/life

My take on Conway's Game of Life on the Playdate console, so as to practice making games for this platform

Primary LanguageLuaMIT LicenseMIT

Installation (Windows):

  1. Unlock Build and Run (Simulator).ps1 file if it's locked: open properties and click unlock in the bottom of the window.

  2. If you've installed Playdate SDK to the default path (Documents folder) then just run ADD_ENV_VARIABLE.cmd to add env variables:

    • PLAYDATE_SDK_PATH to Playdate SDK
    • Adds Playdate SDK's bin folder to PATH (if it is not already added) to create pdc shortcut

    !!! If you've changed default path - edit 6th line in ADD_ENV_VARIABLE.cmd, then run it.
    set SDKPATH="YOUR CUSTOM SDK PATH HERE"

    This should be done only once, you need to restart VSCode after this.

  3. Edit your Code.exe execatable (VSCode) to run with admin rights by default. You can find this file if you input this path to your explorer: %appdata%\..\Local\Programs\Microsoft VS Code
    Open Windows PowerShell and change execution policy to RemoteSigned, so you can run closeSim.ps1 without admin rights:
    Enter Set-ExecutionPolicy -ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned -Scope CurrentUser into PowerShell then hit Y.

  4. Open template folder with VSCode, install recomended extensions (popup will show in the lower right corner): Lua, Lua Plus. Then restart VSCode.

  5. If you want to change "build and run" key (default is Ctrl+Shift+B):

    • Ctrl + K, Ctrl + S
    • Change keybind for Tasks: Run Build Task (I've changed to F5)

  6. Your can find your main.lua file inside source folder. Press your "Run Build Task" button, you should see "Template" text in playdate simulator.

  7. Feel free to delete dvd.lua and all dvd-related lines from main.lua (marked -- DEMO)

  8. Feel free to delete .vscode-linux folder.

⚠️ Don't forget to change your unique project info in source/pdxinfo: "bundleID", "name", "author", "description". Read more about pdxinfo here. It's critical to change your game bundleID, so there will be no collisions with other games, installed via sideload.

Installation (Linux):

  1. If it's not already executable, navigate to this directory and make build_and_run.sh executable by running the following command: 
    chmod +x build_and_run.sh
  2. Move/rename the default .vscode directory (for Windows) to something else, or delete it: 
    mv .vscode .vscode-windows
  3. Move/rename the Linux-specific .vscode directory to be default 
    mv .vscode-linux .vscode
  4. Add PLAYDATE_SDK_PATH to your .bashrc/.zshrc or equivalent, and source it; check it with: env | grep -i playdate
  5. Launch/relaunch VSCode - if prompted to install extensions, click Yes.
  6. If desired, change the default key sequence for Build/Run as described in the Windows instructions above

⚠️ Don't forget to change your unique project info in source/pdxinfo: "bundleID", "name", "author", "description". Read more about pdxinfo here. It's critical to change your game bundleID, so there will be no collisions with other games, installed via sideload.

Installation (Mac):

https://github.com/cadin/playdate-vscode-template