Newbie Questions?

[Grubby]

Howdy all,

New to Lua/LOVE and the forums. After about a week of mucking around, I'm fairly familiar with what the Lua/LOVE combo can do (but not all of it) so I'll keep my two questions simple. I should probably mention my interest in games is mostly restricted to turn based strategy games with limited graphics, lots of math and arrays (tables), strong AI, and massive re-playability.

Just what type of game or game genre is LOVE 'NOT' suited for? Granted, the Devs, people who donated to the project and general fan-boys are bound to say it can do anything, but lets be practical. As an example, I can see problems with anything that might need to splatter a screen with a crap load of formatted text with multiple fonts. Seems LOVE is also a bit short on how it can handle persistent worlds --> Fat save game type files one might store in different places.

Another question is whether or not it would be wise to commit to this combo in its current state. I noticed some radical changes going on with each new version of LOVE. Could indeed be a pain to have to update code for a newer version with any lengthy project. Would it be better to hold off a bit until maybe 1.0 and just muck around with all of this?. I'm rather liking the Lua/Love combo. Yup. Of course, I'm still having a tough time wrapping my head around a few things.

Any advice or comments appreciated.

Thanks,

[bartbes]

Granted, the Devs, people who donated to the project and general fan-boys are bound to say it can do anything, but lets be practical.

Keep in mind most people ask for easy things, and are asking for "Can you code this for me?" more than "Is it possible?"

[kikito]

Just what type of game or game genre is LOVE 'NOT' suited for?

3D. Network.
(It can do them, just not exactly ideal).

Another question is whether or not it would be wise to commit to this combo in its current state. I noticed some radical changes going on with each new version of LOVE.

It is worth it. LÖVE updates come in glacial pace, and are relatively easy to update.

[Grubby]

@bartbes

I hate to be disrespectful, and perhaps I don't understand your reply, but aren't we [all] looking for something easier? If not, then why use the lua/love combo at all. Couldn't we all just grab an OSS version of a c/c++ compiler, tack on some helper libraries, and go from there? But wait, isn't the desire to use helper libraries also the desire to do something easier? Isn't a compiler a need to do something easier? Doesn't all of this mean we want someone else to code things for us? Let me know the last version of your assembler for machine specific code? See, even an assembler is an attempt to do something easier.


Thanks kikito,

A simple, clean, and to the point answer to my questions.

I currently have a python/pygame/sdl model of a 2d business sim I've been toying with for some time. Dare I say it, but yes, I'm finding it rather easy to push the code toward the lua/LOVE combo. The twist for me is that the game/toy can be animated on its own with almost no intervention on my part. Just a few functions shoved into draw and I'm good to go. Do-able. Splattering text is another story. Saving a persistent world is another story.

So here is another question... We've all seen it! its where someone takes code and brands it for themselves without giving credit where credit is due. It sucks to have to mention this, but LOVE does nothing to prevent this from happening. Right? Don't bother preaching about OSS either...

[Plu]

Love doesn't really prevent that, no. Not that I know of, anyway. It's relatively easy to extract the code from the .exe if you want to.

Also I think splattering text shouldn't be too hard either, have you been experiencing trouble with it? I've never heard any comments on it being a problem before and I don't see why it would be, either. You just need to load up a bunch of fonts and make a lot of calls to love.graphics.print()

[kikito]

We've all seen it! its where someone takes code and brands it for themselves without giving credit where credit is due. It sucks to have to mention this, but LOVE does nothing to prevent this from happening. Right? Don't bother preaching about OSS either...

I would counter that we have all seen it in other platforms. Moreover, we have seen it in other platforms which already have measures to counter this.

At the end, it's a personal decision, not a commercial one. The fact remains that no code encryption algorithm is perfect. Anyone with enough will, time, and google can crack any system. And you are most likely not going to make any money from it anyway. Does the possibility of someone rebrading some of your code really bother you that much?

[bartbes]

Well, that sentence looked like you've seen earlier topics with "Can I do X?", and you see the constant "yes" every time. That's because they typically don't ask for much (except a huge investment of their time), and tend to be asking for things more along the lines of "Can you do X for me?". Nobody benefits from other people wasting their time, if anything, we don't want people wasting their time with love, because it will mean people walk away hating it, which is the opposite of what we want.

[Grubby]

kikito

Does the possibility of someone rebrading some of your code really bother you that much?

Not really. It's more of an embarrassment factor then anything else. I noticed some game projects being critiqued more so on programming structure more then what the authors actually did. Never mind. I'm still not sure I need to commit to lua/love. <-- Although I'm really leaning this way. I haven't seen too may things that indicate this route is what I want to do with my project. Just shopping around I guess...

And yes, one can shop around by toying with the language/libraries as well as getting a feel for the comunity behind it. I'm still looking into a few pure 3d OSS systems. Some of these have huge communities behind them. Some of these 3d engines have actually made it into the commercial realm. Of course, there are indeed disadvantages, something lua/love seemingly handles by NOT actually handling everything. <-- Might sound silly, but that can be crucial. Since there are no or very little rules from the start, I can create my own rules.

Anyway, I hope the glacier slides and 0.9 shows up.

[Karai17]

Love is a 2D engine, so it can basically do anything you'd want if you're wanting to make a 2D game. It is not in a "stable" state, so you can expect some bugs. That being said, it is actually quite sturdy and capable.

If you're looking to make a 2D turn-based strategy, then I'd say go for it. Lua is a very flexible and capable language and the love API is pretty fantastic and simple to learn and use. There are also a tonne of libraries available on the wiki to make your life easier.