I made a little script that converts a picture into a PICO-8 cartridge. Here how it works:
1. Install PHP and its GD library. Works best on Linux and OS X, but can also work on Windows.
2. Download this pic2p8.php script and run it like this:
php pic2p8.php mypic.jpg
3. Copy the output into a new file with a .p8 extension into your cartridge folder. (Type folder in the PICO-8 prompt, or for you Linux users do this:)
php pic2p8.php mypic.jpg > ~/.lexaloffle/pico-8/carts/mypic.p8
4. Now you can load the cart and run it in PICO-8 already as it have some simple code to show it.
If you're not satisfied with the result you can always try GIMP:
1. Download PICO-8.gpl and put it in GIMP's palette directory.
2. Create or resize an existing picture in 128x128 and modify it however you like.
3. Go to Image > Mode > Indexed colors > Use a custom palette > PICO-8, uncheck Remove unused colors from palette, click OK.
4. Now export the resulting picture and run it through the above script.
Now that you have a full-screen picture, you can do interesting stuff with it, play some music on it or whatever... Have fun!
Oh interesting stuff. Is that also useful to import sprites or can we already import spritesheets by default?
What does it do as DJ says? Does it override the spriteaheet? That could be very useful!
Yeah, you can always design your sprites in GIMP, then use the script to generate a new cartridge. You can't import into an existing cartridge yet, unless you open it and copy the spritesheet with a text editor.
That's pretty cool, let's hope you'll be able to edits carts for such tools! :D
A cart editor tool script would be indeed pretty interesting.
That is nice. I prefer using my own editing tools personally, such as how with 84+CSE or HP PPL games I design all my sprites in Photofiltre Studio before importing them.
I thought also to make a custom cart repository as an exercise to get my hands on Flask. It could be a cool thing to do.