New Dev Machine for Love2D?

[TomChinery]

Hi all,

I have been using Lua and Love2D on my 5 year old laptop for quite a while now. I have just started my second year of Sixth form college, and it seems that I would be able to benefit by upgrading to a new laptop.

I am in a position to work on my first commercial game project, which I will work on in my spare time and use the Love2D Framework. This will first be made for Windows, Mac, and Linux, then eventually ported over to iOS and Android.

My point being, I want to purchase a 13" MacBook Pro however I only have £500 to spend (me being a student and all). This means I can only afford a second hand 2010 model with 4GB of ram. I shall then upgrade it to an SSD. This by my reckoning and knowledge will mean that it will be powerful enough for me to do coding with Lua/Love2D, making graphics in either Gimp/InkScape, and will allow me to distribute my game on all the desired platforms; Windows, Linux, OSX, iOS, and Android. I am hoping I'll get at least 5 hours of battery life and that it should last me for the next two years.

What I'd really like from you guys; the Love2D community, is confirmation that this is a would be a wise purchase, and to check if I have missed anything out.

I will obviously give back to the Love2D community anyway I can apart from helping financially, perhaps when I'm a successful indie developer I can give some kind of contribution to say thank you but as of now that can't happen.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to seeing your suggestions/comments. Don't worry if you can't answer I totally understand that this is a game development forum and some of you may not be able to help.

Thanks again,
-- Tom Chinery.

[Lafolie]

The laptop you mentioned seems similar to mine, which has more than enough than you 'need' for Löve. The problem with your plan would be porting things to iOS, which is a bit of a grey area with this framework at the moment.

[josefnpat]

I am well aware that the following comments sound like I'm trying to start a flame war, but I'm not. I'm not telling you what to run, I don't care what OS you run; just don't tell me what to run. The most important thing you can do is ensure that you are comfortable with the OS and the development tools. Love is rather cross platform, as it's rather easy to distribute to other platforms regardless what the host platform is on, but in the end it is still wise to test on all OS's. ( AppleAL? ;p )

If the computer is just for Lua/Love, then in my opinion an apple product or a windows operating system is a waste.

1. The apple computer hardware is naturally overpriced and is rightly so considering OS X is locked to the hardware (aside from hackintoshes).
2. Windows is going to add a little on the top, but there's a good chance you're going to get this with any laptop unless you're buying bare bones. You will get a better bang for your buck, and in my experience the hardware will last longer.

And unless you're looking for a very specific IDE, linux has the best programming tools imo (vim,emacs,eclipse,geany).

Some good brands for linux laptops would be; Dell, Lenovo, HP, Asus

TL;DR;

As a linux head, I suggest linux. If you don't like linux, get a hackintosh.

[ivan]

I'd say stick with your current laptop. Love2D and 2D games in general don't require the latest hardware. Plus most people who will play your game will be using mid-range laptops so IMO you'll be perfectly fine with your current machine. Also, a 13-inch screen seems a bit small (for me personally) especially with programming where you'll be staring at text for long periods of time.

[kikito]

Also, a 13-inch screen seems a bit small (for me personally) especially with programming where you'll be staring at text for long periods of time.

I've been using a 13'' macbook air (2012) exclusively for programming for some months now, so I stare at it for ~12 hours per day. I have an external 21'' monitor, but I have never felt the need to plug it in.

If the mac monitor was cheap/bad, like some of the previous laptops I had, I would probably prefer to attach an external monitor. The air's monitor is very good, even if it's not retina. The smallest screen format forces me to be organized, since I can't afford to have visual clutter on the screen. I've heard that some crazy people prefer the 11'' version for programming, for the same reason. Bigger screen formats (I've got a 15'' laptop and a 17'') seem too big now.

I want to purchase a 13" MacBook Pro however I only have £500 to spend

That case I'd recommend you to look elsewhere.

