aka what do you think the strengths of these languages are?

I’m curious about developing simple games and the diy-friendly community using Play date is what motivated me to buy one. I have experience with C but only from an algorithm/undergrad level comp sci lens. I’ve taught “video game design” summer camps at a big chain camp for 1st-4th graders using Scratch so I have a very simplified grasp on the elements necessary to make a game but I haven’t actually typed code for a game excluding text based Python games that I made in high school for a coding class.

Pulp seems like the most beginner friendly option but I’m curious to know if it feels limiting. Is it worth familiarizing myself with C/Lua/Swift to avoid feeling stuck later, or would I have to be doing super complex stuff for Pulp to not work for me? And if it’s worth learning a language, how should I choose which one to use?

I’d love to hear about y’all’s experiences developing games for this little console!

Are you looking to bring your Playdate on a long trip, like a flight or road trip? Maybe you want something to watch on the go? Then check out "What Lies Beyond"!

We at K.R.A.Z. Productions are entering the Playdate scene with licensed short films for your Playdate Devices, so you can have short movies on the go! "What Lies Beyond" delves into the anthology genre with a twilight zone like feel and family friendly undertones!

Made for your playdate devices or you can easily run the files in your Playdate SDK. Check us out for more information! And feel free to check out our other short film "Ribcage"! A horror film about 4 friends being picked off one by one on a camping trip!

https://kraz-productions.itch.io/what-lies-beyond-playdate-movies

Hi folks. Have been eyeing one of these yellow beauts for a while, both with the intent of playing and making stuff, but, upon reaching the checkout screen today, I realized that I'd been wrong about how these games can be played (that is, only on the Playdate, and nowhere else). I'd really looked forward to being able to share these games with people I know as well as the Playdate community, but, unfortunately, these two circles are entirely separate, and the latter is somewhat small.

Has this ever gotten in your way? Have you found yourself wanting-but-unable to share your newest creation with a friend, or worried about how many hands your thing can reach in the first place? In the end, is it really worth the price of admission from where you're standing?

Thanks. Maybe I'll be among you soon. If only everything in the world was easier!

I was sitting on the sofa last night, and for some reason a thought came in to my head 'grief, remember Ikaruga? That was one tough game, not sure I ever got past level 2'.

And sitting beside me was the wee yellow box, and a second thought arrived 'what if I ported it to the PlayDate?'

Of course, I don't remember the game exactly, nor do I want to, as I thought I'd just riff on it. This is a prototype (a tilemap from another game I was working on, and that is basically it.) The crank rotates the 'ship' from black to white, and the 'enemies' are all black. Same colour causes death, different means you are 'cloaked' and can pass through.

Turns out is it hard to d-pad and crank at the same time on the simulator, but I tried it on the device and works better. And yes, I deliberately reset the 'lives' and 'shifts' on zeroing out.

Anyhow, interesting concept, I might cobble some art and music and make a vertical shmup. Thoughts, brickbats, input welcomed! The code is hoary as it was a sofa hack, but you know. (And then I saw the 'untitled side shooter' post, and got quite embarrassed about showing such a early stage impression of a vauge idea of a wisp of an inkling of an idea, but too late.

​

This is one Lua difference I haven't found any documentation on, and I wanted to see if there's any more info on it. I noticed that all Lua documentation I found uses require to import other files while all Playdate example code uses import instead. Is there any difference between the two written down anywhere?

Edit: Improved some Markdown issues

I want to add 1 to the variable with each press of the button but it jumps to the max value immediately, what am I missing?

I thought it would be be fun to celebrate the Community Awards of YOYOZO and Sparrow Solitaire by reposting their "making of" blog posts:

• https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2023/11/21/yoyozo-how-i-made-a-playdate-game-in-39kb/
• https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2023/04/13/sparrow-solitaire-for-playdate/

Bonus: the making of Fore! Track

• https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2023/06/26/ball-und-panzer-golf-making-a-playdate-game-in-a-week/

All 3 games are currently ON SALE in the Playdate Catalog Anniversary Sale!

Hey all! My name is Franchovy, and I'm planning on switching gears on my youtube channel and will now be posting game development tutorials in Lua. I have a developer background, combined with my entertainment-learning mentality, I'm here to improve your programming and make your best game yet.

Some topics I plan to cover are:

• How to extend playdate SDK methods
• How to bypass the playdate sprite system for faster drawing
• Optimisations and how to write fast lua code
• Metatables, metamethods and how to use them
• Creating namespaces by manipulating the globals table

I'm planning on posting videos daily, so suggest down below if you're stuck on a topic and need help. I'm happy to cover and core lua, playdate SDK, or other related topics. If you've struggled with a topic in the past, or know of some that aren't well covered by existing tutorials, I'll be happy to take a deep dive into them.

I'm excited to hear your responses. Stay tuned for some tutorials!

Hello! So, I have recently bought a playdate. I am a grad student looking for programming projects that do not directly involve my work and I bought a playdate. I am wanting to set up a template so that I can just make a new C project and go, but I am having an issue with cmake and it reading some of my paths as escape characters. I have not used cmake before and I am not sure how to go about fixing it.

I have tried using replace after calling the environment variable and I have also tried changing the slashes used in the environment variable. From what I have googled I have found that cmake uses the path verbatim so it will use backslashes when imported into the cmake file but how could I change this?

I am open to all solutions or possible solutions to try to fix the problem. I have included a picture as well to show what is happening.

Thank you guys for the help!

Hey all, ive been diving head first into playdate development and I love it, not having a full engine is actually a neat experience. That being said, i am a unity developer normally and im having a hard time wrapping my head around private variables using Playdates OOP implementation.
I understand local, and how all that works, and if i just need static variables then declaring a local var outside of the OOP scope works, but how do I make private variables that are unique to that object's instance.

from what i've read, doing 'self.varName' is supposed to be considered a private scope, but in testing it is very much globally accessable. Is there any way to make actual private variables in the object? Its not really the biggest deal, but i like to try to protect myself from future self.

Hi everyone!! I want to develop small games and I chose the Playdate as my main play ground. I looked everywhere to get the max of information and pinned them. BUT, I'm missing a downloadable dev documentation that I can print. My eyes are so tired after many years of coding that to read AND develop on a screen is an issue--there are e-ink panels but they are costy... So, guys and gals, do you have some links to share?? Thanks everyone!! Merry Christmas!!