How to make a platformer [Youtube Tutorial] - All (6) episodes released!

[Jeeper]

It's been a while since the first tutorial series on how to setup Löve and make Pong (https://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=89192). In the meantime I have been working on a new series that covers how to make a platformer game from scratch using Tiled and STI. The series will consist of 6 episodes of roughly 20 minutes each.

Episode 1 - Setup & map
Episode 2 - Player character
Episode 3 - Animations
Episode 4 - Coins
Episode 5 - Obstacles & HP
Episode 6 - Enemy & Multiple Levels





Edit: Finally all episodes have been released! Any and all feedback is very welcome

[sphyrth]

It looks like an Engine Tutorial that keeps reminding people that it's a Framework Tutorial.

Using the love.physics library got me interested. I'm looking forward to that part.

[Jeeper]

It looks like an Engine Tutorial that keeps reminding people that it's a Framework Tutorial.

I am trying to figure out if this is positive or negative (or neither, haha)

Using the love.physics library got me interested. I'm looking forward to that part.

I love the physics module, I use it in probably 90% of my games. I think it's a bit underused due to a perception of it being clunky and/or overkill.

[sphyrth]

lol - that was just a neutral observation.

The physics module's inefficiency in its early days does have a factor, and there's a library (I think HUMP) that does most of the heavy-lifting to make use of it. So people tend to depend on that instead.

[Jeeper]

Just released E2. In this episode I show how to make the player character

[sphyrth]

You know it's getting serious when there's little room for the cringe-y jokes on the script (and yes, that's another objective observation).

This is the episode where I need to take time and digest.

[sphyrth]

Presenting math.max and math.min surprised me. Your thesis for introducing it now is the very reason I ignored mentioning it in the previous tutorial.

[Jeeper]

Presenting math.max and math.min surprised me. Your thesis for introducing it now is the very reason I ignored mentioning it in the previous tutorial.

Thank you for posting the video!

Yeah I try to make sure to introduce a few new concepts at the time, to not make it overwhelming. I do find it quite difficult to find the right balance though.

[sphyrth]

So many things to say:

1. I like your approach on the Metatables (Make the minimum by rote because they audience is smart enough to mess around with it). A lot of the video tutorials I've seen had too much ramble in them.
2. Using your coding mistake to your advantage (creating comedy) instead of redo-ing them was a nice touch, too.
3. My personal nitpick is that you should've used love.math.random. But I guess you can just use that later on because you need to introduce "seeding" first.
4. You're tutorial is so good that I keep forgetting that you're doing inefficient stuff for the sake of Tutorial Clarity and Depth.
   I mean, I was constantly yelling "Why too many functions!?" "Why are you using so many instances of the same image!?"
   I have to tell myself several times, "Chill! Viewers will eventually know how to clean-up their code."

[Jeeper]

...

Thank you again for posting the latest video and for your in-depth feedback, it's greatly appreciated. I indeed intend to cover love.math.random and the upsides of it (probably when I make a rogue-like tutorial series down the road). When the randomization is not that "important" I tend to just use math.random.

And yes you are correct that a lot of the things that might seem like "bad practice" for a seasoned programmer like yourself often has to do with me not wanting to introduce too many things too fast. Some of these things will be covered in the coming episodes, others won't (because otherwise the series would drag on forever ). I intend to start creating some slightly higher level stuff in the future, that will have a higher focus on smarter solutions. With that said I am by no means perfect and you can for sure find ways to optimize all of my code.