Tiny Fisher (Pico-8 Example Code)

Quick note about controls:  Pico-8 has two action buttons, called "X" and "O."  On a keyboard, "X" is the X key, and "O" is the Z key.

It's Tiny Fisher! A full Pico-8 example project intended to spook you out and help you learn about strange rendering effects.

While this game runs at a very low resolution (128x128 with only 16 colors), most of the concepts in it can be applied to modern 3D games, as well.  For example, if you're interested in 3D character animation, but you don't want to be too reliant on using pre-existing tools, then the character in this game could be useful as an example of how some of this stuff might be done from scratch.

The game is free to play in your browser (at the top of the page), but if you want to read the source code, you'll have to give me a bit of money.  The minimum price is $1, so you can figure out what you think it's worth to you.

!! ATTENTION !!

THIS IS SOURCE CODE FOR A PICO-8 PROJECT!

YOU NEED PICO-8 TO MAKE FULL USE OF THIS DOWNLOAD!

Here's where you can buy Pico-8.  You can open a .p8 file in any text editor to read the Lua code, but the Pico-8 editor is the only way to run the game locally and make builds including your changes.

Here are some of Tiny Fisher's features, which you can learn about by reading the source code:

3D character animation (with knees and elbows!)

Spriteless animated fish rendering

Water which visualizes a flow-velocity field

Fullscreen "day to night" transition filter

Realtime shadows, including soft shadows from the player

"Windy grass" rendering

Procedurally generated maps

If a few people ask me about a topic in the code, I'll try to make some video content explaining that system in detail.

Note about commercial usage:

Tiny Fisher's code can be re-used or modified for commercial purposes.  The sprites and audio assets are not included in this permission - if you want to make a mod, you have to replace the sprites, sounds, and songs with your own.  If you want to re-use parts of the code, you can copy-paste them however you want.