continued explorations: Lua
Apr. 5th, 2025 08:54 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yhlee posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
making_gamesBeen a minute again; I'm buried under a novel.
What have y'all been up to in gaming and/or game design and/or gamedev?
- Gabe Barrett's Find the Fun, aimed toward tabletop game design - and fulfillment/manufacturing considerations, which is sure A Mess right now vis-à-vis the US and trade war. :]
- Michael Futter's The Gamedev Business Handbook is terrific and eye-opening, and within 30 pages convinced me that I never want to start an indie game studio. Hard talk about businesss incorporation, cash flow, employer obligations to employees, etc. (yes, there are caveats all over to the tune of "please check with a LAWYER in your LOCAL JURISDICTION" for fine detail, especially at the current moment, whatever it is). I was saying to friends elsewhere that selling your house or remortgaging your house to fund an indie game studio, for me, is OH HECK NO mode (I know at least one person who has done one of these) and was also the moment that I realized that I'm more financially risk-averse than I thought I was. I'm still reading because I'm curious; I've been applying to game writing and narrative design roles (I made it to round 3/final round interview this past week for one role, although it is doubtful I will be offered the role and that's okitty, I know what to bone up on to be more competitive and the interviewers were great!) so this is now in a spirit of "I want to have a general understanding of how game studios work financially/business-wise as someone who is looking for work as an employee."
- Defold 101 [Zenva: free online video course with downloadable source code, assets, PDF materials; requires signing up for the website]. I've heard mixed reviews of Zenva's coding/gamedev courses generally, but all the ones for Defold (cross-platform open-source 2D-specialized games, coding in Lua) specifically are free. This one was super helpful for me as an orientation to the IDE! (Defold itself has a number of pretty good tutorials.)
- Beyond Defold, I finally figured out how to get Matchanovel (visual novel package for Defold) running - Halfstar, the dev, was incredibly kind and responsive when I ran into issues I couldn't work out how to solve by looking around the web, reading documentation, etc. Matchanovel is itself a WIP and some of the documentation for more advanced features isn't there yet or requires a higher level of Defold + Lua proficiency than I have yet attained, but I'm working on it! In particular, the sprite placement system is such a pleasure after wrestling with the genuinely BONKERS system in Ren'Py.
- Picked up The Beginner's Guide to Lua for Game Development [itch.io, $15 USD, about ~100 pages], which is honestly terrific as an intro to the language. It assumes you are starting from zero, which is not me (I had the two years of CS so I know basic mode OOP, control structures, etc.) but it's well-written and friendly. Also mad props tbh that it starts with a (brief) overview of Turing Machines and assembly to motivate "so why Lua" as a high-level language. It recommends working through the exercises with the Onecompiler online interpreter. And mad props that this comes in a PDF, a light mode HTML file, and a dark mode HTML file. I actually avoid dark mode like the plague in displays because it messes me up in migraine-adjacent ways, but I know people who are the other way around, and this is a terrific accommodation.
- I'm looking forward to exploring PICO-8 Fantasy Console:
I ordered an Anbernic RG CubeXX as a ~retro handheld that should arrive today, and on which I plan on installing PICO-8, so we'll see how it goes! PICO-8 uses a version of Lua so that'll be fun. :)
Next up for me is probably Roberto Ierusalimschy's Programming in Lua 4th ed. (since PICO-8 and Defold both use Lua).
What have y'all been up to in gaming and/or game design and/or gamedev?
