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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 sponsore

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.

je42 2y ago
Love 2d can be quickly extended with hot reloading. See https://github.com/rxi/lurker https://github.com/rxi/lurker
- trevorhinesley 2y ago
  That’s awesome! It’s been a core feature of DragonRuby since the start, and they share similar framework values from what I can tell. It’s worth a look. I’m not the biggest Lua fan, personally, so DragonRuby scratches the right itch.
vunderba 2y ago
Hmmm. DragonRuby seems to be a closed source proprietary game engine (at least as far as I can tell). With open source engines like Love2D / Godot / PhaserJS / Pyxel becoming more popular - this may be a deterrent for many devs on HN. Something else to consider is traction, if you get stuck in DragonRuby there's probably not a huge amount of docs/tutorials around it. That being said, it does seem like they have a pretty active Discord at least.
- trevorhinesley 2y ago
  > DragonRuby seems to be a closed source proprietary game engine Yes, but check out: https://docs.dragonruby.org/#/misc/faq?id=dragonruby-is-not-open-source-thats-not-right https://docs.dragonruby.org/#/misc/faq?id=dragonruby-is-not-... And https://docs.dragonruby.org/#/misc/faq?id=what-if-i-build-something-with-dragonruby-but-dragonruby-llp-becomes-insolvent https://docs.dragonruby.org/#/misc/faq?id=what-if-i-build-so... > If you get stuck in DragonRuby there’s probably not a huge amount of docs/tutorials around it. You’d be surprised. The docs are extensive and there are sample games galore in the distro. https://docs.dragonruby.org/#/ https://docs.dragonruby.org/#/ Also the Discord is incredibly helpful and the creators chime in regularly. It’s a pretty special engine and community IMO
  - vunderba 2y ago
    I totally get it - I'm not definitely not casting aspersions on their choice to go commercial with it. I just feel like with the insane Unity pricing restructuring (which they ultimately rolled back) - a lot of game devs have been pretty gun shy about investing in another proprietary engine. That said, we can always use more game engines / frameworks!
jasonhr13 2y ago
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.
- trevorhinesley 2y ago
  Preach! Similar experience here. Agreed on Lua too. Love that some people dig Lua; to each their own, it’s just not for me.
  - d3VwsX 2y ago
    I never was a big fan of Lua and that was something that kept me from looking closer at Löve, but a few months ago I discovered fennel (Lisp-like that transpiles to Lua) and that you can use that to write Löve games. This looks like an up-to-date introduction: https://itch.io/jam/love2d-jam-2024/topic/3484009/getting-started-with-fennel-and-lve https://itch.io/jam/love2d-jam-2024/topic/3484009/getting-st... The "absolutely minimal Löve 2D fennel" repo was useful to me as I found the other templates a bit bloated (but possibly those are more useful for real-world projects beyond small experiments?): https://sr.ht/~benthor/absolutely-minimal-love2d-fennel/ https://sr.ht/~benthor/absolutely-minimal-love2d-fennel/ I did find that startup-time was bad for Fennel om some very low-end devices, or when running even a small game using LoveDOS in DOSBox, so I set up my test-projects to pre-compile the fennel-code to Lua as part of building the .love-files and that solved that problem.

je42 2y ago

Love 2d can be quickly extended with hot reloading. See https://github.com/rxi/lurker https://github.com/rxi/lurker

trevorhinesley 2y ago
That’s awesome! It’s been a core feature of DragonRuby since the start, and they share similar framework values from what I can tell. It’s worth a look. I’m not the biggest Lua fan, personally, so DragonRuby scratches the right itch.

vunderba 2y ago

Hmmm. DragonRuby seems to be a closed source proprietary game engine (at least as far as I can tell). With open source engines like Love2D / Godot / PhaserJS / Pyxel becoming more popular - this may be a deterrent for many devs on HN. Something else to consider is traction, if you get stuck in DragonRuby there's probably not a huge amount of docs/tutorials around it. That being said, it does seem like they have a pretty active Discord at least.

trevorhinesley 2y ago
> DragonRuby seems to be a closed source proprietary game engine Yes, but check out: https://docs.dragonruby.org/#/misc/faq?id=dragonruby-is-not-open-source-thats-not-right https://docs.dragonruby.org/#/misc/faq?id=dragonruby-is-not-... And https://docs.dragonruby.org/#/misc/faq?id=what-if-i-build-something-with-dragonruby-but-dragonruby-llp-becomes-insolvent https://docs.dragonruby.org/#/misc/faq?id=what-if-i-build-so... > If you get stuck in DragonRuby there’s probably not a huge amount of docs/tutorials around it. You’d be surprised. The docs are extensive and there are sample games galore in the distro. https://docs.dragonruby.org/#/ https://docs.dragonruby.org/#/ Also the Discord is incredibly helpful and the creators chime in regularly. It’s a pretty special engine and community IMO
- vunderba 2y ago
  I totally get it - I'm not definitely not casting aspersions on their choice to go commercial with it. I just feel like with the insane Unity pricing restructuring (which they ultimately rolled back) - a lot of game devs have been pretty gun shy about investing in another proprietary engine. That said, we can always use more game engines / frameworks!

jasonhr13 2y ago

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.

trevorhinesley 2y ago
Preach! Similar experience here. Agreed on Lua too. Love that some people dig Lua; to each their own, it’s just not for me.
- d3VwsX 2y ago
  I never was a big fan of Lua and that was something that kept me from looking closer at Löve, but a few months ago I discovered fennel (Lisp-like that transpiles to Lua) and that you can use that to write Löve games. This looks like an up-to-date introduction: https://itch.io/jam/love2d-jam-2024/topic/3484009/getting-started-with-fennel-and-lve https://itch.io/jam/love2d-jam-2024/topic/3484009/getting-st... The "absolutely minimal Löve 2D fennel" repo was useful to me as I found the other templates a bit bloated (but possibly those are more useful for real-world projects beyond small experiments?): https://sr.ht/~benthor/absolutely-minimal-love2d-fennel/ https://sr.ht/~benthor/absolutely-minimal-love2d-fennel/ I did find that startup-time was bad for Fennel om some very low-end devices, or when running even a small game using LoveDOS in DOSBox, so I set up my test-projects to pre-compile the fennel-code to Lua as part of building the .love-files and that solved that problem.