Hi, I'm Zachary!

[zachwlewis]

After lurking the forums for a few days and creating a game as my first ever program with Lua and Love, I decided to introduce myself properly (i.e., not a series of misshapen sentences written at butt o'clock).

My name is Zachary, and during the day, I'm a professional game developer. I work mainly with Adobe Flash doing UI work; however, I always find myself picking through some UnrealScript when things don't go exactly as planned. During the night, I'm an aspiring indie developer (currently working with a co-located team of misfits on an XBOX 360 and PC title called Monolith).

I stumbled upon Love after reading through a debate on the TIGSource forums about what was better, Multimedia Fusion or Game Maker. Turns out, Love always triumphs.

I'll continue to lurk here and participate in any community events as well as answer whatever technical questions I can (I'm a pretty strong programmer and designer, but I'm weak on Lua syntax and the interworkings of Love, so I'd probably be better suited for game-theory stuff).

It's a pleasure to meet everyone, and I hope to have more great experiences working with Love!

[bmelts]

I rather liked your misshapen sentences written at butt o'clock. They certainly beat "hay lol heres my game plz play" (not that the level of discourse on this forum reaches that level, but you know what I mean).

Also I certainly agree that LÖVE triumphs over all. (Particularly Game Maker.)

If you need any help with Lua's (or LÖVE's) particular quirks, by all means ask around, or pop onto the IRC channel. Sometimes people even talk on it! (I'm a zombie and never sleep, so I'm usually there.)

Pleasure to meet you too! If hello.love is any indication, I'm greatly looking forward to seeing what else you produce

[zachwlewis]

I'm an IRC fiend, so you can bet that I'll be there vulgaring up your channel. I tend to want to talk about programming when I'm on programming-related channels, so I'm all like, "Hey. Hey. What's the best way to handle a switch in Lua?" Then, they'll be all like, "So my mom was SOOO drunk last nite dude lol".

Also, if you liked hello love: i really don't know who you are, you'll be pleased to hear that it's now in version 1.1. Better maps and shit.

[Robin]

I rather liked your misshapen sentences written at butt o'clock. They certainly beat "hay lol heres my game plz play" (not that the level of discourse on this forum reaches that level, but you know what I mean).

Seconded. They made a nice read.

Also: welcome!

[pygy]

Welcome aboard
Like the others, I enjoyed your first post.

The best way to learn Lua inside out is to read the PiL book (Programming in Lua, written by one of the Lua autors). It's really a pleasure to read.
The first edition is available for free online. http://www.lua.org/pil/ It covers Lua 5.0 which is very similar to the current 5.1 version.
The main differences is the way varargs are handled (now using "..."), and the new module system (how require() and module() work).

for the record:

Code: Select all

foo = function(...)
    print(...)
end
foo(1,2,3) --> prints "1    2    3"

bar = function(...)
    print( select(2,...) )
end
bar("a", "b", "c") --> prints "b"

select('#',...) gives you the number of arguments passed.

You may also be interested in the second chapter ("Performance Tips") of the Lua Programming Gems, by the same author. It gives some details on the internals of the VM, and how to get the best out of it.

[Robin]

for the record:

Code: Select all

(snip)
bar = function(...)
    print( select(2,...) )
end
bar("a", "b", "c") --> prints "b"

Actually, select(n, ...) passes every argument after n, so bar("a", "b", "c") prints

Code: Select all

"b"       "c"

[pygy]

You learn something new every day :-)