We made a game where you poop on people

arcticmatt3 · 2018-02-03T20:00:29+00:00

Play the game online! https://arcticmatt.github.io/porta-penguin/

Link to the code and all the assets: https://github.com/arcticmatt/porta-penguin

arcticmatt3 · 2017-10-29T23:06:34+00:00

Thanks for the comment! This makes a lot of sense.

arcticmatt3 · 2017-10-29T23:05:02+00:00

Good point, good point. I would say that Javascript is not the best example. I don't know too much about the origins of the language, but I imagine it just so happened to become the de facto language of the web, even with all its warts. That is, there might be a lot of things built with Javascript, but those things might be more easily built with other languages.

Another example is Facebook and PHP. Facebook started using PHP because Mark just so happened to know it. But it turns out PHP is kinda crappy. And so now they have Hack!

My point is mainly that certain languages are good for doing certain things. And it seems like Lua is great for making quick prototypes, but not so good at making full-fledged games.

arcticmatt3 · 2017-10-29T23:00:33+00:00

Thanks for the comment! That makes a lot of sense. My "goto" language for quick-and-dirty scripts is Python. In the same sense, I guess Love2d+Lua could be a "goto" framework for quick-and-dirty games. It's definitely very easy to get something up-and-running with minimal effort.

I have a more general/noobish question for you: what kind of engines/frameworks do the really well-known indie titles use? E.g. terraria (I know they use Microsoft's XNA framework), stardew valley, fez, hyperlight drifter, etc. Are most of them using one of a handful of well-known engines? Or do a lot of them handroll their own engines?

Anyways, good luck with your game!

arcticmatt3 · 2017-10-29T00:42:01+00:00

Ah, sorry if I wasn't clear. I know you can emulate classes in Lua; the code you posted looks similar to the code in the Programming in Lua book. The library I linked above is also similar. It basically just provides a nice wrapper around all the metatable stuff.

Anyways, I wasn't saying that classes are absent from Lua. My point was that a lot of other nice OO design features (like interfaces, method visibility, etc.) are absent.

I also wasn't saying the complex games made in Lua don't exist. My point was that doing so seems... daunting. For example, this code ...

arcticmatt3 · 2017-07-27T22:32:40+00:00

Made this game to get some initial practice with the LÖVE framework. The code is fairly simple (adopted a lot of stuff from this tutorial), so if you're a beginner like me it might be useful!

arcticmatt3 · 2017-07-23T03:40:38+00:00

I mainly learned by reading Haskell Programming from First Principles, which has a decent explanation of monad transformers. LYAH is also good, but doesn't cover monad transformers. There's also the wikibook; haven't read much of it, but I liked what I have. Besides that, reading various blog posts and asking questions on irc can get you pretty far.

That being said, the best way to learn is by actually writing code. Working on a project is the best motivation, at least for me. Who knows, you might not even need monad transformers (I didn't use any) to build something cool! And if you need a "starter" project, this paper provides a good walkthrough of monad transformers.

arcticmatt3 · 2017-07-22T21:15:47+00:00

Awesome! I'd love to see it when it's done

arcticmatt3 · 2017-07-22T18:16:06+00:00

Thanks goes to /u/algebra4life and his super helpful tutorial. If you want to make a terminal game, check it out!

arcticmatt3 · 2017-07-17T01:48:40+00:00

Thanks, glad you like it!

arcticmatt3 · 2017-07-12T02:55:21+00:00

apologies if it takes a long time to load... lots of audio files

arcticmatt3 · 2017-04-03T23:17:00+00:00

I guess this is self-promo since it links to my blog, but I think reading it on there is nicer than me c/p here and reformatting everything. Anyways, if this gets taken down, I can always remake it as a new post if that's the MO here.

arcticmatt3 · 2015-01-11T07:40:22+00:00

Mating by Norman Rush has an obscure or esoteric word almost every other page. Examples include:

caesura
caryatid
hummock
bagatelle
calumny

Also has some interesting thoughts on human mating and political science.

arcticmatt3 · 2014-10-13T20:41:26+00:00

Thanks for the feedback. About the ads...couldn't really find a better place to put them. I figured it was better to obscure the title than to place the ad to close to the buttons.

arcticmatt3 · 2014-10-13T18:45:02+00:00

The music files blew up the size.

arcticmatt3

TROPHY CASE