The Language of LÖVE
So, I’ve started dabbling in games development with a few game ideas I’ve got bouncing around in my head. And whilst I wanted to make wonderful, amazing, visual feasts of games - I also wanted to start a bit slower and ease myself into what is essentially the most difficult discipline of software engineering around.
Cue, LÖVE - an engine dedicated to 2D games (there are 3D libraries available for it). It uses LUA, and pretty much encourages diving straight into the code and learning how to make a game, as opposed to learning the tools and figuring out how to use a suite of (albeit amazingly powerful) tools.
I worked on some basic tutorials last night, and I’m enjoying learning both LUA and the engine right away. It’s quite logical from what I can tell so far and I found a few tutorials especially helpful in understanding what’s going on:
- this tutorial about Tilemaps by Kikito helped me understand how to use spritesheets, and make use of them effectively
- your first game in 200 lines by OSMStudios showed really, how quickly games could be thrown together (perhaps good for future GameJam participation?)
- basic platformer tutorial from OSMStudios also shows different kinds of movement and techniques
I’ll probably start blogging a little bit about my upcoming game idea and my adventures in tinkering around with the LOVE 2D engine. So stay tuned!