Tron Style 80’s Animated Landscape on Pico-8

The 8-bit style of the Pico-8 lends itself well to the 80’s cyber genre. I’ve been throwing around some ideas for a demo or potential game. A 3d style animated landscape seemed like a good place to start.

The concept is simple enough, a series of horizontal lines generated in a FOR loop that are animated down the screen, their start time is staggered and the lines are accelerated.

The vertical lines that give the illusion of perspective are generated from two FOR loops, one for either side of the middle of the screen. One loop increments while the other decrements.

The _init statement sets up the foundation objects and variables for the animation. Notice the “start” and “offset” vars, together these control the vertical start position of the horizon. “Start” will adjust the starting spacing of the horizontal lines.

function _init()
	start = 5 -- Starting distance between horizontal lines
	offset = 55 -- Starting vertical position for lines
	lineh = {}
	lineh.moveNum = {} -- Create the line object array
	last1 = time() -- Init animation timer
	start_line_num = 0 -- Init line counter, puts a delay on the for loop
	lineCont = {} -- Array 1 of vertical lines (left side of screen)
	lineCont2 = {} -- Array 2 of vertical lines (right side)
	lineNum = 0 -- Start the vertical lines horizontal 
	lineNum2 = 0

	lineEach = 5 -- Starting position and spacing horizontal lines

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