Developer Resources

SDK Resources

Specifically for the SDK!

Tutorials

• Programming Playdate YouTube video
• Getting Started with the Playdate SDK (Windows-based)
• Everything About Playdate SDK Collisions in 7 Minutes
• Compiling Lua projects on Windows
• LDtk Tips & Tricks for Playdate projects

IDE Integrations

• Nova editor extension
• Visual Studio Simulator build integration
• Visual Studio Debugging
• VS code - Windows LUA development template This template will help you with autocompletion and running your code in simulator.
• Playdate VS Code Template (Mac) Build and run projects in the Playdate simulator (on Mac) with a key shortcut.
• VS Code (Mac OS only) launch extension
• Visual Studio Code extension (Unofficial) Build and debug Playdate games
• Visual Studio Code cookiecutter template

Libraries

• AnimatedSprite: Extends Playdate's sprite capabilities.
• Playdate Aseprite Palettes: An Aseprite extension giving you palettes representing Playdate's 1-bit colour palette.
• GFXP Lib GFXP is a small library with a collection of patterns for Playdate.
• Panels Build scrolling interactive comics for the Playdate console.
• Noble Engine The Playdate SDK is probably the most user-friendly console SDK ever made, but if you're familiar with state/scene-based game engine frameworks like Unity, Flixel, Citrus, or others, you may be looking for a library that can get your game "on its feet,” extend existing APIs, offer new features, or provide more intuative ways to leverage the SDK in your game.
• Cotton If you are a relatively new developer coming from Pulp, this framework will make the jump a little easier. With most of the function of Pulp + a LDtk preconfigured, making your games will be easy!
• Roomy-Playdate A scene management library based on the popular Love library
• pdParticles A simple, free particles library for Playdate
• glitterbomb Based on the Unity particle system, an easy-to-use library for creating particle emitters. Supports animated particles and physics-based movement.
• playbit: Build cross-platform Playdate games with Lua, create build scripts, and utilize preprocessor macros!

Fonts

• June: June is a multilingual, high-resolution bitmap font with some playful curves and distinctive letterforms, inspired by portable game fonts of the 00's.
• BitFontMaker2: Collection of pixel fonts and a web-based font maker.
• Tophat: Tophat is a powerful bitmap font creation tool. It lets you import TTF/OTF fonts, gives you fine control over Unicode coverage, and makes kerning more convenient than ever with kerning previews directly visible on the main screen. Tophat even lets you copy, paste, or otherwise manipulate multiple selected glyphs at once!

Tools

• Dithering Oven: Great 1 Bit Image Dithering tool
• PlayDither: 1-bit dithering specifically for playdate
• Playdate video encoder: Converts videos to .pdv files
• Wav to PDA Converter: Converts .wav files to .pda files
• Jsfxr: Jsfxr is an online 8 bit sound maker and sfx generator. All you need to make retro sound effects with jsfxr is a web browser
• GFXP Pattern Editor v2: A simple browser tool for creating new patterns and a large library of ready-made ones. Now with the ability to create your own library.
• LDtk importer: A tool to import tilemaps made in LDtk

Pulp Resources

Tutorials

• PulpScript: A Beginner's Guide: A tutorial that goes over the basics of PulpScript. Concise and to the point.
• Make an Adventure Game for the Playdate using Pulp: How to implement health, static hazards, moving hazards, locked doors, and more.
• Making a Simple Enemy AI and Attack System: How to make a simple enemy pathfinding AI, how to make the player face the direction you move, a simple sword attack system, as well as locking a room until all enemies are defeated.

Example Projects

• Platformer: A basic project with added gravity so it handles like a platformer.
• Dynamic Path Generator: Are you just as tired as me of endlessly creating separate tiles and place them in the correct order to make a path? This project shows a single tile that just does all of that for you!

Tools

• Aseprite script: Export multi-tile animations to Pulp
• Pulp Import Script Prepares an image or QR code for importing into Pulp, including tile chunking and transforming color to black & white.
• Dithering Oven: Great 1 Bit Image Dithering tool.
• Pulp Mill A Pulp-to-Lua converter which is designed to provide significant performance gains to pulp games.
• Pulp+ A Chrome extension to extend Pulp with some extra features!
• PulpScript Syntax A Visual Studio Code extension providing syntax highlighting for PulpScript.

Assets

• 160 micro roguelike tiles: 160 1bit 8×8 tiles for RPG or roguelikes. In the package you'll find walls, enemies, items, interface elements and more.
• 8x8.me patterns: Large collection of repeating tile patterns (CC0).
• Useful 1bit sprites: Textures, patterns and various theme icons sprites. More here.
• 1800 Pulp compliant tiles: Large tileset to get you going.
• Playdate Input Icons: D-pad, A, B, Crank & power icons made by Dev_the_cord on Discord.

