What's new

picogame moves in small helper-lib releases (circup update gets you the newest) and in firmware builds (see Supported hardware). This page does not list every release — it summarises what mattered in each period, newest first, and keeps the changes that need action from you in one place.

Breaking changes at a glance

Newest first. Everything else on this page is additive.

• 0.3.0 (2026-09-06) — the helper libs ship as one set: picogame_script needs the picogame_ui from the same release (no compatibility shim). Update the whole bundle, not single files. Older *.scene.json / project.json files still load; tools/scene_build.py migrate rewrites them as game.json.
• 0.2.1 (2026-08-31) — picogame_pool: the pool owns its in-use bit, so sprite.visible only means “draw this”. Code that hid a pooled sprite to free its slot must release() it.
• Firmware 2026-08-23 + libs 0.1.36 — Tilemap.tile(x, y[, value]) split into get_tile(x, y) and set_tile(x, y, value). Update firmware and libs together.
• 0.1.32 (2026-08-17) — picogame_rand became an alloc-free 30-bit Lehmer generator; the same seed now produces a different sequence than before.
• 0.1.30 (2026-08-14) — picogame_ray renders natively and needs a firmware with Canvas.vspans. Older firmware: stay on 0.1.29.
• Firmware 2026-08-27 (upstream freeze) — module-level pg.render() takes its layer list as layers (Display.render() keeps sprites); StripDraw.invalidate() with a partial rectangle raises ValueError; Scene’s strip buffers default to None (framebuffer boards no longer pass two explicit Nones).

2026-09-01 → 09-06 · libs 0.2.2 → 0.3.0

One game.json per game, and stories in Python. The editor now saves a single game.json (every level, the assets table, sounds, zones) plus device-ready .pal8 art and a story.py; on the device picogame_scene.Game(pg, "game.json") streams it one level at a time and bakes at boot — no conversion step, no per-level .mpy. Story scripts run through the picogame_story interpreter with the d.* contract (d.say, d.goto, d.view). tools/scene_build.py check | art | migrate validates, converts art and upgrades old files.

• Libs — 0.2.5 is a per-frame cost pass with the API unchanged: Buttons.poll() is ~3× cheaper, Pool.count()/spawn() are O(1), View caches tile property tables, Fade, Camera and mode-7 skip idle work, synth waveform tables build on first use (touch them at startup, not mid-game). Teardown for launcher-style reloads: Buttons.deinit(), Synth.deinit(), SceneBox.lift(). Small UI additions: text_width()/centred text, HudLabel.color, SceneMenu.set_items(), SceneLabel.x/.y move the label, fx.Flash, fx.Camera takes the HUD band.
• Firmware — a Scene/pg.render() given anything but a bus display hard-faulted on RP2350 (Fruit Jam went dark); it is a TypeError now (upstream #11306). StripDraw and Triangles dirty rectangles are screen-space again (a scrolled scene left ghosts). ESP32-S3: pg.project() uses the Xtensa FPU inline (float is now the fast path).
• Editor & playground — PNG, .pal8 and story.py opened on their own attach to the open game; the playground runs a whole game folder, drops the legacy in-browser baker and is refrozen with the 0.3.0 libs.
• Simulator — --seed, --tap, --strict-dirty, a reserved-band warning, an honest --profile leak verdict, and the public surface is checked against the firmware’s signatures, not just names.
• Docs & skill — a truth audit corrected nine statements about changed behaviour and the .mpy shadowing explanation (it is sys.path order, not the extension); the game-design skill gained a narrative/dialogue playbook and measured audio costs.

2026-08-24 → 08-31 · libs 0.2.0 → 0.2.1

The engine is in CircuitPython. The picogame module was merged into adafruit/circuitpython on 2026-08-27 (#11199); it ships in a future CircuitPython release, and MakerClass builds carry it until then. The docs prose moved into the public picogame repo — pull requests welcome.

