Demos


install_demos

This command is used to install the PICO-8 demonstration cartridges, which are pre-made demos that showcase different features and techniques for creating games. When you use this command, a "demos" subfolder is created in the currently opened folder. This subfolder contains a collection of demonstration cartridges that you can explore using the splore or load command.

First time setup:
1) Open PICO-8 and view the welcome screen.
2) Type in "install_demos" (no quotes, no spaces, with underscore) and press Enter.
3) The demo carts have been downloaded, to navigate to them, first type "cd demos" (without quotes, with space) and press enter.
4) You can type "ls" or "dir" and press enter to view the file names in this demos folder.
5) To load a demo cart, type "load [filename]" where filename is the name of the demo cart, listed below.

The demo carts include:

api A well commented cart demonstrating many common built-in functions of the PICO-8 Lua.
automata A demo of Cellular Automata: a system where a grid of cells changes states based on simple rules and the states of their neighbors.
bounce A bouncy physics demo of a sprite inside of a ball, colliding with bounds of the screen.
cast A first-person view raycasting demo, using the 2D map and colors to define and draw a 3D space. Complete with collision and moving platforms.
collide A top-down demo of collisions with map drawn walls and animated objects such as a bouncy ball, coins, and other characters that zep named "peopleoids".
dots3d A 3D rotating and zooming cube made of many circles.
drippy An etch-a-sketch style drawing demo where the pixels slowly and colorfully bleed down the screen.
hello A wavy and colorful sprite animation demo of the classic text "hello world".
jelpi A full platformer demo with what has become the mascot character of PICO-8. It has everything from platformer movement, item pickups, powerups, enemies, collectibles, signs, puzzles, hard to reach areas, background scroll, multiple levels, particle effects, and a dragon boss.
sort A fun sorting of a table demo using giraffes of random heights to visualize it.
wander A top-down demo of a cat that can pick up apples, and wander across multiple screens on the map. Instead of a constant scroll, this demonstrates a quick screen cut such as those used in the first Legend of Zelda dungeons.
waves A wavy ripple animation effect using only pset() to draw a grid of pixels.

Images in this Guide by NerdyTeachers is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

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4 Nov 2023

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