind of works but the quarter tiles (4x4) are a massive pain to handle and my mind drops the idea. Back to the thinking chair for a while… then a very very old mockup on a potential Hero Quest game gets me started and I begin working on isometric art and a prototype engine.

DAY 2 Looks like I have a “working” (but terribly underperformant and hacky) isometric renderer for PICO-8 and the idea of moving into a “tactics” game crystalizes and I put up an initial prototype (fully random generated map and some units on it)

DAY 3 Getting the first heavy performance issues (mostly because the maps I test are still fully random) so it is time to get some fixes in place for that while continuing on art and implement a basic entity system for the units in the game.

DAY 4 Some work on the units but mostly still chasing performance tunning

DAY 5 Reaching the performance limit I am gonna be getting out of this “quick” engine… A clear decision to take, map size is gonna be extremely limiting, parituclarly the variance of height between tiles. New focus is putting together some map editor so I can progress with actual map and game mechanics

DAY 6 (TODAY) Editor progresses reasonably, fighting some issues with storing/retrieving the data but the goal is solve that today/tomorrow… To easy the tension I push on some style changes I started the previous night for the tiles.

I will keep you posted… I really hope to finish something playable out of this but I cannot put as much time I’d like to on completing the project. Comments appreciated!

I definitely hope you get something playable and released! This looks great so far and I’d love to try it out!

Me too ;) Thnx for the interest. Your project is also looking nice.

This is looking great! Love the isometric look in Pico-8.


You should checkout this isometric engine another PICO-8 dev is working on.
https://twitter.com/iSpellcaster/status/1291764136687394817?s=20

Thnx Cody Ward… he is actually taking after my posts there :) I am a bit stressed with the coding (I also do coding for a living, and it’s been a complex week) so I am relaxing that a bit until the weekend. Today Just working on finxing the Art style. If you liked it so far I think the new additions you’d love!

DAY 8: Pushing pixels… I finally radjusted a bit things for the game setting. It’s gonna be a battle btwn the kingdom and the Necromancer’s forces… almost done with the units, missing a 2H heavy unit for the “skellies”…

So the game starts to get a context… The kingdom is under attack by the Necromancer’s army. 5 types of units per side:

Map loading is in place so now I can start looking into actual gameplay… let’s see if I can get things speeding up a bit!

Working un User interaction and trying to get things sorted to have a somewhat “interactive playable” level… still a few days from there… For those interested on seeing it “moving” my current wip cart is in pico8’s bbs

Yesterday focused on impelementing most of the logic behind move calculation… it’s starting to show off…

Moving around is starting to be a reality… next implement turn control. I will be missing not that much after that… attack zone calculation, the actual combat, unit “death”, victory conditions, spells and skills for the units… Oh man, did I say not that much? I lied…

Day 12… move seems to be finally correct, move areas, jumping over water preventing ending move in the water, proper area calculation on unit activation… that took most of the time I could put on it today. Added also a basic turn logic so side unit selection is restricted and unit done after completing their turn… Let’s see if tomorrow I can implement turn rotation (alternate sides) and work on attack areas.

Really not sure I’ll be in time to get an actually playable thing to enter :/

Things are still far from the sweet spot… Turn system in place, refactored most of the unit moving code and revamped the UI menus… if wanting to get a glimpse a wip cart is uploaded at pico8 bbs https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=39134.

Tomorrow focus on attack zone calculation (I have a happy idea that could reduce a lot the implementation cost) and I hope basic combat… If that goes as expected the minimal set of features to have this entering the jam would be missing AI, wining conditions (eliminate all units in the other side) and the mgck/skill system (so priests can heal, mages can cast spells, etc) So many pending things (not even a sad sound in place…) and such a small amount of hours to do them all…

Getting close to a playable version… combat is kind of working, multiple attack types per unit, friendly unit spells, potions… the units still don’t “die” though… Tomorrow I need to implement units death, end-game state (all units in side X dead), tile based spells and a couple of missing unit special attacks and victory conditions and some base AI for the undead (or leave the prototype as a 2 alternating players thing… that could for sure reduce how much I need to implement yet).

Considering the remaining time Sound is gonna be missing in this prototype I’m afraid unless some talented pico-8 musician wants to contribute with a couple tracks (one for title/menu and a bg loop for in-game) and some sound effects (attack, spell casting, turn change…)

If you want to get a teste on how it looks you can try it at pico 8 bbs