Starting With love - advice

[Dubforce]

Awesome, thank you very much! I think I would mostly like to use a true object oriented language like C# to do my game development, but I am going to, at the very least, create this first game with love. I took a look at SFML and it seems like a really good framework. Another than came up while I was reading about it was Allegro5. Do you have any insight about that?

I'm starting to think that game development is one of those things where you just need to start, and deal with complications as they arise. I don't think any game I'm going to make in the next few months will push any engine/framework to its limits, so it doesn't really matter what I use (I guess).

[Murii]

Dont use C# if you want to publish your game to android or Ios or web

[Automatik]

Out of curiosity, do you guys have any tip for working with art if you have no artistic abilities?

You can also get artistics abilities : Draw a lot, examine good art, read tutorials, you will get better.

[easy82]

I think you should pick one that fulfills your needs, and stick with it. You can create virtually anything if you know the ins and outs of the chosen engine.

There are some people who are not really into arts, or just generally better at other things, like programming. So if you don't want to practice drawing, why don't you team up with others? Make and share your plan, and a prototype, and recuite people.

[murks]

One possible limitation: If you want to do a lot of sound manipulation love might not be for you. Basic playback of music and sounds works fine and it has some positional sound capability, for most games this is just fine. But for say a sound-based game I think it might not be the right thing. I've only seen one very basic sound synthesis tutorial so far, it stopped after synthesizing a sine wave, go figure...

[OttoRobba]

For your question on art, you would probably do well with having an art-minded person collaborating. Being aesthetically pleasing has little to do with ability to draw but you need someone that can curate what is good and what is not. For instance, this guy's portfolio is insanely good http://crowquills.com/ but there is hardly any drawing going on in there - he just has developed a really good aesthetic sense.


As far as frameworks go, LÖVE is pretty incredible - but then again, it depends on your expectations and needs.

If you want to develop for the web, I'd say it is not the best pick (at least not yet) and I'd recommend something like Phaser. Phaser is akin to Flixel but in Javascript - it is a really powerful, well developed engine. They have a clear focus on mobiles and desktop wrapping as well so you could use it to deploy on multiple platforms.
API is where it confuses me though, and I did have some weird bugs happening but then again - web development is a pain in the ass and tiny differences can have between browsers.

For mobiles, it is almost a good choice but support is still experimental so there might be nasty bugs hidden, who knows.
If I was making games exclusively for mobiles I'd buckle down and try to learn the monstrous Moai or just use Phaser.

For the desktop, it is an amazing choice - for 2D, I honestly think it is the best.
It is fast, free, well documented, api is clean and sane. It is highly accessible from the get go and, for pc gaming, makes modding all that much easier.
The community is really active, as is development.
Lua is fun to code with and I'd rather use it than any other current language.

Truth is, you probably will only be sure of how much you like it after you use it at least a little bit. My suggestion is this: try to do a really simple pong game on LÖVE and other frameworks, see which one best fits your needs and your workflow, which code you like best, etc...

[gestaltist]

I am an example of a total lack of artistic talent. My two cents.

1) start with projects that don’t really require any art (like, pong, arkanoid, tetris) to get your feet wet. Everybody can draw a circle and a rectangle (after all, love2d has a function for that ) and you will at least learn enough to understand the development process and what makes a game

2) when working on a project that requires art, start with no art, as well. E.g., make a prototype where the characters are simply triangles (and the “pointy end” shows the direction they are facing. Or use art that is available for free. Then, when you have something that already works, it’s much easier to talk someone into doing some art for your project.

3) get an artsy girlfriend and get her to draw for your games. Problem solved.

[T-Bone]

About artistic talent, I'd say either come up with an art style that you can work with (what you consider ugly can be beautiful in somebody else's eyes) or team up with someone else who's more artistic than you. I did the latter with Hat Cat and it worked very well.

[Jeeper]

You can use Love because the community is friendly and big.But i would suggest to NOT i repeat to not use box2d because the performance is awful !

I kind of disagree, been using it for a while and it is really good and solid if you know what you are doing. "Concerned joe" uses it as well as their multiplayer spin off "Move or die".

I mean pretty much any computer from the last 10 years should be able to run your game without issues unless you fucked something up ^_^.


That doesn't mean that it is good for everything, in Luminosity I made my own collision and physics because I needed something specific that box2d didn't provide.

[Murii]

You can use Love because the community is friendly and big.But i would suggest to NOT i repeat to not use box2d because the performance is awful !

I kind of disagree, been using it for a while and it is really good and solid if you know what you are doing. "Concerned joe" uses it as well as their multiplayer spin off "Move or die".

I mean pretty much any computer from the last 10 years should be able to run your game without issues unless you fucked something up ^_^.


That doesn't mean that it is good for everything, in Luminosity I made my own collision and physics because I needed something specific that box2d didn't provide.

I`ve tried on my netbook to test box2d and in Java/Libgdx i was able to spawn 300 boxes with 58-61fps and then in Love at 32 boxes i got 33 fps.Soooo yeah...