> Shaun has joked that “brute force creativity” is the attitude to take when solving a problem in Pulp. This simple toolbox gives you just enough flexibility to expand the game’s featureset beyond what seems possible at first.
I learned to program using Scratch and I loved this about the language community that developed around it. For the first few years it didn't even have arrays, procedures, or text input, and people (kids!) worked around these things by encoding state using the powerful graphics tools, clever math, and brute force.
People in the forums would clamor for more powerful features, but they were rolled out slowly and carefully. Later on I had a brief internship with the Scratch team and got a sense for why. The dev team was small, but more importantly they thought very carefully about how to whittle a language feature to its essence to enable maximum creativity with minimum cognitive overhead. I really appreciated that.
Of course I also quickly developed an appreciation for Snap[0] (née BYOB) which veered off from Scratch with a more "f*ck it, have everything" philosophy towards language design :)
Ever since I got an OP-1 [0] and found it such an absolute delight, it made me realize how a simple, well crafted experience can provide such sheer joy. Something I haven't felt on the "supercomputer in your pocket" in like decades. Constraints can be really fun, because they remove the paralysis of choice.
I hope this is a new frontier of people making open source hardware devices. You can totally craft the experience from start to finish in a way that wasn't so easy before.
Amen to this. I got an OP-1 for myself for my birthday this past year. I was interested in it because of joy, and I enjoy using it because of joy. It is hard to put a price on that aspect of it as an object, and it goes well beyond a BOM, a microcontroller firmware, more capable gear for less money, or an unconstrained software implementation of the same that continues to have me sit in front of yet another screen and try to free my mind. It's not for everyone, and if it's not for you, don't buy it and move on.
Wow, a shoutout to Shaun Inman - I had no idea he was working at Panic these days. His blog was a big inspiration for me back when I was just starting my career as a programmer. Good ole' sIFR: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scalable_Inman_Flash_Replaceme...
From what I could tell from the Playdate episode of the Panic podcast, he doesn't work there. Pulp seems to be more of a "collaboration" – he was making it himself, and it seems that Panic gave him some funding and some of Neven's time (designer).
I recognized his name from an old self-hosted RSS reader I used to use back in the day. Looks like the marketing site for it is still up. https://feedafever.com/
This whole project continue to be a big love-fest to retro gaming. I love the idea of building simple (or not!) retro-style games for a hand-held device. Hopefully Pulp games will be playable in the browser, so people will be able to try the games even if they didn't order a Playdate, or until their order arrives.
I don't really have any game dev experience, but i've been hacking around in Love2D to try building basic games with Lua. Pulp sounds like a great way to get going, and I'm excited to try it! Love to see what a bunch of creative developers are going to come up with.
> Hopefully Pulp games will be playable in the browser
Prediction: the Pulp games won't be any fun in a browser. You'd be missing what makes the Playdate fun (the device) and the obvious understanding that there are constraints to what can be made for it, and instead you'd be playing a clunky game on a supercomputer.
I think they'd be foolish to allow the games to be played in the browser.
> This whole project continue to be a big love-fest to retro gaming.
You can buy Gameboy-lookalike devices in any toystore for a few bucks. I personally don't understand the rage, although I must admit that I was never a big fan of computer games to begin with.
This looks like fun environment to work with. The less pixels you need to push around, the more you can focus on gameplay. But I painfully learned, that even binary pixel art needs a good eye and patience to do right.
I pre-ordered my playdate and would love to play around with the SDK now. Feels a bit unfair though, that they are hiding this tool in a private beta, even though there already seem to have quite a few games done for it. For the rest of us, we can just hope...
> Feels a bit unfair though, that they are hiding this tool in a private beta
I've been following Playdate closely. They have said publicly that the Playdate software isn't finished yet, and the press devices only had a couple of games, and those weren't even finished.
Reading between the lines, I think the on-device API is still in flux as the OS is finished off, and that Panic expect the games to need final touch-ups. Based on this, it would make sense that Pulp can't yet produce games that could be guaranteed to work with the final shipping device.
As Panic clearly care so much about the product, I think it's fair that they're keeping these things restricted to a group that they can give all the communication effort and attention to. Developer relations at scale is hard because it's just a ton of communication and support, and Panic obviously don't have the capacity to do that for all 10s of thousands of developers who like to have a peek.
I hope that you will be able to export your Pulp game to be played in a web browser, like PICO-8. If this framework will require the physical hardware it will unfortunately be relegated to a tiny niche.
HyperTalk had similar objectives: making a structured programming language as natural-language like as possible. One of the things that made HyperTalk feel more friendly, I think, was the 'it', a temporary variable that was carried line to line. It let you write things like:
ask "What is the value?"
put it into card field "display"
It's this sort of stuff that I think will make the Playdate a huge hit with a particular market. I'm not sure it's going to take off in a huge way, but it's almost already a "cult classic".
