Gotten interested in .lua and love 2D

[Ekamu]

hey slow down your going too fast with this. You should definitely go for it and make whatever game you dream of but you need to take it easy especially if this is your first time with LOVE or any framework.

Instead try to pick out your best features from Command & Conquer Red Alert and then just work on that then after you can slowly add in more features. If you need to learn LOVE then try to make a much simpler version of your game preferably something with an arcade feel or simple and fun game mechanics.

It might take a while before you are able to make your dream game. While I am soo psyched to hear your making a Command & Conquer fan game (memories) its a little difficult for one person especially this being your first time round.

If you want to learn Lua supper fast, mess around A LOT with the command shell while you try out most of these tutorials:
(http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaTutorial)

Most of all don't stress out and just take it easy O.K. For now try make something simple "like" Red Alert but forget about those advanced features. Ask yourself why do I LOVE Red Alert or Mari0 or whatever game your really like and just work with that one feature (for example squashing goomba or shooting enemies e.t.c) It's fun to mess around with a simple feature and make something awesome and creative.

Treat it like you would a puzzle, fixing it peace by peace until you get the picture.
(puzzles are fun right? but they can also be frustrating if you try and force it all together)

[SuperScourge]

hey slow down your going too fast with this. You should definitely go for it and make whatever game you dream of but you need to take it easy especially if this is your first time with LOVE or any framework.

Instead try to pick out your best features from Command & Conquer Red Alert and then just work on that then after you can slowly add in more features. If you need to learn LOVE then try to make a much simpler version of your game preferably something with an arcade feel or simple and fun game mechanics.

It might take a while before you are able to make your dream game. While I am soo psyched to hear your making a Command & Conquer fan game (memories) its a little difficult for one person especially this being your first time round.

If you want to learn Lua supper fast, mess around A LOT with the command shell while you try out most of these tutorials:
(http://lua-users.org/wiki/LuaTutorial)

Most of all don't stress out and just take it easy O.K. For now try make something simple "like" Red Alert but forget about those advanced features. Ask yourself why do I LOVE Red Alert or Mari0 or whatever game your really like and just work with that one feature (for example squashing goomba or shooting enemies e.t.c) It's fun to mess around with a simple feature and make something awesome and creative.

Treat it like you would a puzzle, fixing it peace by peace until you get the picture.
(puzzles are fun right? but they can also be frustrating if you try and force it all together)

I'm not sure what features I would use here it's just the basics from the game itself and there will be (hopefully) a Mission builder to build your very own mission from scratch, still gonna read up about Lua and just do a basic app that doesn't do anything but just simple coding to make sure I understand love2d

I use Mind Node and use it to use what features I would need to build C&C Platinum.

[Ekamu]

I have an idea for you, for your first game why not try to code some blocks to move and attack other blocks. You can use color to represent your enemies e.g red and blue for your team. When you click on a blue box it selects that player and then when you click on a red box it tells the selected player to move and attack that red box.
This will definitely help you make a strategy game like command and conquer and you will need this as the base model for your game anyway.

For starters just try it with one blue box and one red box. forget about attacking and stats for now, just try code it so the blue box can move to the red. then add in more features and slowly continue to work from that. If you can accomplish just that then you will be well on your way to make a great strategy game.

It might be a little challenging so before you go there you could study this: http://www.love2d.org/wiki/Tutorial:Gridlocked_Player

If for some reason you still have difficulty then go even simpler and just make a grid movement system then continue from that.

Basically you want to isolate your problems into very basic things.

When it comes to learning a programming language the best and fastest way is to do something with it, just like learning a normal language, you remember it faster the more you speak it and think in it. If you try to understand it all at once first you might get really bored and irritated because their is a lot to remember and learn and experience is the best teacher.

Everyone thinks different though so whatever is best for you. Most of all if you are having fun then you are on the right path.

(Also MindNode is really cool, thanks for the link)

[SuperScourge]

I have an idea for you, for your first game why not try to code some blocks to move and attack other blocks. You can use color to represent your enemies e.g red and blue for your team. When you click on a blue box it selects that player and then when you click on a red box it tells the selected player to move and attack that red box.
This will definitely help you make a strategy game like command and conquer and you will need this as the base model for your game anyway.

