Am I Waisting My Time?

[baconhawka7x]

I do the art, and coding for Sock Munkee Modding(I don't expect you to know us lol). We mod minecraft.
Basically I started doing texture packs in minecraft, which overtimer urged me to start modding minecraft. I never really understood the code, mostly just changed variables and such. Then I heard about stabyourself, amazing gamedevs. After playing some of there games i went to there website and found that they use "love2d". So i decided to check it out. It took me a couple of trys before I really broke into love2d. I was really determined to learn all of the concepts and everything. But now I'm wondering if I should come back to this later. I feel like love2d is a lot simpler than any other engine. And if i master love2d now, it will be more difficult to switch to another engine(like java). So should I leave love2d for another engine? Or stick with it?

[osgeld]

language wise lua is different than most everything out there, its closest to pascal if pascal was a distant cousin in another country (a century apart) ... that being said lua and love have the advantage of being pretty easy to deal with.

Are you wasting your time? IMO no your not, even though you are probably going to have to relearn some things when you switch to a different language system, if your goal is to learn how video games work you dont have the overhead of much more complex systems keeping you from learning the basics of game coding and design ... which in any mid-high level language never really change.

IE: a ray caster works the same as it does in C, lua, or python.

and at the end of the day if you learn any programming system well enough its not that much of a challenge to jump to any other system out there, though the names and rules will change, they all do the exact same thing

[Ensayia]

Learning Lua and the LOVE framework is most certainly not a waste of time.

The thing is, as you learn through trial and error with LOVE you are actually teaching yourself programming concepts. While most languages are different, most are really quite the same in actual concept. My staple language years ago was QBasic and I wasn't particularly awesome with it either. I tried C, C++, Java, etc. without much progress for a long while. I had a lot of help from a friend in learning Lua and after three years of it and LOVE I recently started dabbling in C++ again and am finding it far more easy to follow this time around.

Languages vary largely in implementation but if you pick one and stick with it, after a while you will learn enough core concepts to start in other languages. Once you know why things are done it's just down to figuring out syntax and specifc implementations. I feel a tiny bit spoiled by Lua because the table data structure basically does everything awesomely and some of the ways tables can be useful in Lua are a little more difficult to pull off in other languages, although most everything is possible in every language these days.

Stick with it. I found programming to have a very steep learning curve myself but you will eventually reach a point where things start to make sense.

[Ellohir]

Learning to program is learning to express what you want to the computer. It may be said differently or easier in Lua, but it's still the ability to set your mind into that mood. Progress can be done in any language. If this is a hobby, you should stick to what you like most.

[Robin]

Another reason why LÖVE is great use of your time is that LÖVE and Lua are both excellent for rapid prototyping: you can make something that makes sense very quickly, so you can spend most your effort actually learning how to use algorithms and making games, instead of struggling to get the basics running.

So it will be relatively easy, and you still learn skills you can use in a wide variety of frameworks and languages.

[coffee]

My two cents. Spite of have small coding training I'm also not a coder and I'm more oriented for design. Indeed you could have more accessible and friendly ways of create games like point and click game creator packages but none give it real liberty to do the way you want or you need to waste later some time to get around the game template backbone. Very easy to start but hard later to do a very custom own engine. But if you have perseverance and are willing to burn a bit in the first times your brain you are in the right place. Lua/LOVE is one the friendly coding language/engine to start with. But anyway you always need to learn and do some effort whatever you choose. And remember that the best think in LOVE is a friendly helping community.

[Jasoco]

I found it easier to move over to Lua after coming from BASIC and JavaScript. I have never been able to understand nor make heads nor tails of C++, C#, Cocoa or any other derivative.

Ever.

[josefnpat]

Lua and I have disagreements every once and a while, but It is by far one of my preferred languages.

Even though the core of lua is rather basic, the beauty is the supplemental libraries.

With that being said, there is always room for performance boosting, as one can push c/c++ into the system (much like love wraps around lua with a c++ engine)

Even better (and this is important to me as a linux user) is entirely cross-platform (and i'm not just talking windows, osx linux).

[clickrush]

the reasons why I choose the LÖVE framework are the following:

- Lua is currently the most used scripting language in gamedesign. For me this means that it must have something that is suited for gamedesign. In case you do not know: World of Warcraft uses Lua as it's scripting language as well.

- C++ is the most used programming language for game engines, as well as for the LÖVE framework.

- LÖVE is a free and opensource project.

- the LÖVE community is certainly not the biggest but you can see that it seeks to be a strong, friendly and intelligent one and I think it is successfull in that manner. Just the name of the programm tells it all actually.

- LÖVE is cuter and more handsome than the others.