Fonts

• Playdate Blackletter: A spooooky font for Pulp developers.
• Neven's Free Fonts: Three free fonts for Pulp.
• Retro Decorations Fonts
• Little Cianán for Pulp, inspired by Irish manuscripts.
• twoFace Multi & Clara-T Medium for pulp by ronlent.

Tutorials

• PulpScript: A Beginner's Guide: A tutorial that goes over the basics of PulpScript. Concise and to the point.
• Make an Adventure Game for the Playdate using Pulp: How to implement health, static hazards, moving hazards, locked doors, and more.
• Making a Simple Enemy AI and Attack System: How to make a simple enemy pathfinding AI, how to make the player face the direction you move, a simple sword attack system, as well as locking a room until all enemies are defeated.

Example Projects

• Platformer: A basic project with added gravity so it handles like a platformer.
• Dynamic Path Generator: Are you just as tired as me of endlessly creating separate tiles and place them in the correct order to make a path? This project shows a single tile that just does all of that for you!

Tools

• Aseprite script: Export multi-tile animations to Pulp
• Pulp Import Script Prepares an image or QR code for importing into Pulp, including tile chunking and transforming color to black & white.
• Dithering Oven: Great 1 Bit Image Dithering tool.
• Pulp Mill A Pulp-to-Lua converter which is designed to provide significant performance gains to pulp games.
• Pulp+ A Chrome extension to extend Pulp with some extra features!
• PulpScript Syntax A Visual Studio Code extension providing syntax highlighting for PulpScript.

Assets

• 160 micro roguelike tiles: 160 1bit 8×8 tiles for RPG or roguelikes. In the package you'll find walls, enemies, items, interface elements and more.
• 8x8.me patterns: Large collection of repeating tile patterns (CC0).
• Useful 1bit sprites: Textures, patterns and various theme icons sprites. More here.
• 1800 Pulp compliant tiles: Large tileset to get you going.
• Playdate Input Icons: D-pad, A, B, Crank & power icons made by Dev_the_cord on Discord.

Fonts

• Playdate Blackletter: A spooooky font for Pulp developers.
• Neven's Free Fonts: Three free fonts for Pulp.
• Retro Decorations Fonts
• Little Cianán for Pulp, inspired by Irish manuscripts.
• twoFace Multi & Clara-T Medium for pulp by ronlent.

Art Resources

Sites

• https://jspaint.app/ - Online art program
• https://www.piskelapp.com/ - Online art program
• https://avatarmaker.com/ - Online portrait maker
• https://kaasiand.cool/tophat/ - For creating fonts for PlayDate
• https://dev.playdate.store/tools/gfxp/ - in-browser pattern editor

Various 1-bit conversion tools:

• https://kaasiand.cool/oven/
• https://www.pixelicious.xyz/
• https://potch.me/demos/playdither/
• https://29a.ch/ditherlicious/
• https://gazs.github.io/canvas-atkinson-dither/

Tutorials

• https://saint11.org/blog/pixel-art-tutorials/
• https://pixelparmesan.com/fundamentals-of-isometric-pixel-art/
• https://c6y.github.io/tilix-reference/

Programs

• BitCam - paid; a one-bit camera for iPhones
• PixelBasher - paid, a "kitbashing" program
• dotpict - free; for iPhone and Android
• OneBitDitherTool - free - PC
• Pixen - free with paid options; for Mac and iPad
  • Article on using Pixen to create Playdate graphics
• aesprite - paid - multiple platforms - the "gold standard" of pixel art programs.
  • https://twitter.com/Gogolitus/status/1634596725045198850?t=dwcjGHKH7IhUw0_LxkCQ8Q&s=19 add-on for Aseprite; dithering brushes.
  • https://noesteryo.itch.io/aseprite-isometric-guidelines add-on for Aseprite; isometric guidelines
  • https://github.com/dzuk-mutant/playdate-palette add-on for Aseprite; a playdate pallete.

Assets

A variety of assets available for use.

A lot more can be found at https://itch.io/game-assets/tag-1-bit , but here are some commonly used ones.

Fonts

• http://www.pentacom.jp/pentacom/bitfontmaker2/gallery/ - Online font-maker; has various bitmap fonts.
• https://kaasiand.cool/tophat/ - Converts font files into Playdate font format
• https://gingerbeardman.itch.io/st-din-playdate-font - Ready-to-use Playdate fonts
• https://crabaret.itch.io/8x8-fonts-for-playdate-pulp - two fonts for Pulp development

User Interface

• https://andelrodis.itch.io/1-bit-game-ui-pack
• https://minalien.itch.io/playdate-16px-input-icons
• https://kenney.nl/assets/1-bit-input-prompts-pixel-16

Tile Sets

• https://winglesspenny64.itch.io/playdate-platformer-tileset - Useful for platformers

Misc

• https://jayjay99.itch.io/1-bit-portraits - Portraits

Other Lists

• Awesome Playdate: A list of awesome resources for game development on Panic's Playdate console.