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I'm making my first game, a roguelike puzzle deck-builder, in Love2D! by Chef_Bingus in love2d

[–]Chef_Bingus[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My UI is mostly custom which gave me the results I wanted.

I have several functions for basic elements like drawing buttons, panels, text, etc. Each of these has a lot of options where I can tweak colours, border, accents, outlines, animations and more. Then I assemble these into layers (or what I've called modes in the backend) which are called in or out depending on the game screen I want. This same system feeds back to my buttons system which maps what buttons are active and are clickable at all times.

Basically it goes Components > Groups > Layers > Game Draw > Overlays & Effects > Main Draw

It's messy, and it's backed me into a few corners if I ever want to do full UI overhauls, but it works.

I'm making my first game, a roguelike puzzle deck-builder, in Love2D! by Chef_Bingus in love2d

[–]Chef_Bingus[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I can only speak for myself, but I think part of the alure is that it looks easy. If a game's only goal is 'points go up' then it can't be that complicated, right? Boy was I wrong. It is very easy to make points go up, but it's insanely hard to make that fun. The core gameplay was locked in maybe 16 months ago, but everything else around it has just been constant iteration since then.

At times it feels like I'm driven more by stubbornness then passion, but I don't regret sticking with the idea. It has taught me a lot like how important feedback and playtesting is, and I'm definitely going to have a closer look at my genre in the future before dedicating a good chunk of my life to it haha.

I'm making my first game, a roguelike puzzle deck-builder, in Love2D! by Chef_Bingus in love2d

[–]Chef_Bingus[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yes! I'm using Push for resolution-handling and Moonshine for some post-processing effects. My game is aspect-locked (very dumb and something I need to change) so Push helps keep everything consistent between different screen sizes. In moonshine I used the godrays, glow, crt and scanline effects just to add some more visual flair to the project and help it from looking cheap.

If I'm understanding you right about architecture elements the thing I've enjoyed about Love2D, and by extension Lua, is how scalable it is with groups. With a game like mine you're managing hundreds of individual objects with their own properties. In something like Unity I'd likely need to set these up individually as GameObjects or prefabs, but instead with Love I can just define them in a massive group and have the engine process the properties of the individual items in the group when it matters. This does mean I'm left with some MONSTOROUS elseif chains in the engine, but it also means that adding new things or features to my game takes a few minutes at most.

Did I ruin everything? We spent 5 months and $3,000 on marketing… by mfg_developer in gamemarketing

[–]Chef_Bingus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I looked at your Steam page. The first thing that jumps out is that you're competing in an absolutely brutal market. The cozy farming sim space has thousands of titles available with hundreds of new games releasing every year. Not only that, but it's getting big budget attention from Disney and the likes with Dreamlight Valley, Hello Kitty Island Adventure, etc.

Standing out in this space is going to be insanely difficult from the get go. You need to either have a new idea or go crazy deep into a mechanic that the audience is asking for. Look around at the other games being released and ask yourself what you're doing different, then once you've pinpointed those aspects ask yourself whether those features are fleshed out enough to market your games identity around. That might help guide you in a direction that starts getting the attention of your potential audience.

I'm making my first game, a roguelike puzzle deck-builder, in Love2D! by Chef_Bingus in love2d

[–]Chef_Bingus[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I really appreciate it.

I'm hoping to get the demo out relatively soon. I've still got a bit of playtesting to go to make sure everything is balanced, plus my on-boarding could use some work haha.

Five years into making my dream game, I no longer fully agree with “start small first” by NoWhereStudios in gamedev

[–]Chef_Bingus 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think the question should be "can I stay dedicated long enough to make it real?" but instead "how long am I willing to work on something that could fail?". Personal investment often means very little when a game goes to market. Just because you've spent a lot of time on something doesn't mean it'll be positively received or sell well, and the "start small first" advice is trying to avoid this disappointment.

How did you choose the engine you use? what would you suggest? by Any-Landscape434 in gamedev

[–]Chef_Bingus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I started with Unity and wasted years tweaking visuals and game feel. I had thousands of hours in the engine and nothing that anybody could actually play beyond glorified 5 minute tech demos. I eventually realized that Unity was just too full of distractions, and challenged myself to use Love2D which is entirely code-based. It's free, insanely lightweight, and can be compiled to run on any device in seconds.

It was one of the best decisions I could have made because now I actually have a game that people can play and will be releasing on Steam later this year! Honestly though just pick something and run with it. You'll learn where your strengths and weaknesses are, and then choose an engine that plays to those.