• Libs — 0.2.0: picogame_scenebake / picogame_scene.load_json bake a level’s JSON on the device; tile_has() for tile flags; the README indexes every module. 0.2.1: picogame_script — story scripts as generators driven by a Director (retarget() on a map change); View.set_tile_prop() for runtime tile flags; picogame_road; Raycaster.set_cell() for worlds that change; fx.Shake(None) for strip-rendered games; seq.Script for self-playing demos; shapes.masks() and gap=.
• Editor & playground — Story panel (CodeMirror) and effects edited in modal forms with visual object pickers; whole-project Try in playground handoff; exports named by purpose with ASCII maps as the default; custom tile flags; shift+wheel scrolls horizontally. The playground stages any helper lib that drifted since the last freeze on every Run, and has a user-picked integer display scale (1–4×).
• Simulator — a verification run is fast and its leak report honest; the racing road is implemented; Tilemap drawing is fuzzed against an unculled reference; frame counts are taken at the game’s frame boundary.
• Games & docs — the platformer demo everyone copies was fixed and rewritten without the traps; the shipped games practice what the playbook preaches; two CI docs checks that reported green regardless of findings were fixed.

2026-08-17 → 08-23 · libs 0.1.32 → 0.1.36

Typing, one display source, and the Tilemap split.

• Libs — picogame-stubs: type stubs for the native module (a wheel on every release) so VS Code / Pylance completes pg.*. picogame_game.screen() / display() find the board’s display anywhere (supervisor.runtime.display first) — stop reading board.DISPLAY in games. picogame_debug is optional everywhere. picogame_i2cpad really recovers a stuck bus and accepts a bus name in PICOGAME_I2C. Options menus rebuild their rows at runtime. FAST_DISPLAY_SUPPORTED feature detection.
• Firmware — universal builds with ROMFS built in (the separate -romfs downloads are gone); rasterizer and scaled-blit fast paths; Display and Framebuffer always registered.
• Editor — Tiled import, the asset converter, autosave, multi-select, runner templates; save into a project folder, export levels as ASCII maps, open an exported scene back, and a notice when someone else wrote the file.
• Games & tools — Corona (horde survivor) and Pictor (a PicoLibSDK port) ship; Train and PicoWing get title splashes; tools/p8music.py bakes PICO-8 tracker music; the level editor and asset converter are standalone apps in the public repo.
• Docs — half-resolution art with power-of-two upscale; the real tilemap encodings (grid / rows+legend) in the scene format; scripted input timelines in the simulator.

2026-08-03 → 08-16 · libs 0.1.21 → 0.1.31

Native pseudo-3D, I2C pads, tracker music, Tiled.

• Libs — picogame_ray renders fully natively (the caster emits merged runs, Canvas.vspans paints them — about 8× faster than the Python-per-strip version on RP2040, flat across viewing angles). picogame_i2cpad: a generic I2C gamepad driver with presets and declarative recipes (qwstpad and friends), bus recovery after a soft reload. picogame_music: a PICO-8 tracker player on synthio (4 channels ≈ 3 ms/frame on RP2040). picogame_iso: isometric projection with a batch block builder. The scene format carries tile orientations (flips/rotations), sprite angles and zone/point data — what tools/tiled2scene.py and the editor export.
• Firmware — the 3D primitives wave: pg.project(), Canvas.fill_triangles() with strip-replay offsets, the pg.Triangles layer, pg.vblank(), and an experimental pg.core1 fork-join on RP2.
• Docs — the engine-only page (the C module without helpers), the native raycaster pipeline, showcase GIFs for the three 3D techniques.

2026-07-27 → 08-02 · libs 0.1.17 → 0.1.20

Two players, a games menu, mode-7 and raycasting.