- Gabe Barrett's Find the Fun, aimed toward tabletop game design - and fulfillment/manufacturing considerations, which is sure A Mess right now vis-à-vis the US and trade war. :]
- Michael Futter's The Gamedev Business Handbook is terrific and eye-opening, and within 30 pages convinced me that I never want to start an indie game studio. Hard talk about businesss incorporation, cash flow, employer obligations to employees, etc. (yes, there are caveats all over to the tune of "please check with a LAWYER in your LOCAL JURISDICTION" for fine detail, especially at the current moment, whatever it is). I was saying to friends elsewhere that selling your house or remortgaging your house to fund an indie game studio, for me, is OH HECK NO mode (I know at least one person who has done one of these) and was also the moment that I realized that I'm more financially risk-averse than I thought I was. I'm still reading because I'm curious; I've been applying to game writing and narrative design roles (I made it to round 3/final round interview this past week for one role, although it is doubtful I will be offered the role and that's okitty, I know what to bone up on to be more competitive and the interviewers were great!) so this is now in a spirit of "I want to have a general understanding of how game studios work financially/business-wise as someone who is looking for work as an employee."
- Defold 101 [Zenva: free online video course with downloadable source code, assets, PDF materials; requires signing up for the website]. I've heard mixed reviews of Zenva's coding/gamedev courses generally, but all the ones for Defold (cross-platform open-source 2D-specialized games, coding in Lua) specifically are free. This one was super helpful for me as an orientation to the IDE! (Defold itself has a number of pretty good tutorials.)
- Beyond Defold, I finally figured out how to get Matchanovel (visual novel package for Defold) running - Halfstar, the dev, was incredibly kind and responsive when I ran into issues I couldn't work out how to solve by looking around the web, reading documentation, etc. Matchanovel is itself a WIP and some of the documentation for more advanced features isn't there yet or requires a higher level of Defold + Lua proficiency than I have yet attained, but I'm working on it! In particular, the sprite placement system is such a pleasure after wrestling with the genuinely BONKERS system in Ren'Py.
- Picked up The Beginner's Guide to Lua for Game Development [itch.io, $15 USD, about ~100 pages], which is honestly terrific as an intro to the language. It assumes you are starting from zero, which is not me (I had the two years of CS so I know basic mode OOP, control structures, etc.) but it's well-written and friendly. Also mad props tbh that it starts with a (brief) overview of Turing Machines and assembly to motivate "so why Lua" as a high-level language. It recommends working through the exercises with the Onecompiler online interpreter. And mad props that this comes in a PDF, a light mode HTML file, and a dark mode HTML file. I actually avoid dark mode like the plague in displays because it messes me up in migraine-adjacent ways, but I know people who are the other way around, and this is a terrific accommodation.
- I'm looking forward to exploring PICO-8 Fantasy Console:
Welcome to PICO-8!
PICO-8 is a fantasy console for making, sharing and playing tiny games and other computer programs. It feels like a regular console, but runs on Windows / Mac / Linux. When you turn it on, the machine greets you with a commandline, a suite of cartridge creation tools, and an online cartridge browser called SPLORE.
Get PICO-8 $14.99
Windows | Mac | Linux | Raspberry Pi
Specifications
Display 128x128 16 colours
Cart Size 32k
Sound 4 channel chip blerps
Code P8 Lua
CPU 4M vm insts/sec
Sprites 256 8x8 sprites
Map 128x32 tiles
The harsh limitations of PICO-8 are carefully chosen to be fun to work with, to encourage small but expressive designs, and to give cartridges made with PICO-8 their own particular look and feel.
Creative Tools
PICO-8 has tools for editing code, music, sound, sprites, maps built right into the console. Create a whole game or program in one sitting without needing to leave the cosy development environment!
Shareable Cartridges
PICO-8 cartridges can be saved in a special .png format and sent directly to other users, shared with anyone via a web cart player, or exported to stand-alone HTML5, Windows, Mac and Linux apps.
Any cartridge can be opened again in PICO-8, letting you peek inside to modify or study the code, graphics and sound.
I ordered an Anbernic RG CubeXX as a ~retro handheld that should arrive today, and on which I plan on installing PICO-8, so we'll see how it goes! PICO-8 uses a version of Lua so that'll be fun. :)
Next up for me is probably Roberto Ierusalimschy's Programming in Lua 4th ed. (since PICO-8 and Defold both use Lua).
