Picocraft - demake of Warcraft III
I'm happy to release Picocraft, after 3 years of uneven development ! (okay, not a full time 3 years)
Picocraft is a pico-demake of Warcraft III Reign of Chaos.
The idea comes from a cool pixel art animated mockup by Brullov_art. I knew from start that it would be a long trip, but I didn't imagine sooo long !
The demake is made of 3 cartridge (96Ko) and contains :
- 4 maps
- 32x32 to 64x64 grid maps
- Human race
- 4 units - peasant, footman, rifleman and priest with each
- 6 buildings - farm, town hall, forge, barracks, arcan sanctum, scoot towers
- Skirmish mode, one CPU opponent
- Fog of war
- Human theme on start cartridge, original units sfx inspired by english voice
- More dev details on devlog
How to play ?
This cartridge is designed to be played with mouse, keyboard arrows move the map
If you're familiar with Blizzard RTS, you won't be lost !
Mouse click / click + drag to select, the right click to order
You can use action button, or left/right click on minimap
You can select up to 6 units
Your goal is to destroy all your ennemy buidings
What is missing compared to original
- There is no keyboard shortcut
- you can't units or building on a shortcut
- There is no heroes
- One order at a time
- Arrrg so much more !
This cartridge would not have been possible
- p chevalier lighting the spark
- @zep for pico8 and px9 data compression
- @freds72 for his support and pointing me cool piece of code
Art
- @Brullov_art for the idea and the cool pixels
- yes-i-do for tower sprite
- anton markelow for units sfx ideas
- glenn stafford and gori fater for blackrock&roll original and arrangement track
Code & tool from community:
- @zep px9
- @JadeLombax for helping with virtual sprite
- @TheRoboZ for pd_rotate
- @JWinslow23 for tablefy
- @thisismypassword shrinko8
- Morgan McGuire pathfinding framework and fast array insert/delete
- @NerdyTeachers for picoview#14 and extreme token saving by @MarechalBanane
Game infos
UI
Units
Peasant goal is harvesting gold, lumber, and building structures. They can also repair or help other peasant to build faster
- HP: 25
- Damage: 2
- Armor: 0
- Gold: 50
- Food: 1
Footman, the first melee warrior on the battle field
- HP: 50
- Damage: 5 - 7
- Armor: 1
- Gold: 100
- Food: 2
Rifleman, great shooter
- HP: 100
- Damage: 8 - 10
- Armor: 0
- Gold: 150
- Lumber: 20
- Food: 2
Priest, can heal or defend with his magic staff
- HP: 75
- Mana: 50
- Damage: 3
- Armor: 0
- Gold: 120
- Lumber: 5
- Food: 2
buildings
- Farm, used to increase food and allow recruiting more
- HP 300, 450 or 600
- Town hall, to recruit peasant and buy upgrades
- HP 1000,1300 or 1700
- Barracks, allow to recruit footmen or riflemen
- HP 1000,1250 or 1500
- Scoot tower, to see what's happening on the ground
- HP 250,300 or 350
- Blacksmith, unlock masonry upgrades
- HP 800,950 or 1100
- Arcan sanctum, recruit priest here
- HP 800,1050 or 1300
Upgrades
Scout tower upgrades
- can evolve to guard tower
Hall upgrades
- Improved lumber harvesting, harvest more wood at once
- Improved Masonry, unlock by blacksmith, increase building HP
- Advanced Masonry, unlock by blacksmith, increase building HP more
Blacksmith upgrades
- Iron Forged Swords, increases the base attack damage of Peasant (+1) and Footmen (+2)
- Mithril Forged Swords, increases the base attack damage of Peasant (+2) and Footmen (+4)
- Iron Plating, increases the base armor of Peasant (+1) and Footmen (+1)
- Mithril Plating, increases the base armor of Peasant (+1) and Footmen (+2)
- Black Gunpowder, increases the base ranged attack damage of Riflemen (+2) and Priest (+1)
- Imbued Gunpowder, increases the base ranged attack damage of Riflemen (+4) and Priest (+2)
- Studded Leather Armor, increases the armor of Riflemen (+1) and Priest (+1)
- Dragonhide Leather Armor, increases the armor of Riflemen (+2) and Priest (+1)
Surviving bugz (will be fix soon)
- Peasant can be block when constructing
- You can trick the CPU player, and burning cpu with impossible pathfinding
- Sometimes, mine can be locked, need to find the last peasant to reset...
Coding tricks
- PX9 compression
- Video remapping
- Extreme token fight !
- table serialization, tablify by @JWinslow23 which was way more light than mine
- Storing data everywhere it is possible !
- Patience... maybe too much
Changelog
1.2 2025-05-06
- add guard tower upgrade
- add blacksmith upgrades
- improve cpu to build blacksmith and use it
- CPU strategy and map adjustment
- fix frame level bug that allow construction on forbidden place
- fix units fight trees
- fix cancel buy error that can create ressources
1.1 2025-04-11
- fix game crash when peasant try to repair a mine or a tree
- fix game crash when a mine collapsed
- fix last peasant in a mine getting stuck (and immortal)
1.0 2025-04-10
- first release
This is super cool! Nice job. I love seeing all these RTS games come to Pico 8
This is really cool. When will a download come out for this?
This is such an incredible project for Pico-8. Congratulations on releasing it!
Thanks you !!
For the first evening, 3 bugs were spotted, 2 fixed on my computer.
I'll publish details and a patch tomorrow, in the meantime, don't repair trees or mines 😜
Amazing! I love Warcraft games and after the demake of Dune II, I have secretly hoped for a Warcraft demake. I will try to finish this too (I got obliterated by the CPU on my first try). Also this raises the question: is Dota possible?
I release a patch at noon (utc+2) that fix
- game crash when peasant try to repair a mine or a tree
- game crash when a mine collapsed
- last peasant in a mine getting stuck (and immortal)
I'm preparing an update for #picocraft
- units upgrade at the blasksmith
- scout tower upgrade to guard tower
I very short on token, I find a way to free some with extrem refacto/token fight, I don't think there will be much update after this one. I hoped to add orcs, but I looks like I should have to cut some feature to add them, plus I don't have the graphics... We'll see that.
I've just release the update with tower and blacksmith upgrade, full changelog in description
Have fun
I've just added a devlog link in description that is talking about sprite and map management in Picocraft.
Thanks for reading!
genuinely incredible! still in awe at the way my mouse immediately moved to send that peasant to chop some wood with that decades past muscle memory. this is so cool, one of the coolest things i've seen on here.
[Please log in to post a comment]