This is not sparta..? I am lost ;_;

[Raider]

Hiya! I like introduction threads but there isn't one. Therefore I feel unloved.

I'm from across a metaphorical ocean, hailing from the bright, sunny, python-infested lands of Blender 3D. In particular, a little forum called GameBlender.org. Curiously we use exactly the same forum system and skin as you peeps.. but have slightly larger smileys. Totally not compensating for somethin'.

STORYTIME.

I've been looking for a good 2D engine for a while now. Originally I found LÖVE quite quickly, but it's use of Lua deflected my cursory investigations. However, I now have a rather compelling 2D game concept that Blender is (le gasp i'm about to blaspheme.) not.

really capable.

of.

So I decided to go in the deep end, and brave Lua to get to the wonderfullness of LÖVE. Happy to say I spent the first 4 hours grinning madly, making it spin pictures around and play unfitting music while I tab twitched between lua docs, LÖVE docs, and.. yes. You get the picture.

The point of this is that I think this is the first time a program has been so.. welcoming, and instantly comprehendable.

The organisation of the engine modules, and how easy it is to get to all the systems in a single line, is amazing. I'm really looking forward to learning more Lua for this.

Oh. Background.
I hold my own in 3d vectors and matrices, physics and minimalism. I know C++ and Python, and use both frequently. I did try to combine them once, but it had more boilerplating than a steam train.

LÖVE is appreciably similar to Blender in that it can package .exes, and you just put the dependencies in the same folder. (Mind you Blender has about six billion of them while LÖVE has 7..)

So I'm, y'know, all excited and stuff! Also you have kind of not many forum boards!

[Pliskin09]

welcome aboard mate i wanted to get into blender 3d game engine but it was too large for someone to simply jump in. not very inviting etc. so i figured i'd start small and work my way up. i tried some python game engines but found them rather limiting actually? they where horrible.. (pygame etc). lua is pretty similar in the way its writen so i took whatever little knowledge i had of phython over here to lua, and started coding hehe

[Raider]

Thanks!

Aye, newbies tend to poke around at the bottom of the Blender mountain, only to have an avalanche of buttons and hotkeys fall on them.

So you find Lua okay to work with?

I know it's a silly question. It's just that, coming from a Python background, Lua really seems just a little bit weird. I've caught myself hunt-and-peck typing. Which is not a good sign. .~.

[Pliskin09]

i can use blender fine for modeling. (thats why i wanted to get into the game engine). its the python that threw me off. i didnt know much at all back then about python (Still dont), but i knew how to write up some really basic code. the structure is fairly similar to LUA in my opinion (lack of {'s and }'s for example).

what i like about luais that it feels very flexible so yeah, im enjoying it.

reckon you can send some games my way you've made with the blender GE for me to take a look at? (doesnt need to be anything huge ofcourse )

[Raider]

Er, unfortunately I don't have any simple game examples.

But, here's a selection of stuff you might find useful to look over.

FPS template:
http://www.gameblender.org/download/file.php?id=1253
Controls are WASD, spacebar, left click, right click and ctrl key.

Aircraft physics:
http://www.gameblender.org/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1177
A thread link because the controls and info are in there. Make sure to read further down and find the second plane. =o


Sorry if these aren't appropriate, ;

If you wanna learn more I suggest you join gameblender.org. We have heaps of tutorials, resources, a chat room which is occasionally active, and pie. It's better than BlenderArtists, for game engine peeps. (Unless you want to poke ideas at the devs, who are all at BA.)

If it wasn't apparent I'm one of the admins there so, uh, ..obey?

what's with this whole 'obey' thing anyway

And, er, I suppose I'd better start talking less about forums so as not to appear like a salesman.

[Pliskin09]

thanks for the links. i think i will stick with lua for now though, keep it at a manageable level. oh as for the obey - i dont know either. just do it i guess hah

[snake]

Blender GE is really nice.
I my opinion the Blender GE is the best 3D engine ever made and Love of course the best 2d "engine".
They both are open source, cross platform and just nice.

About LUA vs Python:
Python was my first programming language and I think it is the best language to start programming but somehow I like LUA more.
It is not that hard to learn LUA when you know Python.

[osgeld]

my problem with python is its forced formatting, yea its a pita for lua noobs to learn what a tab key is, but its 10x more irritating to copy paste a py script just to find out that the whole format is totally wrong directly off of their webpages

it almost seems cryptic and random what passes as valid or not based on spaces and tabs

and thats some bullshit IMO

[Raider]

Conversely, I'm finding it messy to have to terminate clauses with "end", and start if/for branches and loops with "do" or "then". The advantages of multiline and not having to use indents is lost on me. I use them anyway, so I can see what level an operation is on.

Definitely not looking to start an argument here. (Haven't people run out of fuel to burn in the lua vs python wars?) The simple fact is, it's two separate ways of doing things and neither is better. It's down to which you have gotten comfortable with. The only problem is, no-one spots that little fire extinguisher while trying to out-burn each other.

I'm starting to see the point of Lua. It may not have classes, but I'm already on the brink of switching preference for organisation from class declaration to simple usage of tables. I don't have to use hasattr to check for variables or necessarily initialize them to prevent errors. Advantage right there. Plus I never use inheritance. (More of a struct guy, am I.)

Heck, as far as I can see (what with tables being able to hold overloaded operator functions) a table is just a Python class with the formalities of constructors/destructors stripped. Something like that. But I'm just going where others have boldly gone before, as far as comparations go.



There's BS in your opinion?

[Robin]

I'm with Raider on this one. I use both Py-- BrainFuck and Lua, and love them both.

Although the "none-existant = nil" thing was something I liked at first, later on it just annoys me, because Lua won't complain if I misspell anything other than an indexed table or called function. But anyway, it's just a matter of preference.

BTW, about the obey thing: Have you read this thread? Any questions about motivation are better directed at rude .