Supported Languages

TIC-80 Supports multiple scripting languages, including:

Fennel
Javascript (ES2020 as of 1.1)
Lua
Moonscript
Ruby (Ruby 2.x compatible mRuby, specifically)
Squirrel
Wren
Janet
Scheme (s7)
Python

TIC-80 also supports compiled languages via our WASM support. If your compiled language of choice can compile to Web Assembly there is a good chance you could use it to develop for TIC-80.

You need to specify the language you use by adding one the following to the metadata:

Language	Tag
For Fennel	`;; script: fennel`
For Javascript	`// script: js`
For Lua	`-- script: lua`
For Moonscript	`-- script: moon`
For Ruby	`# script: ruby`
For Squirrel	`// script: squirrel`
For Wren	`// script: wren`
For Janet	`# script: janet`
For Scheme	`;; script: scheme`
For Python	`# script: python`

Note: If no script tag is added it will be considered as a Lua cart.

Starting New Compiled from Source Project

See WASM Support.

Starting New Scripting Project

To see a demo or start a new project in your scripting language of choice just start up TIC-80 and from the console type new [lang], for example for a Wren project just type:

new wren

Type help new to print arguments for each language.

for some on-screen guidance.

Structured Edition

Structured edition is an edition mode, available only for lisp-like languages like Scheme, Janet and Fennel. It helps the user to keep the program well written by automatically balancing the parenthesis and editing code at an S-Expression level. It will be harder to delete parenthesis until the expression is emptied first, to help keep the balance. Here are some key bindings available in structured edition languages:

Key Binding	Functionality
ctl-down or alt-S	S-Expify (add parenthesis around word or s-expression)
ctl-up	Extirp from S-Expression (remove word or s-expression from enclosing s-expression)