Advance Wars is an absolute dream to clone. I had that itch too, and made a full clone with story mode in PICO-8 a couple years ago.
The challenge there was that PICO-8 has infuriating arbitrary restrictions on code size to limit the developers for fun lol. To get around that, I have code that swaps serialized memory between virtual "cartridges" in order to fit everything in.
Sadly that limits the game from distribution on the official PICO-8 network "Splore", because those games must be single-cartridge only, so I have a stripped down version without a campaign that is uploaded there.
The AI was by far the funnest to implement. Getting enemy ranged units to retreat correctly when they were in range of attack was such an awesome feeling. It really led me down a rabbit hole of making games primarily so that I could code fun AI
The challenge there was that PICO-8 has infuriating arbitrary restrictions on code size to limit the developers for fun lol. To get around that, I have code that swaps serialized memory between virtual "cartridges" in order to fit everything in.
Sadly that limits the game from distribution on the official PICO-8 network "Splore", because those games must be single-cartridge only, so I have a stripped down version without a campaign that is uploaded there.
The AI was by far the funnest to implement. Getting enemy ranged units to retreat correctly when they were in range of attack was such an awesome feeling. It really led me down a rabbit hole of making games primarily so that I could code fun AI
You can play in your browser here: https://lambdanaut.itch.io/picowars