Hello, I'm new here

General discussion about LÖVE, Lua, game development, puns, and unicorns.
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tomshreds
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Hello, I'm new here

Post by tomshreds »

Hi!

I've been developing software for the last ten years and this week I decided to try out game development.

I'd like to make a 2D RPG, kinda like Earthbound on the SNES.

So far I checked many many ways of making games. I started learning OpenGL, and then went with SFML but I didn't feel it was worth the hassle to deal with C++ for such a "simple" game.

I looked at games made with löve, I saw potential but I didn't find anything worth the "wow" factor. Do NOT get me wrong, löve seems awesome, the community seems wonderful but I'm thinking about the limitations. Is there any?

I mean, as far as portability and possibilities, is it good? Do you have any interesting example story of games that went from löve to Steam?

I don't mean to bash on löve, I really consider giving it a try. So far I'm considering C#/XNA, Lua/Löve, and C++/SFML(or SDL).

At first I thought it was a tool to make games for beginners but seeing all the good stuff people come up with in the community, I'm starting to get interested as I don't need a "beginner solution" but an optimal one.

I hope to be part of the community pretty soon!

Thanks a lot and have a nice day!

/tommy
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paritybit
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Re: Hello, I'm new here

Post by paritybit »

I think you need to consider what you are trying to do and evaluate whether Love will be enough for you -- and that's something only you can decide.

I've been writing software for about 10 years now in C#, C++ and other high level languages; I've always wanted to write games but have never worked up enough courage mixed with enough experience (at the same time) to give it a real shot -- at least until a couple months ago when I stumbled across the Love2d site.

Having some amount of experience as you do, I expect you understand that you probably won't do the right thing from the very beginning. You need to spend some time to learn the theory behind developing games as opposed to whatever kind of software you work on now. Love2d and Lua provide an easy to learn environment to get your feet wet. Or at least they have for me. I'm still not sure that Love is the right long-term platform for me to use, but for now it's very easy to learn and you can see results very quickly. I commonly see it referred to as a rapid prototyping game engine.

You may want to take a look at Snayke as an example of a market-ready game. This shader demo is one of the cooler things I've seen done. Personally, I think Love has what it takes to serve as a platform for marketable games but I'm keeping my ambitions low for now.

It may not be the best commercial engine (mostly because it isn't a commercial engine), but it's definitely easy to learn and community supported.
Last edited by paritybit on Thu Oct 18, 2012 10:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Qcode
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Re: Hello, I'm new here

Post by Qcode »

Well an interesting that made with love is Mari0, a combination of Valve's Portal and Super Mario Brothres. I don't recall any games making it to Steam, but there's two on Desura, Wake Up Call and Snayke. I haven't encountered any limitations, but I've only been using it for a year.
tomshreds
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Re: Hello, I'm new here

Post by tomshreds »

Wow thanks for such nice responses! I really like the "won't get it right" and "nice prototyping engine" argument. I think I'll take the time to try it!

Thanks a lot also for the game recommendations! Greatly appreciated!
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T-Bone
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Re: Hello, I'm new here

Post by T-Bone »

I would say that it's definitely possible to make a game like Earthbound with LÖVE. LÖVE makes it easy to draw stuff in a window and play sounds, as well as manage inputs from keyboard, mouse and joysticks. The rest is up to you, basically, just like it would be with any other framework. The difference is mostly that working with LÖVE is much easier than most C++ libraries.

Also, performance won't be a problem. 2D games run really smooth on most hardware with LÖVE.
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Nsmurf
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Re: Hello, I'm new here

Post by Nsmurf »

Someone posted Mari0 already, but here is the link to stabyourself.

They have made:
  • Mari0: A mario-portal 2d mash up.
  • Ortho robot: A 3d-ish game that has to be played to be described.
  • Not tetris: It's like tetris, but the pieces can rotate in any direction.
  • Trosh: ...
  • Order of twilight: It's a My Little Pony game.
  • Rimshot: Drumbeat synthesizer.
My guess is that if Mari0 didn't involve the portal aspect it could get on steam :roll: I don't mean a mario clone, but something as awesome as Mari0 that didn't involve a steam game.
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T-Bone
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Re: Hello, I'm new here

Post by T-Bone »

There are tons of examples of totally sellable games that could have been made with LÖVE even though they weren't. Cave Story comes to mind. It is simply a matter of if you're good enough a game designer to make a game that's good enough. When you've reached that level, the choice of engine and/or framework doesn't matter all that much.
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ivan
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Re: Hello, I'm new here

Post by ivan »

T-Bone wrote:There are tons of examples of totally sellable games that could have been made with LÖVE even though they weren't. Cave Story comes to mind. It is simply a matter of if you're good enough a game designer to make a game that's good enough. When you've reached that level, the choice of engine and/or framework doesn't matter all that much.
Yep, the technology is not that important, the harder thing is staying focused and excited about your game during development.
Especially during the design stage you won't be getting public feedback/downloads so you have to rely solely on how much faith you have in your original idea.
It's also really hard to avoid burnout after you've been working on a project for over 6-7 months and you have to keep grinding.
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