A Guide to Getting Started with Love2D

[thelinx]

The name Löve mostly brings up problems when googling. Trying to go directly to, say the Löve wiki page for physics, googling "love physics" won't get you anywhere near that

Still, I don't really mind since I'm using a swedish keyboard with a dedicated "ö" key anyway

But googling "love physics site:love2d.org" will.

[Jasoco]

I think it would be more correct if you just call it LOVE or love if you can't use the Ö. The domain name is the only thing that has the 2d part attached to it.

Yet every time someone mentions how cool it'd be if Löve could do 3D, some silly billy goat comes in and points out that it's "Löve2d, not Löve3d" and pisses me off.

[snake]

Nice guide but mentioning OOP in a text targeted at beginners is a bit too much.
Don`t confuse them with advanced stuff.
And also you only talk about OO in general so not really love related.
And you don't need to know about OO to understand the Love API.

On text editors you don't mention anything about an editor for Linux.
Ah and "Mac" is the Hardware, better say OSX.
Also TextWrangler doesn't seem to be free software so better recommend something like Geany which works on every platform.

Oh and you don't talk about features of Lua.
You have to motivate them learning it.

Also there isn't even an Hello World!
Not really hands on approach.
Also you might want to link the love example browser and some famous games.
Oh and screenshots. I have seen no.

Well enough the bitching for now.

[bartbes]

Ah and "Mac" is the Hardware, better say OSX.

Actually, the OS is called Mac OS, and OSX is just version 10 (X) of it.

[snake]

Ah and "Mac" is the Hardware, better say OSX.

Actually, the OS is called Mac OS, and OSX is just version 10 (X) of it.

Oh my fault.
Well most people just say OSX but yeah you are right.

[BlackBulletIV]

Nice guide but mentioning OOP in a text targeted at beginners is a bit too much.
Don`t confuse them with advanced stuff.
And also you only talk about OO in general so not really love related.
And you don't need to know about OO to understand the Love API.

I did feel uneasy about it, but I though it might also be confusing if there was nothing to say about OOP. And no, you do need to understand the basics of OOP to use the LOVE API properly; otherwise you won't know how to use classes.

About the non-LOVE related discussion of OOP, well that's the way it's going to be everywhere, OOP is generally the same; I did give a LOVE-specific code example however.

On text editors you don't mention anything about an editor for Linux.
Ah and "Mac" is the Hardware, better say OSX.
Also TextWrangler doesn't seem to be free software so better recommend something like Geany which works on every platform.

That's because I have no experience with Lua-supporting text editors for Linux.

TextWrangler is free (free as in "beer", of course). That company offers BBEdit as well, which isn't free, so you may have been looking at that somehow.

Oh and you don't talk about features of Lua.
You have to motivate them learning it.

In my mind, the motivation is coming from LOVE; if you don't know Lua, you can't use LOVE.

Also there isn't even an Hello World!
Not really hands on approach.

Hands-on teaching was never the purpose of this guide; it's a guide on where and when to go to learn how to use LOVE, with some basic knowledge that's needed thrown in.

[snake]

Might be a bit late to answer but well:

I did feel uneasy about it, but I though it might also be confusing if there was nothing to say about OOP. And no, you do need to understand the basics of OOP to use the LOVE API properly; otherwise you won't know how to use classes.

Lua doesn't come with a class system and Love doesn't include one and I really don't see why you think knowing about OOP would help to understand anything in this context.
In fact you don't need to know anything about OOP to make a game in Love.
(Though of course it depends on how far you stretch the Definition of OO and it might help when doing big projects.)

Further reading:
http://prog21.dadgum.com/93.html

About the non-LOVE related discussion of OOP, well that's the way it's going to be everywhere, OOP is generally the same; I did give a LOVE-specific code example however.

Nah what people think OOP is and how it should be done can be fundamentally different.

TextWrangler is free (free as in "beer", of course). That company offers BBEdit as well, which isn't free, so you may have been looking at that somehow.

I was talking about free Software not Freeware.

[tentus]

I was talking about free Software not Freeware.

freeware /ˈfrēˌwe(ə)r/
Noun: Software that is free of charge.

?

[bartbes]

Ooh, I can do that too!

Free software, software libre or libre software is software that can be used, studied, and modified without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that further recipients can also do these things and that manufacturers of consumer-facing hardware allow user modifications to their hardware. Free software is generally available without charge, but can have a fee, such as in the form of charging for CDs or other distribution medium among other ways.

[BlackBulletIV]

Lua doesn't come with a class system and Love doesn't include one and I really don't see why you think knowing about OOP would help to understand anything in this context.
In fact you don't need to know anything about OOP to make a game in Love.

I was explaining OOP a bit because LOVE has classes in it, like ParticleSystem for example. I thought without understanding a little OOP, using them would be rather confusing; I could be wrong though, I find it hard to think as a complete beginner in these topics. Anyway, I have put a note saying that you don't need to understand OOP to get started (people won't be using LOVE's classes straight away).

Nah what people think OOP is and how it should be done can be fundamentally different.

And so I was explaining the form that LOVE (and almost everything else) uses while giving a code example of using one of LOVE's classes.

I was talking about free Software not Freeware.

Well that explains. I think many newbies won't really care so much about whether it's free software or not; they will care about it being free of charge however.