Petrichor 64 - Interpreted Game System
A downloadable Engine for Windows, macOS, and Linux
Why is pixel art so prominate in indie games? Because it's faster to get your idea out and prototyped into a proof of concept, or a beautiful fully fledged game ready to sell. But why do we have to settle for 2D, clever 3D hacks from from a 2D engine, or a bloated multi-gigabyte game engine just to get our simple idea out with a little more flair then a single dimension can offer us?
Is there another way?
Scattered across a dozen floppy disks from my late Uncle Bartholomew's garage we've unearthed the remains of a console that never was. Adapting it to modern computer systems and programming languages, we've managed to bring it back from the dead. The Petrichor 64 Interpreted Game System, an all in one software suite and development kit to provide a budding or experimental game developer everything they need to turn their idea into an interactive experience!
Featuring features such as the following features
- Lua scripting
- Automatic directory based asset loading
- Configure asset properties via lua, aseprite exported json, or even special file-naming paradigms for lightning fast workflow. Just name a 32x32 image "example.16.png" and you have 4 images (example0, example1, etc) to work with!
- Easily "pack" your scripts and assets into an image file that contains your game data. Distribute this image as a game cartridge that can be opened, or clicked and dragged to run from another instance of Petrichor 64, or rename to auto.game.png to load it automatically on boot.
- Simple perspective or
orthogonalcamera control via commands - Easy command line control of billboarded sprites or gltf models in 3D space
- 3D Tiling system allows for any provided gltf model to be statically inserted into the world with efficient chunking along an aligned 3D coordinate system
- No 3D models? No problem! Provide the tile command with the name of an image in your asset directory. It automatically applies it as a cube! Send 6 image names into the model command and customize a cube even further! You can even build a model by auto-texturerd quads, or inline vectors and uvs!
- Special CRT and newer monitor emulation showcase your game just as it would have appeared had [REDACTED] released the console back in 1998. Control the resolution, curvature, and even cathode error correction via commands. Or just apply modernize=true to view as a boring old flat screen. ( Modernize is on by default )
- Full keyboard, mouse (with buttons 1-5), and game controller support
- Tested and working natively on Windows, MacOS,
Linux. Yes that includes Steam Deck.(Coming Soon) - Compact file size
For a full list of commands and getting started, wiki is in the works, type `help` in engine for a list of commands, or create a new project with `new project_name` to generate a codex
Coming Soon
Due to terrible preservation process, and the fact it was on floppy disks, the restoration of this software and emulated hardware will take quite some time for the current developer count of: 1, to complete
- Orthogonal camera, and more granular control of FoV
- Code editor
- In-editor simple model editor
- In-editor sound editor ( See https://makeavoy.itch.io/sound-maker for progress)
- In-editor tile and chunk previewer
- Rigged model animation support
- Very basic P2P multiplayer support
- Incremental performance improvements
Coming Later
- Anti-cheat measures
- Bundling game cartridges into an single, sign-able executable/app for easier distribution on store pages
- Web browser support
- Real time lighting????
- More robust multiplayer support
Examples
https://github.com/Auxnon/petrichor-games
Licensing
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Install instructions
- Windows Upon unzipping and running the executable file, a blue warning window will open, click on `More Info` and `Run Anyway`. My name, Nick McAvoy, will appear as the publisher.
- MacOS Opening the dmg you can drag the app into Applications or wherever is handy. You will have to right click it and select Open the first time you run it. MacOS gatekeeper will display an additional warning you can safely disregard.
- Linux: depending on your distro you may need to set the appimage as executable, or just use the `chmod +x` command
Software is digitally signed with Sectigo validated OV certification as an indepedent publisher. This does not mean Windows or MacOS trust it yet, unfortunately, despite it being a valid code authority.
Development log
- V 0.4.0May 03, 2023
- Version 0.3.0Feb 25, 2023
- V 0.2.4Jan 31, 2023
- V 0.2.3Jan 29, 2023
- V 0.2.2Jan 28, 2023
Comments
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looks good but just tried on both win 10 and Ubuntu 22.04 and neither would work, Windows just flashes up and disappears, linux does nothing. Did follow instructions for both..
Hi there! Appreciate the feedback, actually had to develop a way to troubleshoot or I would have answered sooner, ha! Big 0.4.0 update just dropped, may have fixed things. Worse case it now has an error popup window if it fails so at least I have an idea what broke for you. On ubuntu you can also run on command line and it should output there as well. Sounds like maybe an incompatible graphics backend? I’m working on making that something that can be modified
Hi, Thanks for updating, now runs on Windows without issue and you were right the linux box had a gpu deficiency. Trying it now in Windows...
I'm on a potato-Mac 10.14.6 with Intel Core i5 and is says the system is to old.
It looks like I had included the incorrect intel binary and that was also an apple silicon version. If you’re able to try again Im curious if it works! There shouldn’t be a reason my dependencies aren’t supported on Mojave but I could be wrong
still can't open it.
and besides the german the error message is a bit weird since it doesn't name the system correctly:
Apparently it’s a toolchain bug fixed in nightly but not in stable? I could build the engine on nightly but it’s hard to say if that would cause new problems 🤔 I give it a shot 🤷♂️
I didn’t think that it would corrupt German OS versioning though? Hopefully it’s tied to the same bug
This looks neat, got me inspired musically, that's for sure! Unable to open on my Mac using the instructions above - have also opened the file internally, but only get a Terminal.
Hi! Thanks for trying it! Out of curious are you on arm based mac or intel? I thought I compiled to universal but I may have not. I've tested on my m1 mac so far. There's a performance update I'm testing on mac that could also be the issue, should be out tonight or tomorrow.
Intel, unfortunately. It's still running very strong. Thank you for checking!
I’ve built it for Intel Macs as well with the newest version, I’d appreciate it if you can confirm it’s working!
Still the same results, tried not only using the 'control' key paired with a right-click, but option and command as well. Oh well.
As it turns out my bundler was creating a separate directory for the the Intel targeted build instead of putting it in the release folder. Ugh. Anyway the correct binary should be included and rosetta says it’s Intel this time