PICO-8 Android v1.6.6
Highlights
Three long-running input bugs squashed, one new user-requested option, and a
menu that finally saves your changes without needing to press Save.
Fixes
Physical controls stop reacting after Android backgrounds the app (Android 10)
Reported on devices running Android 10, where sending the app to the
background and bringing it back would leave the on-screen D-pad and buttons
visually responsive but with no effect in-game. Root cause: Android was
silently invalidating our internal write descriptor to PICO-8 while reporting
writes as successful — so every button press went into a black hole.
The app now confirms every input packet with PICO-8 via a lightweight
heartbeat and, on the first sign of trouble, transparently rebuilds the
connection and re-plays the missed presses. From the user's side: the
symptom is gone.
Every button press registered as both ❎ and 🅾️ on Retroid / AYN Thor
Reported on handhelds that let you toggle the controller layout in firmware
(Retro / Xbox / Off). After such a toggle, every face button would fire
BOTH PICO-8 primary and secondary buttons at once, breaking most games. The
only workaround was to force-close the app.
Thanks to finally being able to test on real hardware (Retroid) the fix was
easier to find. Please provide some feedback if it still has issues for your
device.
Turns out PICO-8 inside the app's chroot was silently reading the controller
directly, in parallel to our own controller pipeline — and when the
firmware-installed mapping disagreed with our mapping, both fired on
different PICO-8 buttons. We now hide the physical controller from PICO-8
so all controller input flows through a single, predictable path.
Toggling the Retro/Xbox firmware controller layout no longer requires a restart
Because the previous fix eliminates the parallel input path, changing the
handheld's controller mode is fine — buttons keep working as expected.
New
"Start with Splore" toggle
New setting under Tools (default: on = current behavior). Turn it off
and PICO-8 boots directly to its command prompt (>) instead of the Splore
cart browser. Handy for advanced users who want to type run, load, or
their own commands. Cart launches from the app's own browser and favourites
are unaffected either way.
UX
The "Save Settings" button is gone
Every option in the settings menu now writes to disk instantly the moment
you change it. No more forgetting to press Save and losing your changes on
next launch. Layout customisations (drag/scale of on-screen controls) are
still flushed automatically when you close the panel or the app goes to
background — same as before.
Full Changelog: 1.6.4...1.6.6