Building Game Prototypes with LÖVE • Hacker News Board

Re: Building Game Prototypes with LÖVE

#41

Post by trevorhinesley » Wed, Jan 01, 2025, 5:12 AM UTC

jasonhr13 wrote: post #39

trevorhinesley wrote: post #4

To the OP, try DragonRuby for your next game if you miss hot reloading but like the scripting, code-first nature of LÖVE. It’s also cross-platform. Not sponsored, just a big fan and it scratches many of the same itches as you described with LÖVE.

I prototyped a game in a few frameworks/engines, namely: Godot, GMS, Defold, Love, and DragonRuby. I ended up sticking with DR because I found the api the most intuitive, and because I’m a career ruby dev and just can’t get myself to enjoy Lua. I find DR and Love to both be fantastic for those who just want to code.

Preach! Similar experience here. Agreed on Lua too. Love that some people dig Lua; to each their own, it’s just not for me.

Re: Building Game Prototypes with LÖVE

#42

Post by mattfrommars » Wed, Jan 01, 2025, 5:12 AM UTC

I'm always amazed how people like author "learn" and "build' so quickly. I recently started to dabble with unity on basics and no way on earth I can build, say something like Heartstone clone or the interaction. My background is web back end mostly.

Good stuff OP.

Re: Building Game Prototypes with LÖVE

#43

Post by fooster » Wed, Jan 01, 2025, 5:44 AM UTC

aquova wrote: post #10

modernerd wrote: post #5

Balatro was made with LÖVE, and a lot of it like the background and score flames were made with GLSL to reduce the amount and size of assets: https://www.reddit.com/r/PixelArt/comments/143ybxa/pixelated... The OP mentions hot reloading and there are a couple of repos that may help with that: https://github.com/clofresh/love-module https://github.com/usysrc/LICK Their card game prototype is really impressive for three…

Balatro recently published a mobile version of their game, but I was under the impression Love2D only supported desktop platforms. Has that changed?

Love may not but there is nothing inherently unworkable with Lua and iOS. I released an iOS game which used luajit on ios and it worked great.

Re: Building Game Prototypes with LÖVE

#44

Post by Kenji » Wed, Jan 01, 2025, 5:55 AM UTC

mattfrommars wrote: post #42

I'm always amazed how people like author "learn" and "build' so quickly. I recently started to dabble with unity on basics and no way on earth I can build, say something like Heartstone clone or the interaction. My background is web back end mostly. Good stuff OP.

[dead]

Re: Building Game Prototypes with LÖVE

#45

Post by Pufferbo » Wed, Jan 01, 2025, 6:42 AM UTC

mattfrommars wrote: post #42

I'm always amazed how people like author "learn" and "build' so quickly. I recently started to dabble with unity on basics and no way on earth I can build, say something like Heartstone clone or the interaction. My background is web back end mostly. Good stuff OP.

I’ve found using frameworks like Love, or Pixijs more approachable when coming from a programming background. It’s more like learning the library rather than an entirely new approach to building software.

Re: Building Game Prototypes with LÖVE

#46

Post by pull_my_finger » Wed, Jan 01, 2025, 6:57 AM UTC

I'm a big fan of Love and Lua, but one thing that always bothered me was that there's no real "great" solutions for a) cross platform/web/mobile distribution. I know there are 3rd party solutions but for as mature as the framework is, you'd think it could get a first party solution. The same goes for several API's that you'd think are core to game making, like sprite animations. There are fairly mature libraries, but I always hate having a bunch of patchwork libraries that should be included batteries instead of 3rd party boilerplate.

Re: Building Game Prototypes with LÖVE

#47

Post by jmpavlec » Wed, Jan 01, 2025, 7:45 AM UTC

delduca wrote: post #12

I have been using my engine https://github.com/willtobyte/carimbo Demo https://carimbo.run/play/1.0.30/willtobyte/megarick/1.0.30/7... You can use Lua as scripting language.

FYI the link at the top of your GitHub to play doesn't work. Seems maybe you changed the domain name or maybe the version is outdated compared to the link you pasted here.

play.carimbo.cloud vs carimbo.run

Re: Building Game Prototypes with LÖVE

#48

Post by xixixao » Wed, Jan 01, 2025, 7:46 AM UTC

fn-mote wrote: post #9

The article gives a sketch of three games the author built. It sounds like the velocity was provided by consulting LLMs. It’s fun. I wonder if the creative feeling is an illusion, though. Does the fact that the LLM doesn’t feel like it is directly copying work it has ingested make the experience feel different than just ripping off a project you find on GitHub? Anyway, I would be very interested in a write up that gi…

Have you ever had a creative feeling programming in a higher level language? Did you realize you were harnessing the power of the abstraction, “ripping it off”, without writing a line of assembly yourself?

That said, the LLMs are weak right now. They are great for getting some initial boilerplate (how do I draw a circle with HTML Canvas API?), but as the project grows you’ll be fixing them more and writing your own code. Give it a try, especially with Cursor. It’s awesome.

Re: Building Game Prototypes with LÖVE

#49

Post by occz » Wed, Jan 01, 2025, 8:18 AM UTC

edflsafoiewq wrote: post #29

fao_ wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It took them many months to get it on Android. It's surprising given that back in June? 2024 I just extracted the .love zip from the executable, patched a file or two, and merged it into the love android apk and it Just Worked. Just goes to prove the last 5% rule

The difficulty of porting to mobile is generally changing the UI to work well on a small touchscreen.

The desktop UI actually worked pretty much fine on mobile, to be honest. I ran it for a while using the porting methods available from the desktop binaries to an APK. The mobile UI basically just changes the interactions from a small button on the card to a drag-bases UI, which is slightly better on mobile.

Re: Building Game Prototypes with LÖVE

#50

Post by Pufferbo » Wed, Jan 01, 2025, 9:37 AM UTC

p2detar wrote: post #20

domlebo70 wrote: post #8

What do people think of Phaser? Currently playing around with it. API seems pretty large

It's a full-blown game engine and you can do A LOT with it. I've created several js games with it and it never let me down. I've never tried using it with ts, but it should be even better. edit: Just wanted to add that Phaser has one of the best docs out there including a library of tons of examples that can really get one going.

How does it compare to Pixiljs?