Experience

[mikulka]

So what is everyone's experience with game development, Lua (and other languages), ...


I have made some very simple games (tic-tac-toe, mahjong solitaire, ...).
I once made a presentation/review about Lua, but haven't written anything in this language before.
I'm most experienced with Java and C#.

[mike]

What the hell is this? LiveJournal?

No no, I am just kidding (as always). I started learning Java at school and made some simple text-games there (remember the Chicken Adventure, zig?). Then I tried experimenting with some graphical stuff ("Amish Battle Monkey Raper 2: War Dildo") and even JOGL ("Digital Fist Project"). Moved over to C++ when I entered the university and made some simple games (only one ever completed was "Line Design Test") and was then recruited to make LÖVE with rude.

Had never heard of Lua until it was to be our scripting language.

[tido]

Apart from a very basic guess the number game in C++ back in my younger days, I've only done some RoboCode bot-programming in Java and some very rudimentary OpenGL stuff in C++. Learned Java later during high schoo as part of a computer science class, an ordeal that has caused much grief and mental illness ever since.

Voluntarily joined LÖVE before 0.1 release, but not early enough to be part of the core team. Except for writing a very specific tool for rude and mike, I'm spending most of my days making sure LÖVE compiles under Linux with no warnings. Haven't written a single LUA line in my life... so far.

[Sardtok]

Oh yeah, I remember the Chicken Text Adventure, that's when I explained basic OO to you, and made that ridiculously bad text adventure myself, which had rooms which were linked up in different directions and stuff, and objects you could pick up, and you could look at objects and surroundings.
Do you still have your Text Adventure, cause I can't quite remember the story, but it was kind of funny.

Anyway,
I only ever finished two java games, I guess the year before I started high school, or the year I started high school, I don't know.
I really should finish StarcruiserClassic though, as with all the new features (kick ass OpenGL graphics (that is, explosions are kick-ass, the rest suck just suck balls cause I'm drawing it), gamepad/joystick support, music and high quality sound effects (I guess I'll have to head over to a friend of mine who has studio quality microphones and shit and re-record all those weird sounds I make), it would be a kick ass game.
C/C++ I've only done rudimentary stuff, like helped people get linux games to work on windows (just needed to remove unsupported C++ code (C++ version something's features are not implemented on windows, but are on linux) and include some OS specific headers, and a couple of other things to get OpenGL to work), helped people do stuff that's not C/C++ specific and coded a few basic things like linked lists, HelloWorld and so on.
I'm thinking of doing some Nintendo DS coding in C/C++ though. I'm just not sure whether I should build structs with linked lists, or use C++ OO to do such things. I'm going to ask on some NDS dev specific forums though, whether it's a good idea or not to use OO.

[Merkoth]

Well, I'm a junior game developer, having worked recently on a NDS project using C and some little Lua scripts. Right now I'm working in a very different project targeted at PC/Mac, mostly written in Lua (with a fancy 3d engine written in C++ behind). In fact, I decided to play with LÖVE because it was a fun way to get some practice with Lua n_n
I have a little personal project (poorly) written in C++, but it's currently on hold because I got bored of it.

I've written code in a myriad of languages, but I'm not really an expert in any of them.

@Sardtok: In general terms, there's no problem using OOP with the NDS, as far as you stay away from heavy libraries and extreme code abstraction. Unfortunately, I don't have much experience using unofficial tools like devkitpro and palib so YMMV.

[rude]

... and was then recruited to make LÖVE with rude.

Damn straight.

I've been creating games as a hobby for a while, Java and Flash in the olden days, until I learned to harness the power of C/C++. Of course, all of the games turned out complete shit. Not that they were ever meant to be something else. (eg. Hitler Quest II)

I believe it was me and fleg who were brain storming for a good name back a few years ago, when we eventually suggested LOVE (no umlaut). When the name (to our shock and awe) actually wasn't taken on SourceForge, it was done. Mike was recruited to make LÖVE from the very beginning, I believe. Just 100 remakes later, here we are.

I'm currently working on three game projects now; One Every Extend Extra inspired puzzle-action-music-explosion thing (LÖVE), one top-down shooter (LÖVE) and one epic space game of intergalactic ... transportation (XNA/School). The two former are designed by an actual game designer (not me), which hopefully will result in a breath of fresh air in my otherwise miserable game reportoire. I'll post some screens. Eventually.

[ivan]

I guess I will post a little about myself too. Actually I have a degree in art, here's some of my stuff: 1 2 3 4 5
Got into C++ while I was in high school almost 10 years ago and started making little games. This Mario ripoff was the most advanced prototype that I made at the time. It uses DX 7 and even had a little 'level editor' although the code in it is atrocious.
During college I started learning compiler theory and learned how to be a 'proper software developer'.
Right now, I'm working on an abstract 2D exploration shooter using AGen. Here's a screenshot:

I might post a prototype of it later

[rude]

Nice ... game creation communities desperately need more real artists. Programmer's art makes my eyes bleed.

Ok, I'm curious: what is the significance of the circles in the game? Are they bad zones? I assume the small white-ish polygonal shape is the player avatar?

[ivan]

Nice ... game creation communities desperately need more real artists. Programmer's art makes my eyes bleed.

Hey, thanks rude.
Hand drawn art takes a lot of time to produce (especially animation and stuff).
That's why I decided to use vector graphics for this game.

Ok, I'm curious: what is the significance of the circles in the game?

I wanted to make a game where you have to change your style of playing dramatically, so that you can't just blast your way through the level.
The goal in this prototype is to sneak your way to the big star in the middle (using stealth) and destroy it, at which point it starts exploding (and all the enemies freak out) and you have to franticly find your way out.
Right now, it still doesn't convey the idea very well... but yeah I'll show you a working demo later.

Are they bad zones? I assume the small white-ish polygonal shape is the player avatar?

Everything in there is actually interactable with pseudo physics and stuff.
It was kind of tricky to seperate the collision detection (which occurs in the engine) from the collision resolution (in Lua).
By the way, do you plan to add collision detection in Love? If so, I'm curious as to what kind of interface you would use.

[rude]

Okay, not much like Agen Alpha Build 2008.02.19, then. (It uses similar graphics, so I thought they might be related).

As for collision detection ... my plan was to create a wrapper for Chipmunk 2D. I was going to create a thread for disussing the actual Lua interface, but haven't gotten around to it.

love_chipmunk is actually present in LOVE 0.2.1, but there aren't really any features yet

Here's a pre-pre-pre-[etc]-preview. You can move one of the hearts with the arrow keys. I also see that I didn't include "dt" when adding impulses to the movable object, which means that the impulse will be dependent on your FPS .