Can anyone tell me if LÖVE is right for me?

[mutantant]

Hello to you all.

I have been following this project for a while, and played with it here and there. However, I am looking to create a real game and I am banging my head in indecision on just what to do for the engine.

I am the kind of guy that will let a form of 'tool paralysis' set in, looking at features and the like in engines until my eyes pop out and hide in a corner somewhere.

So, anyway, no one can help me if I don't say what I am looking for, so here it is. I am looking to create some large and complex 2d games. Space exploration stuff like StarFlight/Star Control, big fat universes stuffed with planets you can land on and mine, etc.

I have heard both great and terrible things on all the engines out there, like GameMaker Studio, Construct 2, etc. and I just don't know if sticking to something so pre-built is a good idea, not to mention they cost $ to get all the features. Construct 2 deploys on a lot of hardware, but has a wonky drag-drop programming thing that I hate, and its games are in HTML5 which is strange to think about, even if technical HTML5 is pretty serious stuff. GameMaker has been used for some decent stuff, but all the decent games most likely used custom plugins or additions coded outside the studio anyway.

So I was wondering if you kind folks could show me some LÖVE and let me know if LÖVE could handle sizable projects in a sane manner, including the fairly large amount of data that needs to be shuffled, saved and loaded in a big game, or if in your opinion it would be unwieldy. I know it is basically a framework, and as such there is no real 'hard' limit on anything, but nothing compares to the insight any of you could give me on this.

Thanks for taking the time to read this, and all input on this matter is appreciated.

[micha]

According to a speed test on this webside: http://www.sparkrift.com/2012/1/love2d- ... na-vs-sfml, löve is not the fastest option in terms of game running speed. However it is really fast in terms of development speed. Lua is easy to learn and yet powerful. The build-in functionality of löve is such that you can start coding right away, withough having to set up a compiler and stuff.

There is a default function for the game loop, but you can override it, if needed. You have full flexibility, it is real programming. Löve is not a drag-and-drop game engine. The only constraint is, as far as I know, that your game has to have a window. So if you want to do a pure text game, löve is not what you want.

Is love appropriate for large projects? I believe yes. The largest project I know is mariO, see here: http://stabyourself.net/mari0/

The reason, why I stay with love is the following: Programming a game is quiet a big project and many games are not finished for some reasons. It is already hard enough to structure your own work and ideas. Löve doesn't get in your way by posing implementation problems. A lot of functionality can be implimented in a simple and straight forward manner.

[Pash]

I finally chose lua/love2d because I believe for projects where you want re-usability from code and quick development time, and something that is cheap/free - there is no contender. I tried GMS but the coding part didn't grip me, I couldn't see a real code map, so I chose love.

[mutantant]

Thanks for the replies.

I read the web article on speed differences. I noticed, though it fared poorly in the speed tests, the author still had nice things to say about ease of use, etc. And frankly I can't imagine ever nearing a 6000 sprite threshold in an average 2d game, at least without going nuts with particles or whatever. Certainly not while spinning and re-sizing them all at once as he did in his benchmark.

So I think I will give Love2d a whirl. Why not. I like what micha said about 'implementation problems'. I think that's exactly what bothers me about things like GameMaker Studio. You have to learn the way they do things before you can even begin planning your own project.

Oh, and the Mari0 game linked prior is quite a game. The whole site is filled with impressive stuff that really gets one excited about the possibilities of LÖVE.

Thanks again.

[scutheotaku]

I read the web article on speed differences. I noticed, though it fared poorly in the speed tests, the author still had nice things to say about ease of use, etc. And frankly I can't imagine ever nearing a 6000 sprite threshold in an average 2d game, at least without going nuts with particles or whatever. Certainly not while spinning and re-sizing them all at once as he did in his benchmark.

Also, as the author of the article points out, LOVE uses Lua which is an interpreted language, while the other libraries/frameworks in his test use languages which are compiled. So it's no surprise that LOVE performs noticeably worse than the others in such extreme cases

If you're concerned with performance, I'd suggest looking into the LuaJIT version of LOVE: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8750#p53963
I haven't experimented with the LuaJIT version of LOVE much yet, but I've heard of people getting 60-80% performance gains with it over the standard version of LOVE.

[mutantant]

I read the web article on speed differences. I noticed, though it fared poorly in the speed tests, the author still had nice things to say about ease of use, etc. And frankly I can't imagine ever nearing a 6000 sprite threshold in an average 2d game, at least without going nuts with particles or whatever. Certainly not while spinning and re-sizing them all at once as he did in his benchmark.

Also, as the author of the article points out, LOVE uses Lua which is an interpreted language, while the other libraries/frameworks in his test use languages which are compiled. So it's no surprise that LOVE performs noticeably worse than the others in such extreme cases

If you're concerned with performance, I'd suggest looking into the LuaJIT version of LOVE: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8750#p53963
I haven't experimented with the LuaJIT version of LOVE much yet, but I've heard of people getting 60-80% performance gains with it over the standard version of LOVE.

Absolutely, I know all about the speed issues of interpreted languages. I started programming on an Atari 800 computer with Atari BASIC - you want to speak about slow. 1.4mhz 6502 processor interpreting BASIC in 48k of RAM... good times. But, having coded in all sorts of languages, I will say I like working in interpreted languages so much better. No compile, link nonsense. Just code-run-code-run. Thanks for the link to the LuaJIT version of LÖVE.