Show HN: Akedo – Retro gaming and coding platform
akedo.appThis reminds me of the phantasy consoles scene:
* https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php (paid, $15)
* https://tic80.com/ (Lua, JS, Ruby, Wren, ...., open source, free)
* https://pixelvision8.github.io/Website/ (Lua, C#, open source, free)
I have good memories of playing around with Tic80, now hat v1.0 is out, perhaps I try it again.
Lots of activity in this space recently, there are more at https://github.com/paladin-t/fantasy
This reminds me of microStudio <https://microstudio.dev/>. I used it for a game design class this past semester. All the editors made it easy for my students to jump in and create. It has really great debugging tools now, too.
Looks super-cool, would love to try it. However...
> All from your web browser. Your project is stored in the cloud, accessible from anywhere.
I don't want that. I want my code on my machine, not someone else's. And I most certainly don't want to create an account. :-(
Would you like to work completely offline? Download the microStudio standalone app for Windows, Mac, Linux and Raspberry Pi:
Ohhhhhh, thanks, much appreciated.
Great stuff! Consider having a game jam on itch.io to attract some users
I can't help but plug my own 3D version: https://turtlespaces.org
Thanks, that's a great idea!
In this highly realistic tennis game...
Its always a plus, in my book at least, when the dev has a solid sense of humor...thanks for the work and I hope it helps a youngster get into game programming.
Thanks, I spared no expense!
It's a very deep sense of humor, too, as actual 8-bit sports games were unironically marketed as "highly realistic" or similar. In fairness, those copywriters were probably referring to the simulation code, and not necessarily the graphics, being realistic for the standards ofnthe day.
This is a platform where a DALL-E like bitmap generator would be really useful. Boom... instant assets.
Maybe for placeholders...but honestly it takes very little time to be able to whip up rough pixelart sprites and animations yourself. And they'll probably be better in many ways.
But a game's quality is honestly mostly art & music & other non-automatable creativity rather than the software. I highly recommend treating art and music education as core to indie gamedev education.
This is such a fun idea, actually. Sprites in general (not just 2D 8-bit style) could be really useful for DALL-E to generate. There are a good amount of tilesets and sprite packs for sale online created by pixel artists. But having sprites and tiles generated by DALL-E could really invigorate the indie game community.
What language does it use? I can't match it with anything I know, is it something custom?
It's a language I designed myself heavily influenced by Python, Lua, and BASIC. I wanted something that was as simple as possible to get started with and could grow with the user.
One thing I'd add to the API docs is a way to create bitmap and/or tilemaps. I was able to add some assets to my library but got stuck on figuring out how to render them using the API.
According to the help page:
> Akedo uses a beginner friendly language that is similar to many professional languages but is aimed at producing readable and understandable code.
This looks like a really neat educational platform! A few questions I couldn't find answers to (although didn't do a ton of digging beyond exploring each page/section):
1. Is the language for this open source? If not, is that planned?
2. Is the language compiled or interpreted, and what targets? Is the execution environment a VM that runs in the browser similar to Scratch?
3. Is this a charity or for-profit? If the former, how will it be sustainable (i.e. donations, premium memberships, etc.)? If the latter, what are the plans for monetization?
> 1. Is the language for this open source? If not, is that planned?
It's a language I designed specifically for this platform and is not currently open source. If it proves popular I'm certainly open to it.
> 2. Is the language compiled or interpreted, and what targets? Is it the execution environment a VM that runs in the browser similar to Scratch?
It's interpreted. To improve the performance at some stage I'd like to compile it directly to JavaScript rather than run it through my intermediate layer.
> 3. Is this a charity or for-profit? If the former, how will it be sustainable (i.e. donations, premium memberships, etc.)? If the latter, what are the plans for monetization?
It's for-profit. I'm planning a freemium model so there would be additional features (when I build them!) and access to more advanced tutorials.
Great thank you! Looks like a super awesome project and one that can do a lot of good, so I wish you luck!
How'd you come up with the name? Does it stand for something?
It's actually the Japanese translation of arcade (as in shopping arcade). I wanted something short with available domain names.
The word アーケード (akedo) does exist but is not used very often, and the average Japanese person would probably be confused if you used it. Game arcades are called ゲームセンター (game center) and shopping arcades are called 商店街 (shoutengai).
Not to throw shade on your name choice though, I think it's cute and a nice short name.
The design is very "zen" ;)