• Libs — local multiplayer: Buttons(sources=[...]) per player and find_pads(); open_framebuffer() sets the DVI resolution from code on Fruit Jam; picogame_launcher — the games menu with FruitJamOS-compatible metadata.json; menu helpers, wrap(), zero-alloc compose_into(), polygon sub-region fills. picogame_mode7 and picogame_ray arrive (perspective floor camera, raycaster, billboard sprites) on top of the native pg.raycast primitive.
• Docs & site — homepage rewritten around benefits; launcher, quickstart and performance pages; the pseudo-3D helper page; llms.txt and a downloadable agent skill for AI coding assistants; the picogame-game-design skill published in the public repo; share links compress the code into the URL.
• Games & sim — FruitJamOS-compatible metadata and icons for every game; two-player input in the simulator.

2026-07-13 → 07-26 · libs 0.1.12 → 0.1.16

Fruit Jam. USB HID gamepads (picogame_usbpad) and keyboards (picogame_usbkbd) as button sources, framebuffer HUD and immediate rendering, I2S audio with a volume setting, 8-bit (RGB332) framebuffer displays, and PICOGAME_DEBUG diagnostics that unmask silent failures.

• Libs — ExtraFont: fallback glyphs from small BDF subsets; keyboard-matrix buttons, panel variant and backlight from settings.toml; the font glyph cache went flat (an RP2040 out-of-memory fix).
• Games — a loop-in-function performance pass over 16 titles; the tutorials adopt the State + main() loop shape.
• Site — every gallery game plays in the browser with the real SFX clips; showcase GIFs from a simulator capture harness; the device-download flow; text-UI widget screenshots; the picogui toolkit in the playground.

2026-06-25 → 07-12 · libs 0.1.0 → 0.1.11 — first public releases

The helper libs became a circup-installable bundle (0.1.0, CI-built .py + .mpy), the public repo opened under MIT (tools, simulator, examples, tutorials, games) and the docs site went live with the playground and the level editor.

• Libs — synth.Drone for engine/siren sounds; built-in button profiles for PicoSystem, uGame22, uGame S3 and Thumby Color; audio pin and panel invert read from settings.toml for custom boards; an alloc-free frame loop (Clock/FixedStep, Shake, UI); picogame_anim animates a list of bitmaps; picogame_arena mark/release lifetimes; picogame_cutscene story scenes; picogame_debug RAM watermarks; on-device sound with picogame_synth and the signature SFX kit picogame_sfx.
• Playground — runs the WASM build of the real C engine (no Python engine variant) with editor handoff; native RGB565 in the browser framebuffer.
• Games — Train, PicoRacer, Picatro (a poker deckbuilder), Bang! Bang! (artillery duel); every game size-independent.
• Tools & docs — the custom-board bring-up kit; the ROMFS asset pipeline (png2picogame --split, build_romfs.py); the desktop simulator guide; a doc API lint and an EN/CZ structure check in the build.

Before the releases (2025-08 → 2026-06)

Dates before June 2026 are approximate — the workspace was not under git yet.

• 2026-05/06 — API freeze (naming conventions, tick/poll/is_*), collision moves into the C engine (Sprite.overlaps/near) and picogame_collide retires; NVM save and an options menu; the ESP32-S3 board; the repo split (engine staging, libs bundle, public distro, docs) and the first tutorials — Bounce, Starship, Quest.
• 2026-01/02 — the declarative scene format (JSON → baked .mpy) and loader, the web level editor, the WASM playground, RP2350 boards, more games.
• 2025-11/12 — per-sprite scale/rotate/transpose/flip and the flash/tint/dither/shadow blit effects, Particles, StripDraw (0-RAM full-frame effects), the desktop simulator, the first picogame_* helper suite and Canvas.text with no glyph cache.
• 2025-09/10 — picogame becomes a module of its own: Sprite + Bitmap, a retained Scene with dirty-rect strip rendering, the async-DMA display path on RP2040, then Tilemap with a moving camera and Canvas.
• 2025-08 — the seed: the PicoPad’s stage/ugame libraries cap sprites at one 16×16 tile; a native blitter for arbitrary-size sprites is dropped in behind that API.