The Code - winnichenko/BLOB-87 GitHub Wiki

Cartridge Metadata

Metadata is simply a small block of tagged comments that provides additional information to TIC-80. It's good practice to declare metadata at the very top of your source code.

Example

-- title:  Worm
-- author: Bob Brown
-- desc:   A Clone of the classic Snake
-- script: lua

-- rest of your program goes here

Note: If your code is in an external file, dofile must be placed in the very first line, before the metadata. (dofile is deprecated as of 0.80)

The full list of metadata tag:

-- title:  game title                     -- The name of the cart.
-- author: game developer                 -- The name of the developer.
-- desc:   short description              -- Optional description of the game.
-- script: lua (or moon/wren/js/fennel)   -- Identifies the scripting language used; Lua is the default and most commonly used for TC-80 development.
-- input:  gamepad (or mouse or keyboard) -- Selects gamepad, mouse or keyboard input source. All input types are enabled by default.
-- saveid: MyAwesomeGame                  -- Allows save data to be shared within multiple games on a copy of TIC.

title and author tags

The title and author tags (as well as a cover image) are required for uploading to the official website.

desc tags

Should include a short description of your game.

script tag

You can use any of the other scripting languages that TIC-80 supports by adding one the following to the metadata:

• For Moonscript support -- script: moon tag
• For Javascript (ES5) support // script: js tag
• For Fennel support ;; script: fennel tag
• For Wren support // script: wren tag

input tag

To enable mouse input only (and disable gamepad/keyboard input) add the -- input: mouse tag.

saveid tag

It's highly recommended if using pmem to use a unique saveid. This will allow your cartridge's persistent memory to persist even if you are still continuing to edit the code. Otherwise a saveid will be generated for you based on a MD5 hash of your code.

The TIC-80 API

Please see API Reference for a full list of built-in functions or to download a quick function reference cheat sheet.

Using an External Editor

Remember, it's also easy to use an external editor to write your code.