Short: PICO-8 fantasy console emulator Author: Pawel "Juen" Nowak (j@ki.je) Uploader: Pawel "Juen" Nowak (j ki je) Type: misc/emu Version: 1.0 Requires: AmigaOS 2.0+/020+, 040/060 recommended Architecture: m68k-amigaos; Description: Amico8 is a PICO-8 fantasy console emulator for Amiga computers with a 68020 or better processor. It loads and runs PICO-8 cartridges in both text (.p8) and image (.p8.png) format directly from the Amiga file system. Project status: Amico8 is ready. Roughly 1100 cartridges have been tested and they launch and play, with the AOT/JIT native compiler ON just as with it OFF. Every problem found or reported has been solved. Audio is at about 90%: all waveforms, the note effects and the music sequencer are in place, a few timbres are still being tuned. Unknown bugs may of course still be in there - report them - but this is meant to work. Features: - Runs the vast majority of PICO-8 cartridges (.p8 and .p8.png) - Full 128x128 pixel display, 2x scaled to 256x256 via Amiga copper tricks - 16-colour PICO-8 palette mapped to Amiga 12-bit hardware palette - Joystick (port 2) and keyboard input - Mouse support (port 1) for carts that use mouse API - Paula audio: all 8 PICO-8 waveforms (triangle, tilted-saw, saw, square, pulse, organ, noise, phaser) plus the buzz/noiz timbre variants, the note effects (slide, vibrato, drop, fade in/out, arpeggio) and custom instruments - Serial PCM streaming - serial(0x808) digitised audio for carts with sampled speech or music (Berzerk, Impossible Mission, Amstrad chip tunes) - AOT (Ahead-of-Time) native m68k code compiler - ON by default for a noticeably faster emulator (switch it off in the launcher, or with the NOAOT CLI option, if a particular cart misbehaves under it) - Multi-cart support: load() chains between cartridges (e.g. POOM, The Mind) - BBS cart browser: browse and download cartridges from the Lexaloffle BBS directly from the Amiga (requires AmiSSL + bsdsocket.library) - GUI launcher, with a Check Version button that asks juen.in whether a newer release is available and can install it for you: it fetches the build you are running, keeps the old one as .old, and restarts - Auto Update checkbox: does that check by itself at every start, installs what it finds and restarts into it, without asking each time Two executables are provided: Amico8 - 68020/030 version, no FPU required. Runs on any Amiga with a 68020 or better. Amico8_040 - 68040/060 version, optimised instruction scheduling. Recommended for 040/060 systems. Recommended processor: 68060. Usage: Amico8 - start with GUI! (recommended) or from CLI: Amico8 CART= Amico8 ? (show all CLI options) Controls: Joystick port 2 / cursor keys - d-pad (btn 0..3) Z / Y / C / Alt (or fire 1) - O button (btn 4) X / Ctrl (or fire 2) - X button (btn 5) Enter - open / close pause menu P - freeze (debug pause) F4 - jump to the previous cart * F5 - jump to a random cart * F6 - jump to the next cart * ESC - return to launcher * F4/F5/F6 work only when started from the GUI launcher (they step through the launcher's games-folder list). A short "now loading " splash shows which cart was picked (press ESC during it to drop back to the launcher instead). When you return to the launcher, the selection lands on the cart you were last playing - including one reached via F4/F5/F6. Limitations: - Some newer PICO-8 API calls may not be implemented - Serial PCM (digitised) audio plays on a single Paula channel, so while a cart streams it the PCM comes out of one speaker (mono), the synth timbre is close to but not bit-exact with real PICO-8 - SOME CARTS NEED THE NETWORK AND LOOK BROKEN WITHOUT IT. A cart can ask for a companion cartridge you do not have on disk, and Amico8 fetches it from the Lexaloffle BBS. Offline (or without bsdsocket.library/AmiSSL) that fetch cannot finish and the cart sits on the loading screen - it is waiting for a file, not crashing. linecraft is one: it asks for worldata.p8 before drawing anything. Connect the Amiga, or put the missing cart in the same drawer. --- Tested games: Over 1100 tested PICO-8 cartridges launch and run, with the AOT/JIT native compiler ON just as well as with it OFF. Everything found or reported has been fixed. --- Code used: Lua 5.2 - scripting engine base Copyright (C) 1994-2015 Lua.org, PUC-Rio Authors: R. Ierusalimschy, L. H. de Figueiredo, W. Celes License: MIT (http://www.lua.org/license.html) The Lua VM and standard libraries form the core of the interpreter. z8lua - PICO-8-compatible Lua fork (from the Zepto-8 project) Copyright (C) 2016-2024 Sam Hocevar License: WTFPL (http://www.wtfpl.net/) Source: https://github.com/samhocevar/zepto8 z8lua extends Lua 5.2 with PICO-8-specific syntax (short-if, compound assignment operators, integer division, fix32 number type, PICO-8 math functions). The file z8lua/lpico8lib.c is taken directly from Zepto-8. p8_compress - PICO-8 cartridge decompression Copyright (C) 2014-2022 Lexaloffle Games LLP License: MIT Decompresses PICO-8 Lua source code from both old ":c:" format and modern "pxa" compressed format. stb_image - PNG image loader Author: Sean Barrett License: MIT / Public Domain Source: https://github.com/nothings/stb Used for loading .p8.png cartridge images. FAKE-08 - reference PICO-8 implementation Author: Jonathan (jtothebell) License: MIT Source: https://github.com/jtothebell/fake-08 A HUGE thank-you here. FAKE-08's source was by far the most valuable reference in this whole project - over and over it was what let us pin down exactly how PICO-8 really behaves: API semantics, the audio synthesis model, iterator and metatable edge cases, the fill-pattern glyph values, the _update_buttons contract, music-pattern timing, and countless smaller details were all settled by reading it. Many bugs would have taken days longer (or stayed unsolved) without it. Not a single line of FAKE-08 is in the Amico8 binary - it was only consulted during development - but its clarity made this port possible. Thank you, Jonathan. --- Thanks: Kempy/Veezya, MWB113, Tytus, Paluch, tomcat666, Aladin - testing Quad, OlekW200i, Wozik, Mirq, Borsuk - moral support Jonathan (jtothebell) - FAKE-08 reference implementation --- Pawel "Juen" Nowak Contact: j@ki.je or via imp3!