A good programming laptop needs 3 things:

• a decent processor (most modern ones have it now)
• a good screen (I'm not talking about size, but other things like view angle, native resolution, and refresh rate).
• a good keyboard (for programming you definitively want a keyboard which doesn't mingle with the positioning of special keys).

For doing LÖVE you will a graphics card; but you don't need it to be last-gen or even previous-gen.

My current mac does all this, and on top of that it has huge battery life, and weights very little. But it's expensive.

Lenovo is famous for its rugged laptops. Their keyboards and screens are always good, and in some cases excellent (you will have to do some investigation on which models exactly, I don't quite remember). The nice thing about them is that since they are used by corporations, they have big rotation. It's relatively easy to find modern second-hand Lenovos at decent prices. They will not be as "slick" and light as the macs, but will get you more for your money.

If you *definetly* want to use a mac for some reason, with your budget it'd probably be a better deal to buy a Mac Mini instead (last gen is nearly as good as this gen) and use whichever monitor/keyboards you already have.

[miko]

What I'd really like from you guys; the Love2D community, is confirmation that this is a would be a wise purchase, and to check if I have missed anything out.

I know (almost) nothing about MacBook Pro, but what really matters if it has decent graphic card, i.e. if it supports shaders, canvases and big textures. In case of Love2d the OS does not matter (iOS/Android is quite different story, but that can change in coming years).

[TomChinery]

First of all I would like to thank you all for your comments and suggestions! It is greatly appreciated!

I'd say stick with your current laptop.

I can't stick with my current laptop, what I failed to mention in my original post is that my laptop has no battery, and is way to heavy to even consider to be portable.

A good programming laptop needs 3 things:
a decent processor (most modern ones have it now)
a good screen (I'm not talking about size, but other things like view angle, native resolution, and refresh rate).
a good keyboard (for programming you definitively want a keyboard which doesn't mingle with the positioning of special keys).

I agree, these things are very important. I often end up spending more than 12 hours a day working. The keyboard is especially important for me.

If you *definetly* want to use a mac for some reason, with your budget it'd probably be a better deal to buy a Mac Mini instead (last gen is nearly as good as this gen) and use whichever monitor/keyboards you already have.

The main reason for wanting to get a mac is so I can publish my game on OSX and iOS, so I can maximise my sales. I'm not worrying about Love2D working on iOS at the moment as that will be a future port of my game.

I'm still searching eBay for that MacBook Pro bargain, and will have a look at the Lenovo's as suggested.

I would like to thank you all again for your comments and suggestions,

Thanks,
Tom Chinery.

[Lafolie]

You don't necessarily need a mac to make OS X binaries I think. There was even a project to create a web application that built binaries for you, whatever happened to that?

If you are going to go with OS X I would recommended grabbing Total Terminal which has been immensely helpful to me.

[Nsmurf]

Personally, I find that creating games on a old PC is *good*, because if it will work on my PC, then it is almost sure to work on any other PC. But I shouldn't talk, because I'm looking at new netbooks as well (10 years old is a tad too old)...

Blah, blah, blah, linux is awesome, Dell, Lenovo, HP, Asus, blah, blah, linux, blah.

Wow, *how* did I miss that when I was looking for laptops and netbooks that would play nice with linux? Thanks.

[TomChinery]

Hi all,

I would just like to say I am now buying a Lenovo U410 as it has some nice spec's and its own dedicated GPU. Here are the spec's below:
- Intel® Core™ i3-2367M Processor (3M Cache, 1.40 GHz)
- NVIDIA® GeForce® 610M 1GB
- 4 GB PC3-10600 DDR3 SDRAM 1333MHz
- 750GB 5400 + 32GB SSD
- 9 Hour Battery Life

This is the base model with an coupon for £100 off so it will cost me £549.99 in total.
Find out more here: http://shop.lenovo.com/gbweb/gb/en/note ... eries/u410

I think this is the best choice for me and I will be buying it over the weekend.

Thanks for your input,
-- Tom Chinery.