Is LÖVE really necessary?

[rude]

Haha, funny (and a little creepy). LÖVE speaks!

[hagish]

Yes it is because a world without love ... ok forget it

Currently Love is a casual gaming engine. Its small, simple, 2d and lua. But this is perfectly ok and because of these points i like love . Oh and love's superior documentation and examples (and this is not ironic ) and the extraordinary community.
All in all I think love will stay a niche product like many other game engines (but my favorite small game engine).

If there would be an easy to install browser plugin for the major platforms and browsers it could get a real alternative for the web flash game sector (because most of the time flash just sucks) and then it would become "necessary for the world".

[Tabasco]

I just got started with Love and Lua a couple of days ago and I find that I'm quite fond of it.
It fills a niche and I enjoy working with it, so I would say yes, it is necessary, or at the very least, appreciated.

[1stAnd10]

I think LOVE has been one of the easier game engines to pick up and make progress on that I've encountered since I started game programming as a hobby back in Feb '06. I've tried TGB, Unity (which I love but is not comparable due to it being 3D), Pygame (I hate Python).

I would be lying however if I said I didn't have a few reservations based on the feeling in the forum here about investing a ton of time in LOVE for a game. It's still very early in development, I am concerned about the longevity of the project and the focus on the engine.

My honest advice after seeing a lot of game engines fall by the wayside is to set a focus on what the engine will be and what it will not be, lay out a roadmap and get it there through an iterative process. Rome wasn't built in a day.

There really aren't a lot of good 2D game engines out there with the rush of everyone to move to 3D. The thing is 3D is exponentially tougher to code for a game programming newbie. You have to crawl before you can walk. I really think LOVE can fill a pretty empty niche if it is kept simple to use, gets fleshed out in some areas and the community stays strong. You've got something special here, don't give up on it.

[An00biS]

Hey everybody.

To me, love is definitely special and it makes me worried that a member of it's dev team doubs it.

IMO love is necessary, because AFAIK it's the best lua-based game engine out there. The only althernative I know is BrainDamage, and if this page http://codetank.com/wiki/index.php/Brain_Damage_Library is up to date, then love is far better and probably allways be.

And being lua-based has one great feature: Any game made with it is easily modifiable with just scripts. While creating a simple game is not too big problem in any of the existing technologies, creating a scriptable game is a great deal, at least to me. But with love, it's a sure thing. Right now I'm making such a game (could be called a game engine): You get a scrollable map with obstacles and battle vehicles, but the gameplay is fully controled by user-created scripts. This would be a big thing to do with a compiled language, but with love, I may even get it finished sometime. And I hope love will stay.

[Skofo]

Yes!

The world needs an open easy game engine like this. Admittedly, the only reason that I'm not currently using this and developing stuff for it is because of the browser-ness and profitability of Flash, but if I'd found this during my Game Maker days, I'd switch over and develop with this in an instant. LÖVE does not appear to overcomplicate and get in the way of things like Game Maker does, it's more portable, and it's open source and free (and stylish!). I may very well try to develop with this, after I finish my current Flash project. Or I'll start another Flash project. But if I do, don't fret, because I totally support this and it looks like a lot of people have good use for this over Flash, Pygame, Pyglet. I realize that it must be demotivating to compete against the currently more popular 2D game development platforms, but don't fret! Looking through the tutorials of all four platforms I've mentioned, LÖVE looks like the winner in terms of clear, intuitive code and ease of use. To really set yourself above the competition, though, I'd suggest developing some nifty features that the other platforms don't have. LÖVE already has everything required for developing 2D games, so I say you're set in terms of basic features. Something that the other platforms don't have out of the box is a physics engine, which I was pleasantly surprised to find integrated in LÖVE. LÖVE also has a functional networking library, which I think is very awesome. I don't know what else to ask for, but those two features alone put LÖVE farther than Pygame, Pyglet or Flash (if it were not web-based) in my eyes. It shouldn't hurt to add something to make it even more awesome, though, even though I haven't a clue how, because it is already so awesome.

