Yet Another Pico 8 Builder

YAP8B is Pico 8 builder written in Java. I made it because other builders, frankly, sucked.

How to use

Installation

For windows users, download release yap8b.exe file. You will need Java 8 or later to run the tool. Add the tool to your path variable: https://java.com/en/download/help/path.html

Linux

Download yap8b.jar and either use java -jar yap8b.jar or create shell script and add it to path.

Building from source

Download java 8 jdk, maven and run maven package.

Modules

Init

Creates initial descriptor file. You can copy or create file manually, but this tool will create it for you. Simply run yap8b init and fill the necessary info. It will create JSON descriptor file project.p8j, such as:

$ yap8b init
Name of the project: Test
Author: Me
Version: 1.0.1
Description: 
Project file /tmp/example/project.p8j generated!

Generated descriptor file:

{
  "name": "Test",
  "author": "Me",
  "version": "1.0.1",
  "description": "",
  "main": null,
  "dependencies": {
    "__gfx__": null,
    "__gff__": null,
    "__label__": null,
    "__map__": null,
    "__sfx__": null,
    "__music__": null
  }
}

Descriptor parts

main: path to a lua file. This file gets loaded and preprocessed. Must be filled.

__gfx__, __label__: path to either .p8 file from which section is copied or a .png image file (must be 128x128px or less).

__gff__, __map__, __sfx__, __music__: path to .p8 file from which section is copied.

Build module

Invoked with yap8b build. Creates folder build and generates "name".p8 file based on descriptor.

Lua preprocessing

Lua is preprocessed with simple comment macros. Comment macro must start on start of the line.

Macros

include

Use example:

-- include some/path/to/luafile.lua

Includes that file in the result lua source code. Every include is resolved only once.