Starting from the begining... of the principle.

General discussion about LÖVE, Lua, game development, puns, and unicorns.
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Strelok
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Starting from the begining... of the principle.

Post by Strelok »

So, I have the desire of making small games of the stories that I have in my mind, nothing to sell and get rich, nor to be famous and nor to make a super ultra mmo. I just want to make my tiny and fun games of the stories that I have in my mind(sorry for repeating this).

And I wanted to know. I have a very, very limited ability with programming, lets say I have difficulty with numbers and things, but I have the desire, and hey! I can be really strong when I want something.

So, I wanted to know if Lua can be a good language to start, and if LÖVE can make my game come true. Can you guys help me? Is there any step-by-step on how to make a 2d tile scrolling game with many events and variables and things? Or I will have t o learn piece by piece and put it all together in the future?
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Jasoco
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Re: Starting from the begining... of the principle.

Post by Jasoco »

Löve is super powerful and very good for prototyping as well as actual release games. It all depends on how good you are at coding. Lua is super fast and Löve is even faster in 0.9.0.

Basically if you want to code everything yourself instead of using a program designed to do everything for you (Like GameMaker or Unity or the like) Löve is really fast at getting something out there.

Plus low overhead.
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Strelok
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Re: Starting from the begining... of the principle.

Post by Strelok »

Are there any example games that I can open and study from inside? It would be really interesting. Also, I will start learning Lua, and keep reading the Löve articles.

Thanks for the heads up, it is good to know that I am in good hands with Löve. I came here three years ago, but since I had some time problems I left my wanna-be-hobbie for later... three years later. :|
davisdude
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Re: Starting from the begining... of the principle.

Post by davisdude »

Strelock wrote:Are there any example games that I can open and study from inside? It would be really interesting. Also, I will start learning Lua, and keep reading the Löve articles.
Check out the projects and demos section of the forums for plenty of examples!
Strelock wrote:Thanks for the heads up, it is good to know that I am in good hands with Löve. I came here three years ago, but since I had some time problems I left my wanna-be-hobbie for later... three years later. :|
It's okay! It takes some time to get good at programming anyway (mind you, not long to learn how to, but a long time the most efficiently, cleanly, and epicly as possible :P ).

Anyway, you are in good hands with LÖVE and Lua! :)
GitHub | MLib - Math and shape intersections library | Walt - Animation library | Brady - Camera library with parallax scrolling | Vim-love-docs - Help files and syntax coloring for Vim
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micha
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Re: Starting from the begining... of the principle.

Post by micha »

Also, have a look at all the tutorial on the wiki.
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Hexenhammer
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Re: Starting from the begining... of the principle.

Post by Hexenhammer »

You sound like someone who wants a game maker [1], not LÖVE. In LÖVE you will have to program almost everything yourself and/or integrate other people's libraries.

I do not think LÖVE is a good choice if you just want to make relatively simple games. LÖVE makes more sense for people for whom programming is part of/most of the fun. That means, you have to ask yourself, is programming just a means to an end (the game) for you, or an end in itself?

[1] For example:
https://www.scirra.com/construct2
https://www.yoyogames.com/studio

Note that there are also more specialized game makers which tend to require even less programming(-like) stuff. For example for visual novels: http://www.renpy.org/
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Strelok
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Re: Starting from the begining... of the principle.

Post by Strelok »

Unfortunately, no. I have been using RPG Maker and other pint'n click engines for over six years, and always suffered from their limitations. I always wanted pixel movement instead of those tile-by-tile movement. And I always wanted to learn to program better, I program like a three year child.

Game Maker Studio is more expensive than my hole life and it is not viable for me. If I am taking it to a life hobbie level, I really think I should work and writte all the code. But I am grateful for your concern, it is good so I can be sure of what I want.

I am already watching some tutorials in youtube about Lua, I found many books and othre tutorials about Lua and Löve, found free courses in the internet, the best part is that they're brazilians and found this amazing blog about Lua and Löve http://nova-fusion.com/, the guy who wrote it is a genius.
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Roland_Yonaba
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Re: Starting from the begining... of the principle.

Post by Roland_Yonaba »

Strelok wrote:Löve http://nova-fusion.com/, the guy who wrote it is a genius.
That guy is the Great BlackBulletIV.

EDIT:
Also, these resources might be of help.
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Strelok
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Re: Starting from the begining... of the principle.

Post by Strelok »

Roland_Yonaba wrote:
That's what I was coming for. I am reading about tile engineering right now. But there is many things I don't understand about it. I will have to learn section by section. But first, I am thinking on developing a text based adventure game. Just to learn and get used to Lua and Löve.

Thank you very much, Roland_Yonaba, that will help me a lot.
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OttoRobba
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Re: Starting from the begining... of the principle.

Post by OttoRobba »

There is also Stencyl that is a bit more modular than most makers and is editable through Javascript.

But anyway, if you really want to learn to program (and it is a great skill and great fun) then I really recommend this video for starters:
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