STAY ALIVE, LÖVE! WE LOVE YOU!

But I wouldn't be mad at you guys for quitting your work on this. Working for free is hard. I know this. But hey, if you finish this and iron out all the bugs, it's not like you have to continue working on this, eh? After you develop everything you want in this to make it perfect, you could just keep the website and forums online and leave it for tha people! Who knows, you might come back here to find a forum with hundreds of users active at any given time. You should be developing this because you honestly enjoy developing this, not because you feel entitled to because other people may or may not find use for this.

[HannesP]

I really hope that this project will survive. Lua is very easy to pick up, and its dynamic nature makes it easy to tinker around with different methods when solving various problems. However, it will not be useful to the masses before it comes with a (fairly advanced) sprite class, with support for pixel-perfect collision testing, transforms etc. I'd say this (maybe second to the timing issues) is the #1 prio.

[igneous]

I just stumbled across LÖVE, and I'm really enjoying using it to build my understanding of lua. It's relatively well documented.. and seems to have a really helpful community (I've been hanging out in irc, the folks there are very helpful!). I encourage the LÖVE devs to continue their great work.

I have an ambitious plan for a future project, so I'd be pretty upset to see the engine I plan to build it upon die

[raburabugaaru]

Just to put my two cents in if I may...

I've tried a bunch of game engines, and this is the first one that made me actually WANT to make a game. The rest put me in this "you really can't be a game developer" depression after trying them.

• Game Maker is awesome, but there's no way I'm using midis. I HATE MIDIS!
• RPG Toolkit was fine until I couldn't figure out how to code something. I asked their "warm and friendly community" (*cough* *cough*) for help and came out feeling like an idiot. Plus, Toolkit's pretty limited as far as what it can painlessly do. Oh, and I have Vista - yesterday, I tried to open Toolkit and it wouldn't even come up.
• Pygame makes my brain hurt. I think I could figure it out, but right now, nothing makes sense. LÖVE made sense to me the day I installed it.

That's just a taste of the ones I've looked into. The only one I've really liked so far is LÖVE.

Is it necessary? Define "necessary." Maybe the people who are perfectly happy with other engines don't need it, but people like me who are still looking for "the one" need an engine like this. What I really love about LÖVE is that I still have to learn/understand Lua in order to use it. I can't just be lazy.

I can't make you keep this project up, but I very much hope you will. I think it could be one of the best engines out there if you work at it.

[Sslaxx]

I've been looking around a bit.

I like http://www.scirra.com/ Construct. But it has a fair few problems. The must critical for me is the lack of support for non-Windows OSes. Then comes its lacking proper support for OGG files. Then its dependence on DirectX9. Then its broken (albeit only in the current versions) Python support, which even then isn't extended much beyond (at least at the moment) events and actions. I like the interface, I like the way it works when it comes to events (much nicer than MMF2). Do they intend to fix the shortcomings, work on cross-platform support etc.? Yes, they do. So I'll be following Construct's progress too. Importantly, like LÖVE, it's open source (GPL) with no restrictions on your own projects.

Game Maker? No. No support for OGGs by default. Windows only (and judging by what I've heard about the Mac port attempt, I shouldn't hold my breath waiting for a Linux version, let alone a decent one). The original guy sold out and the current people seem not much better.

Game Editor? No. I could get used to the interface, the use of the C-like scripting language, but the way that the coder pretends the source is available under an Open Source license - it is available, but isn't Open Source - turns me off.

Not done much with Python/PyGame, but it looks OK. There seem to be better alternatives out there for Python, though, like Pyglet.

A LÖVE-powered, cross-platform Construct would, by my reckoning, be the one thing I'd want most.

Is LÖVE necessary? I'd say yes - we haven't really started to see its full potential yet.