The games menu (launcher)

The launcher is picogame’s games menu — the official, and optional, way to keep several games on one board and switch between them. Copy games onto the drive and the launcher lists them; pick one with the D-pad and play, reset to come back.

It’s optional: the quick-start packs boot into the launcher (their root code.py runs it), but a board whose code.py is a single game just runs that game — no menu. Use the launcher when you want more than one game on the same board.

Controls

• UP / DOWN — move through the list.
• A — start the highlighted game.
• RESET (the board’s reset button) — return to the launcher from a game.

How it finds games

By default the launcher scans the demos/, games/ and apps/ folders on the drive — a missing one is simply skipped. Each game is a folder with a code.py entry and its compiled .mpy:

games/
  picotris/
    code.py           # 2-line stub that imports the game
    picotris.mpy      # the compiled game
    metadata.json     # title, icon, ...  (optional)
    icon.bmp          # menu icon          (optional)

A folder with a code.py but no metadata still shows up — the launcher falls back to the folder name and a letter placeholder icon.

A custom boot code.py can scan a different set of folders — just pass them: picogame_launcher.run(roots=("mygames", "demos")).

Add your own game

1. Compile your game to .mpy (mpy-cross yourgame.py), or drop the .py in to compile on-device.
2. Make a folder in apps/ — that’s where your own games go, next to the bundled games/ and demos/ — say apps/yourgame/, with a code.py stub that imports it:

   import yourgame

3. Optional — add a metadata.json beside it so it reads nicely in the menu, plus a small icon.bmp (a 48-pixel BMP works well):

   {
     "title": "Your Game",
     "author": "You",
     "category": "arcade",
     "players": 1,
     "desc": "One line about it.",
     "icon": "icon.bmp"
   }

4. Reset the board — it appears in the menu.

Two ways to describe a game

A folder can carry a small manifest so it reads nicely in the menu. Two formats work:

• metadata.json — simple and FruitJamOS-compatible (title + icon, plus optional author, category, players, desc, entry). One game per folder — this is what the example above uses, so the same folder shows up in both menus.
• picogame.json — the richer form. Either a flat object (title, entry, icon, …) for one game, or an "apps" list to offer several games from one folder — handy for a collection or a game with variants:

  {
    "apps": [
      { "title": "Game A", "entry": "a.py", "icon": "a.bmp" },
      { "title": "Game B", "entry": "b.py", "icon": "b.bmp" }
    ]
  }

  Each entry names its own entry, title and icon (and optional author/category/players/ desc). picogame.json is read before metadata.json.