Minicraft

Minicraft is a semi-open world sandbox game, where YOU build your own world!

Features:

A 50x50 randomly generated map
Saving system (!)
9 distinct blocks
12 different items
Background music
An example world

NOTE When the mouse is in the game screen, the game switches to ARROWS+MOUSE mode. To use ARROWS+ZX move the mouse outside the game screen.

In mouse mode, most actions that require pressing X can be activated using L🖱️, the same goes for Z and R🖱️

Fun fact: This game takes up over 99.96% of all available cartridge space (65515B of 65536B), with just 21 bytes to spare!

Controls

L🖱️ means "left mouse button" R🖱️ means "right mouse button" M🖱️ means "middle mouse button"

Menu ᐃ, ᐁ - Change selection X, L🖱️ - Select

In-game X, L🖱️ - Use selected item Z, R🖱️ - Open inventory M🖱️ - Show the name of the clicked tile

Inventory ᐊ, ᐃ, ᐁ, ᐅ - Move selection X, L🖱️ - Select item and close inventory Z, R🖱️ - Open crafting menu

ℹ️ Info: Items stack to 255

Crafting menu ᐃ, ᐁ - Change selected recipe ᐊ, ᐅ - Previous / next page X, L🖱️ - Craft Z, R🖱️ - Close menu

ℹ️ Note: In the crafting menu, there are two pages of recipes!

Map view X, Z, L🖱️, R🖱️ - Close

Help/Guide book ᐊ, ᐅ, L🖱️ - Previous/next page X, R🖱️ - Close

Cheat code menu X - Write X Z - Write Z ᐊ - Write L ᐃ - Write U ᐁ - Write D ᐅ - Write R

To save your progress Walk into the campfire, and press X (or L🖱️).

Example world

Need inspiration, or just don't feel like building? Ever wanted a peaceful farm life? Use the Example World option in the menu to visit a pre-built farm!

If that wasn't enough inspiration for you, here are some pictures of what you can build:

Fireplace
Beach Umbrella
Sofa & TV
Tractor
Pixel art / map art

And these are just some examples of what you can build

Cheat codes

Missing resources for a build? Want to create a little chaos? PressZand X at the same time to open the cheat code menu.

Cheat codes

LRLRL - Generates 15 tree patches

The generated blocks will NOT replace already existing blocks (the same goes for ZXUDR)
ZXUDR - Generates 15 sand patches
UDLR? - ???
DDU?? - ???

By the way, these are not all cheat codes - in total there are 7. (Can you find them?)

Credits

Programming, Textures, Music & the default palette - Me (TheFloatingPixel) AGB Palette - ANoob from Lospec AYY4 Palette - Polyducks from Lospec Mist GB Palette - Kerrie Lake from Lospec

Technical stuff

Randomness

The wasm4 console doesn't support automatically seeding randomness, so every frame the seed is set to the frame count since the start of the game. Theoretically this is not very random - practically it's random enough.

The function used to generate random numbers is:

// Totally not copied from stackoverflow
function randRange(min: i32, max: i32): i32 {
    min = Math.ceil(min) as i32;
    max = Math.floor(max) as i32;
    return Math.floor(Math.random() * (max - min + 1)) as i32 + min;
}

Map generation

Map generation:

Generating 200 sand patches
1. Pick random position (0-49), (0-49)
2. Generate tree patch at position
3. Repeat 200 times
Generating 100 tree patches
1. Pick random position (0-49), (0-49)
2. Generate sand patch at position
3. Repeat 100 times
Generating 70 bushes
1. Pick random position (0-49), (0-49)
2. Set bush at position
3. Repeat 70 times

Generating a patch of something The center block of the patch is set to the material, the neighboring blocks have a 1 in 3 chance of also being set to the material

	NEIGHBOR
NEIGHBOR	CENTER	NEIGHBOR
	NEIGHBOR

Tile generation chances:

	1 in 3
1 in 3	Always	1 in 3
	1 in 3

Saving

Honestly, saving the game was the most interesting (and time-consuming) part of this project. Here is some info on how it is done:

The map is only 50x50 to fit into 1024 bytes, with 3 bits per tile. But 3 bits only fit 8 different tiles, so how did I fit 9? Well, the campfire is not saved inside of those three bits. Since there only can be one campfire on a map (the one that spawns when creating a new world), the position of the campfire can be saved separately from the map data, thus allowing for 9 tiles.

The save data format is:

Name	Length	Notes
Version	1 byte	always 1
Map data	938 bytes	3 bytes for every tile, starting from the top left corner (see the table below)
Inventory	8 bytes	1 byte for every item, except for the pickaxe, map, campfire and book guide
Player X	1 byte	0 - 49 range
Player Y	1 byte	0 - 49 range
Campfire X	1 byte	0 - 49 range
Campfire Y	1 byte	0 - 49 range

You may notice that the inventory in the save is only 8 bytes long, not 16 as you may expect. That is because the pickaxe, map and book guide simply never exit the players inventory, and the campfire must be placed to save the game, thus not being in the players inventory at the moment of saving.

Map tiles: