Unorganized thoughts about Playdate Pulp
I’ve been using Pulp for a few months now, and I’ve come up with some ideas that I think the whole Pulp community would appreciate (if added).
Make the screenshots taken with the Pulp Player to be in shades of gray, as if captured on the mirror app
This one is just a simple one. I find screenshots in the clasical playdate gray scale color scheme to be more appealing, and it would be great if you added a way to do that without having to go to the Playdate mirror app.
A “Wall Brush” and a “Wall Eraser”
In games with no more than 200–300 tiles, it’s easy to apply collision changes. In my game, I have around 20,000 tiles, because of the amount of imported images it uses, and it becomes very difficult to change long walls (for example, making an 80-tile wall solid or not).
That’s why I think it would be great if, in the same row as the brush tool (for placing tiles) or the bucket tool, there was a Wall Brush tool, which with one click would activate collisions on tiles (that can have collisions), and a Wall Eraser that would do the opposite.
This would help creators spend less time doing repetitive manual work, and more time drawing, composing, or scripting.
Make the Song Tool better
I have quite a lot of Pulp games on my Playdate. There is something about them that I just love, I don’t know why. Their stories vary, the graphics, while minimalistic in most cases, are readable and have that retro feeling I think is great.
The problem I have is the music: all Pulp games sound exactly the same. Some of them have great soundtracks, but because of the limitations of the system, they end up sounding identical to every other Pulp soundtrack.
So here are some ideas I think would improve sounds and music in Pulp games:
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Allow creators to make harmonies with the same instrument. Instead of each instrument being monophonic, allow chords without needing to rely on other instruments that maybe don’t have the sound they want.
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Allow more time signatures. It’s hard (at least for me) to compose a full soundtrack only in 4/4 with max subdivision of 16th notes. Let creators choose their own time signature and make the song maker adapt to it.
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I understand that Pulp’s song maker is meant to give an NES/Game Boy vibe, but having 3 music channels + a noise channel is extremely restrictive. So I thought: instead of NES vibes, wouldn’t it be great if it was more like SNES? It would still feel retro, but would allow developers to create more original, emotional soundtracks.
Allow a 400×240 resolution option instead of 200×120
While making my game, I discovered something about Pulp game development I didn’t expect: it’s very hard to make the audience understand what the things you draw actually are. It’s because tile resolution is super low, just like Pulp games in general.
So I thought: if we already have different letter sizes (small and big), wouldn’t it be great if we had the same concept for resolution?
My proposal is to add an option, probably in the “Game” menu, to increase the resolution from 200×120 to 400×240. When doing this, the tiles you have already drawn wouldn’t disappear—instead, each pixel from the 200×120 version would become a 2×2 block in the 400×240 version.
This would make Pulp games look better, more unique, and would allow developers to create games with a more artistic, expressive look, closer to SDK-made games.
And that’s it! I hope you, dear Panic crew, consider adding some of these features, because I think they would make your already great software even greater.
Allow deleting multiple tiles at a time
In my game, I have nearly 2000 times, and sometimes, an imported image doesn’t goes as espected, and I have to erase 375 tiles, one by one. That’s why I thought it would be great if you could select group of tiles and erase them, or copy them, or whatever you want.
I think this would save a lot of time for everyone trying to make a game in pulp.