Advice for a Newbie?

[Shlösh]

Hello all. I'm new to the Love community and was wondering if any of the experienced love programmers had any references or advice as to how they learned Love. I know a touch of programming and the basic concepts but don't necessarily know a language in full. I was also wondering if it would be necessary to learn Lua or if I would be OK without it. I have worked with Processing and Game-maker a bit but haven't done any large projects in either. I have a few ideas of game concepts I would like to create and Love seemed like a good place to start. If it matters I use Text Wrangler and am on a Mac. One last thing, I was experimenting with Love the other day and made a simple FPS clock and was amazed at the speed. All that aside, any advice or references would be greatly appreciated.

-Shlösh

[coffee]

Hello, I'm a fairly new user only but as almost everyone started at WIKI. https://love2d.org/wiki/Main_Page. There you can learn the first steps. You will need learn Lua but you can do it gradually same time you learn how to use Love Framework. You can use Forum search before ask anything here because already all things were asked in forum before. Have fun and welcome.

EDITED: TextWrangler is a good Mac editor. I myself use Sublime Text + Love Plugin (viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4054) but that it's a question of taste.

[Shlösh]

"You will need learn Lua but you can do it gradually same time you learn how to use Love Framework."
-coffee
Would you suggest getting the Lua guidebook (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... ilindex-20) or just going off of online tutorials?

I have been looking at the wiki a little and will definitely be using it a lot more.
I will check out that other text editor.
Ill keep the forum search in mind before making any more posts.
Thanks again.

[coffee]

"You will need learn Lua but you can do it gradually same time you learn how to use Love Framework."
-coffee
Would you suggest getting the Lua guidebook (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... ilindex-20) or just going off of online tutorials?

I have been looking at the wiki a little and will definitely be using it a lot more.
I will check out that other text editor.
Ill keep the forum search in mind before making any more posts.
Thanks again.

I personally didn't need anything else than online help. However some people usually feel better with guidance in paper (I usually did feel that). Lua Pil (http://www.lua.org/pil/) usually have all the lua answers needed but isn't the most friendly thing. You can try speed up learning with this Crash Lua Tutorial http://luatut.com/crash_course.html. Start doing all Wiki Tutorials. The Lua code there is pretty simple to get.

If you want to get some printed material maybe you could get instead some stuff more oriented to Lua gaming than vanilla Lua talk.

[josefnpat]

Hello all. I'm new to the Love community and was wondering if any of the experienced love programmers had any references or advice as to how they learned Love. I know a touch of programming and the basic concepts but don't necessarily know a language in full. I was also wondering if it would be necessary to learn Lua or if I would be OK without it. I have worked with Processing and Game-maker a bit but haven't done any large projects in either. I have a few ideas of game concepts I would like to create and Love seemed like a good place to start. If it matters I use Text Wrangler and am on a Mac. One last thing, I was experimenting with Love the other day and made a simple FPS clock and was amazed at the speed. All that aside, any advice or references would be greatly appreciated.

-Shlösh

I tend to fall back on http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/ whenever I have questions. I've never needed a book, but then again, I know a dozen languages.

"You will need learn Lua but you can do it gradually same time you learn how to use Love Framework."
-coffee
Would you suggest getting the Lua guidebook (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... ilindex-20) or just going off of online tutorials?

I have been looking at the wiki a little and will definitely be using it a lot more.
I will check out that other text editor.
Ill keep the forum search in mind before making any more posts.
Thanks again.

If you can get a handle on Lua, consider checking out my video tutorial. It's still rough around the edges, but I'm getting rather positive feedback.

[Shlösh]

I tend to fall back on http://www.lua.org/manual/5.1/ whenever I have questions. I've never needed a book, but then again, I know a dozen languages.
-josefnpat
The reference manual looks nice and I will definitely be using it but I may decide to get the book seeing as to how it is my first full language.
Once I have a rough grip on Lua ill give the video a watch.

[Kadoba]

This is more general advice, but stick with it. When you first start learning programming it's easy to feel frustrated and overwhelmed and that's very discouraging. Just understand that it really does all make sense and that you will eventually get through it. Also, when asking for help, ask specific questions and provide code.

If you need a goal then I recommend trying to make a pong clone for the sake of learning. It requires the fundamentals but not much else.