pico-tools

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.

PreReqs

1. An installed copy of pico-8
2. requires nodejs and npm

Gimme Gimme!

Yeah, yeah, calm down.

# install pico-tools with 
npm install -g pico-tools

Setup is a piece of cake

pico-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

Documentation

pico-tools build

# run a cartridge in pico-8 and have it auto-play.

pico-tools build path/to/cartridge.p8

pico-tools watch

# watch a specific file for changes, and then reload automatically.

pico-tools watch path/to/cartridge.p8

WARNING 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!

pico-tools vscode_tasks

# 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

pico-tools home

# will open the pico-tools github page

pico-tools home

pico-tools bbs

# will open the pico-8 bbs in your browser

pico-tools bbs

pico-tools man

# 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