If it weren't for your comment I wouldn't have known that this site was the old Gamasutra... and I was aware of the rename. I didn't realize it was a whole rebrand... and IMO a poor one at that (I find it much less readable than the old site, however dated it looked)
It's sad that a company like Nintendo isn't addressing this market. For $20 more than the Playdate, you can pick up a Switch Lite with way more potential and capabilities. And for the millions that already own a Switch, this could be a fun thing to do with it. In fact, Panic should have figured out how to work with Nintendo and done all the same work with a little on-device runtime and maybe a Bluetooth crank that sits in the same spot as a Joycon. This sort of partnership is not unheard of - look at Niantic's work on Pokemon Go as an example.
Hardware aside, there's no lack of game design apps on the Switch.
Nintendo recently released Game Builder Garage and also have Mario Maker 2 (both are first party Nintendo games)
Nintendo is licensing its IP to mobile game devs. In their minds, the phone is already the "last-gen handheld game console". I'm excited for Fire Emblem: Heroes ;)
Don't know if related: i have made a library that wraps pygame and aims at simplifying writing of 2d games in python. This library is slightly more high level than pygame, on the other hand it is much more basic than a real game engine. See https://github.com/MoserMichael/pygamewrap
I never understand how people can play those pixel games. Don’t they hurt your eyes? And also what’s the point to create games with such poor graphic qualities? Is this kind of unique culture or something?
why would they hurt your eyes more than anything else on a screen? it's easier to build a game with simple graphics, and the mechanics of a game can still be fun regardless of graphical complexity
[+] [-] idreyn|4 years ago|reply
I learned to program using Scratch and I loved this about the language community that developed around it. For the first few years it didn't even have arrays, procedures, or text input, and people (kids!) worked around these things by encoding state using the powerful graphics tools, clever math, and brute force.
People in the forums would clamor for more powerful features, but they were rolled out slowly and carefully. Later on I had a brief internship with the Scratch team and got a sense for why. The dev team was small, but more importantly they thought very carefully about how to whittle a language feature to its essence to enable maximum creativity with minimum cognitive overhead. I really appreciated that.
Of course I also quickly developed an appreciation for Snap[0] (née BYOB) which veered off from Scratch with a more "f*ck it, have everything" philosophy towards language design :)
[0] https://snap.berkeley.edu/snap/snap.html
[+] [-] noman-land|4 years ago|reply
I hope this is a new frontier of people making open source hardware devices. You can totally craft the experience from start to finish in a way that wasn't so easy before.
[0] https://teenage.engineering/products/op-1/anniversary
[+] [-] incanus77|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stavros|4 years ago|reply
EDIT: Oh wow, 1121 EUR? I'm no longer curious :P
[+] [-] MattRix|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamcreasy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lelandfe|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danpalmer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrethegiant|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NetOpWibby|4 years ago|reply
Time to read the article.
[+] [-] dlehman|4 years ago|reply
I don't really have any game dev experience, but i've been hacking around in Love2D to try building basic games with Lua. Pulp sounds like a great way to get going, and I'm excited to try it! Love to see what a bunch of creative developers are going to come up with.
[+] [-] SamBam|4 years ago|reply
Prediction: the Pulp games won't be any fun in a browser. You'd be missing what makes the Playdate fun (the device) and the obvious understanding that there are constraints to what can be made for it, and instead you'd be playing a clunky game on a supercomputer.
I think they'd be foolish to allow the games to be played in the browser.
[+] [-] hypertele-Xii|4 years ago|reply
Seems antithetical to the project's identity of being this expensive, exclusive, social club for niche enthusiasts.
[+] [-] amelius|4 years ago|reply
You can buy Gameboy-lookalike devices in any toystore for a few bucks. I personally don't understand the rage, although I must admit that I was never a big fan of computer games to begin with.
[+] [-] zubspace|4 years ago|reply
I pre-ordered my playdate and would love to play around with the SDK now. Feels a bit unfair though, that they are hiding this tool in a private beta, even though there already seem to have quite a few games done for it. For the rest of us, we can just hope...
[+] [-] danpalmer|4 years ago|reply
I've been following Playdate closely. They have said publicly that the Playdate software isn't finished yet, and the press devices only had a couple of games, and those weren't even finished.
Reading between the lines, I think the on-device API is still in flux as the OS is finished off, and that Panic expect the games to need final touch-ups. Based on this, it would make sense that Pulp can't yet produce games that could be guaranteed to work with the final shipping device.
As Panic clearly care so much about the product, I think it's fair that they're keeping these things restricted to a group that they can give all the communication effort and attention to. Developer relations at scale is hard because it's just a ton of communication and support, and Panic obviously don't have the capacity to do that for all 10s of thousands of developers who like to have a peek.
[+] [-] mathgladiator|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aroman|4 years ago|reply
Source: I left my FAANG job in January.
[+] [-] zapt02|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afandian|4 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperTalk#Messages_and_events
HyperTalk had similar objectives: making a structured programming language as natural-language like as possible. One of the things that made HyperTalk feel more friendly, I think, was the 'it', a temporary variable that was carried line to line. It let you write things like:
[+] [-] e_proxus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bydo|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] frosted-flakes|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danpalmer|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericlewis|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrower123|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aroman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] russellbeattie|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] computerliker|4 years ago|reply
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/game-builder-garage-sw...
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/super-mario-maker-2-sw...
SmileBasic and RPG Maker are also on Switch.
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/smilebasic-4-switch/
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/rpg-maker-mv-switch/
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
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