PRACTICE 2018: Joseph White

I agree that most of the routine software work feels like, umm, filling forms? The way I've made peace with it is to accept that the work that pays the bills is going to be boring. After considering ourselves to be special as software developers for many years, maybe we accept that it is not so special after all, like flipping burgers. Two ways to out from the existential dread: one startup on a problem statement that feels exciting to you, so that you get to pick your tools, processes and what not. But this is not a realistic/affordable option for most people. Also, if your startup achieves even a moderate level of success, you'll be back to solving boring problems. The other is to find a pockets of software development outside work, where you can still solve interesting problems, like developing small games. Joseph White, who created the famed programmable fantasy game console Pico-8 alludes to this (▶ this video) ! It was an explicit goal to build a tool to solve cute, interesting problems because routine software development feels like glueing things together. The whole youtube talk linked above is worth watching. But the trick here is to forgo commercial motivations. People make fun, cute little games on Pico 8, distribute them as cartridges. Occasionally, there's a hit like Celeste. But otherwise its a small community of people solving problems and building things just for fun.

I'm a huge Pico-8 fan and suggest that anyone that is interested in Pico-8 watch Joseph White's (the creator) Practice (NYU game designer conference) talk about the design philosophy of Pico-8. ▶ this video The TLDW of the talk is that he explicitly tried to built a "cozy" game development environment with enough constraints in place to encourage creativity without the stress of starting from a completely blank canvas. At the end Scott Hanselman has a footnote about building or buying a physical Pico-8 console. One thing that is missing is most Pico-8 consoles focus on the play aspect of Pico-8, not the creation aspect of Pico-8 which is just as important to me if not more so. I own a PocketCHIP and the device is a decent handheld computer, but there are many aspects of it that make it painful to use, not due to the form factor but due to the quality of various components. The keyboard is bad although there are a variety of solutions, including 3D printed covers (link) or rubber feet (link). The quality of the screen and touch is also not great, so it was hard for me to draw pixel art on the device. I'd like to build a custom handheld computer primarily for Pico-8 development built around this display link probably using a Raspberry Pi Zero. One of my issues with Pocketchip was that the entire system felt kind of slow\high latency and more compute might be one of the only fixes for that, so rpi zero might not cut it. I'd probably have to print my own case and I still haven't found a great keyboard solution. The best option I've seen is Teensy Thumb keyboard (link), but I might go with a standard bluetooth thumb keyboard. If anyone on HN has built a handheld computer or has good resources I'd love to hear about it. My goal is to get something that feels like a Nintendo handheld (Switch, DS, GB) with good feeling physical thumb keyboard and can also be used to draw pixel art.

All of these are explicit design choices, for example a fixed palette is important to give games a "Pico-8" look and also reduce decisions regarding color choice. I suggest you watch Joseph White's practice talk (▶ this video) if you're curious about design decisions that guided Pico-8. Multiple resolutions would absolutely break the "Fantasy console" feel of Pico-8, even though I understand why programmers universally hate that. To be fair a lot of people do code editing outside of the Pico-8 editor. #4 is an interesting point. The trick here is that different parents have different ideas of what is and isn't appropriate, and of course different kids will have different responses. It seems like the answer is to maybe have a version of Pico-8 that removes splore and expands the demo carts with some universally safe, popular titles. TIC-80 is cool btw and might be a better learning environment for kids. I don't like it (or any of the other fantasy console\pico-8 clones) quite as much as Pico-8 because they remove constraints, making them feel more like generic game editors and less like imaginary retro computers.