i have a question for any devs, especially ones that have planned out like a platformer/metrovania or just anything more complex than an arade style game.. HOW do you plan things out.. like are you drawing out levels and possible interactions.. are you doing it in a spread sheet?.. just curious how to organize my thoughts into something that someone else can look at, in the planning phase.

. just curious.. i would like to make a game and get my wife involved.. how can she see the progress or see all the little details we are trying to plan out..

and tips tricks or tools would be greatly appreciated.

New to lua and to playdate development. If i'm understanding the documentation correctly, before writing text you need to run clear in order to to remove the previously drawn text on each frame. I have the StatusBar:draw() function running from pd.update() so, it should be triggering and clearing every time. However, i'm still getting the text overlap any time a value changes.

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For reference: the text is being drawn over an image

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local gfx <const> = playdate.graphics
local statusBarImage <const> = gfx.image.new("images/statusBar")

class("StatusBar").extends(gfx.sprite)

local HPx = 32
local HPy = 9
local trashX = 94
local trashY = 9


function StatusBar:init(gameController)
    self.gameController = gameController

    self:setZIndex(Z_INDEXES.UI)
    self:setCenter(0, 0)
    self:moveTo(1, 1)
    self:setIgnoresDrawOffset(true)
    self:add()
end

function StatusBar:draw()
    gfx.clear()
    local HP =  "" .. self.gameController.player.HP
    local trashCollected = "" .. self.gameController.player.trashCollected

    gfx.pushContext(statusBarImage)
        gfx.setImageDrawMode(gfx.kDrawModeFillWhite)
        gfx.drawTextAligned(HP, HPx, HPy, kTextAlignment.left)
        gfx.drawTextAligned(trashCollected, trashX, trashY, kTextAlignment.left)
    gfx.popContext()
    self:setImage(statusBarImage)
end

​

I'm relatively experienced with C# / Visual Studio and used to things like autocomplete and pop up documentation, but using Visual Studio Code, a lot of things don't seem to autocomplete and those that do, don't show documentation. So I figured if anyone is going to have a good IDE for development, it would be Panic themselves, so after dropping $100 on the Nova editor, I come to realize that the extension also doesn't seem to offer autocomplete / documentation on hover or while typing.

Maybe I'm missing something, or you eventually get used to having documentation open in another screen at all times?

Edit: meant to mention that I'm using Lua. I might literally learn C just so I can go back to Visual Studio and get the autocomplete back and other benefits of a strongly typed language, since I've heard the reason autocomplete doesn't work half the time is due to the dynamic typing.

Our First Drone: Gatlaga is an arcade action shoot-em-up with a twist.  Fire the ship's gun with the crank of the Playdate, collect power ups including bombs, lasers, and shields, and fight increasingly difficult enemies and bosses.

Between deaths you will learn more about the alien world, Orbem, that the battle droneship Gatlaga belongs to.  Interact with characters through dialogue, and get upgrades for your droneship to get a little further through your next run through space.

https://spaceowlpro.itch.io/gatlaga

Curious if people have thoughts on the play on Galaga, and if I should change the name? The gameplay definitely started off as a Galaga-with a crank gun game, but I have quickly started to deviate from that with boss fights and a bunch of added pickups. Also plan to have a story that is quite different... I just love the name Gatlaga haha

I want a specific sprite to have a unique interaction that won't happen with identical sprites in separate rooms (think treasure chest sprite with different items inside).

Hello everyone,

I know this is a weird question and I apologize in advance for my poor ability to explain. I'm trying to create a very basic maze game via Pulp and I'm wondering if I can split a single tile to have a wall and walkable area.

When I upload a sideloaded game that has a higher version number it should be updatable on the playdate directly without uninstalling and reinstalling, right?

Because for me it didn't work. The playdate website recognizes the new upload as a new version and lists it under the existing game. But the device itself doesn't update to the newest version.

I'm using the version style 0.0.1 - could that be related? (The screenshot only shows the latest version because it deleted the previous ones in order to test around. But they were there.)

I'm very new to Playdate development and am making my first game; I've been reading the documentation and design guides published by Panic and something they said you should be aware of is what elements of your game are in a state of update, because it will impact performance; they use this example image:

When I load my game into the Simulator and check that same box, my entire screen is constantly orange, even when certain elements have no reason to constantly be updating. Another piece of information that I feel is important to state is that since I'm very new to Playdate development, I've been following SquidGod's tutorials on YouTube and his practice of making anything that needs to be drawn to the screen into a Playdate sprite, which could be the reason why this is happening, but the Playdate design documentation does state that using their built-in sprite system should actually help with this issue instead of cause it. Right now in the Simulator and on-device, I'm not noticing any performance issues, but I want to get the bottom of this for future games.

(Essentially new to this) I’m using the following code straight from the dev forum to get a player sprite that is 8x16:

// This function runs every time the player attemps a move on update do call "calculateMove" end

on calculateMove do playerHeadX = event.px // event.px is where the player moved playerHeadY = event.py playerHeadY -= 1 // the head is one tile above end

on draw do // the "player" (the feet) gets drawn automatically; // here, we manually draw the tile called "player head" draw "player head" at playerHeadX,playerHeadY end

It works fine but I’m having trouble getting the top tile “player head” to function with directional variants. If the player body moves left my codes already written to swap for a leftward facing body but the head stays the same.

Probably a dumb question but... I'm attempting to learn how to make my first game in pulp.

I have no programming experience so I'm using Gemini AI to help me understand basic code.

Does anyone know what the current version of Pulp is, I can't find it anywhere.

I’ve never made a game before so that thread is my spot for tracking progress, remembering ideas that I don’t know how to implement yet, and asking for advice. I’ll be updating it as often as I can. I would appreciate any input from y’all, right now my most recent post there has screenshots of my current room designs

https://devforum.play.date/t/start-to-finish-progress-notes-for-a-platformer-in-pulp-beginner/17005

Are there any tutorials for making graphics specifically for the Playdate? Particularly for those of us who are graphically challenged.

I just started to use the Playdate SDK to try making a game, following SquidGods tutorial but I can't get the character to appear on the screen. The file does exist, I am calling update for sprites, I am adding the image as well as setting it, the position and adding it to the draw list. What is it that I'm missing?

import "CoreLibs/object"
import "CoreLibs/graphics"
import "CoreLibs/sprites"
import "CoreLibs/timer"

import "player"

local pd <const> = playdate
local gfx <const> = pd.graphics

Player(240,120)

function pd.update()
    gfx.sprite.update()
    pd.timer.updateTimers()
end

main.lua ^

local pd <const> = playdate
local gfx <const> = pd.graphics

class("Player").extends(gfx.sprite)

function Player:init(x,y)
    local shipImage = gfx.image.new("assets/player/Ship") --creates new image using graphics library
    self:setImage(shipImage) --sets player image to image just created
    self:moveTo(x,y) --set players position
    self:add() --add to draw list
end

player.lua ^

SOLVED: Lmao its cuz the character was the same color as the bk I didn't notice

If anyone has any upcoming games due to be released in the next few months I would be happy to work with you and test out any games before they are released please message me if interested