This link discusses how many cycles you have for your game per frame at 30fps and 60fps, and specifies how many cycles different functions, variable accesses, etc take, and methods of optimisation.
Very interesting, I’ve been reading up on/reminding myself about 6502 opcodes and their cycles recently. It’s kinda cool that Pico-8 is documented to a similar level, even if it seems like those limitations seem artificial (you get a set number of cycles regardless of the speed of the host computer.)
> you get a set number of cycles regardless of the speed of the host computer
If you look at all the PICO-8 clones/inspired platforms without such a restriction, it's hard to overestimate how prescient this was. Basically all of them had raytraced 3D games in their 200x200 pixel box in week 1, which regardless of palette limitations completely kills the 8-bit vibe for me.
Also, this restriction ensures that all the newest PICO-8 games also run on the very old PCs that children might have access to, which I think was great for the health of the platform.
Very interesting, I’ve been reading up on/reminding myself about 6502 opcodes and their cycles recently. It’s kinda cool that Pico-8 is documented to a similar level, even if it seems like those limitations seem artificial (you get a set number of cycles regardless of the speed of the host computer.)