For starters just try it with one blue box and one red box. forget about attacking and stats for now, just try code it so the blue box can move to the red. then add in more features and slowly continue to work from that. If you can accomplish just that then you will be well on your way to make a great strategy game.

It might be a little challenging so before you go there you could study this: http://www.love2d.org/wiki/Tutorial:Gridlocked_Player

If for some reason you still have difficulty then go even simpler and just make a grid movement system then continue from that.

Basically you want to isolate your problems into very basic things.

When it comes to learning a programming language the best and fastest way is to do something with it, just like learning a normal language, you remember it faster the more you speak it and think in it. If you try to understand it all at once first you might get really bored and irritated because their is a lot to remember and learn and experience is the best teacher.

Everyone thinks different though so whatever is best for you. Most of all if you are having fun then you are on the right path.

(Also MindNode is really cool, thanks for the link)

That can work still wanna code the main menu first so the player can actually play the missions and here's what I'll need to do is this

How I can first build the menu and make this look like this when the user clicks on the button of mine? This animation is simulating a mouse click

- this is the main menu I made using the original Red Alert as a base, Scythe & Genesis Games is just my own author name for this. so basically before any actual coding is made I'll have to look through every ripped sprite from the game so I can fix them making sure every sprite is not cut off during my coding.

Here's the main menu's lua (gonna be split in different lua's if I can do that.)

Code: Select all

function love.load()
    intro = love.audio.newSource("music/intro.mp3", "Stream");intro:setLooping(true)
    love.audio.play(intro)
    Menu = love.graphics.newImage("Images/Menu.png")
    
end
function love.draw()
   love.graphics.draw(Menu)
   love.graphics.setColor(255, 0 , 0)
   love.graphics.print("Version 0.1 Beta", 780, 630)
   love.graphics.setColor(255, 218, 0)
   love.graphics.print("Copyright 2013 - Scythe & Genesis Games", 500, 670, 0 ,1)
   love.graphics.setColor (255, 255, 255)
  
end
function love.update()
	
end

https://mindnode.com/ - here's the link to the app itself

[bekey]

-snip-

[MPQC]

Your boundaries are wrong, should use width/height of the button as well.

[bekey]

-snip-

[Ekamu]

Here is a crude illustration to help understand.

pressme.png (1.34 KiB) Viewed 4988 times

So you have the x and y for the actual button (x1,y1) and you also need the co-ordinates for where the button ends (y1,y2). Like Bekey showed you, just add the width for x and height for y to get those co-ords for x2,y2.
The rest is some simple math. If the position for the mouse is greater than x1,y1 *original co-ords and less than where the image ends (x2,y2) then your within the region for the button. You should use a variable to notice this and change the image to the hover graphic and back if this is false.

Be careful with y, its always upside down in computers... I remember this used to confuse me a lot.

You can always post in support if you need some help or irc if its an emergency and you cant wait.
(Also don't worry about graphics for now, you can use those as placeholders until your done coding)

[SuperScourge]

Here is a crude illustration to help understand.

pressme.png

So you have the x and y for the actual button (x1,y1) and you also need the co-ordinates for where the button ends (y1,y2). Like Bekey showed you, just add the width for x and height for y to get those co-ords for x2,y2.
The rest is some simple math. If the position for the mouse is greater than x1,y1 *original co-ords and less than where the image ends (x2,y2) then your within the region for the button. You should use a variable to notice this and change the image to the hover graphic and back if this is false.

Be careful with y, its always upside down in computers... I remember this used to confuse me a lot.

You can always post in support if you need some help or irc if its an emergency and you cant wait.
(Also don't worry about graphics for now, you can use those as placeholders until your done coding)

Okay now here's a tricky part I'm trying to do a little test of Mouseisdown event that it would play a sound, and I looked everywhere for such a code to make sure it plays the first half of a sound like a glock 18 going off as bang, bang, bang getting more than one shot. I could only get the full shot of the sound to play.