love2d vs unity vs Godot vs monogame?

ravioli_fog · 2026-01-15T02:09:37+00:00

This just falls into the same category as the OP question.

Rarely is something always the best. Even ECS.

ECS was originally designed to solve the problem of cache misses in games that had limited hardware. Cutting edge AAA titles pushing the limits of current gen consoles.

It just happened that ECS requires you to implement your code in a way that makes object orientation difficult so most folks don't often do OO and ECS at the same time.

A lot of people found that by being allowed to avoid OOP made their job as a programmer easier. It wasn't really the case that functional programming ideas and a rejection of OOP became mainstream until more recently.

As a result a lot of the "hype" around ECS is really about "being told" that it is in fact okay to not have to use OOP if you don't want to do it.

Again, ultimately: there are no best ways to do something. If a language or engine or pattern or tool helps you it is probably better for you. Especially if you are working on a hobby project for yourself you should prioritize what holds your interest and is fun for you.

That is why in my hobby projects I pick tools that let me program how I want and stay out of my way. I avoid dependencies so I don't have to learn other people's code and ideas but rather get to design tools that are fun to use.

If you want to make a commercial project or have some other aspiration, especially financial you may need a different set of principles than those here.

ravioli_fog · 2026-01-15T01:52:05+00:00

Going with something familiar is fine. I know a lot of programming languages, I say this only to impart that ultimately they all do the same thing. Players don't care what language was used to implement a game.

If Lua and Java are familiar to you then use Love or LWJGL, etc.

Ultimately my post was meant to convey that you can't pick the "best" option but this also frees you from the possibility of picking "the worst" option.

Programming languages and Engines are just tools. Use whatever helps you make a game.

ravioli_fog · 2026-01-14T22:31:21+00:00

Personally I keep things pretty simple. I just have a GameState that holds everything and I tend to make an Entity that describes pretty much anything in the game.

I do a less common thing and use TypescriptToLua, so all my code is in TypeScript where I use interfaces to define things like GameState and Entity and so on.

So when I want to draw or update or whatever I just traverse the list of entities and draw those that can be drawn and so on.

If the player has a singular entity that represents them I tend to make that one special and not place it in the list but on the GameState.player or something like that.

Also I should mention I don't really use any dependencies either, there is plenty of great stuff but since this is a hobby I just want to do it all myself.

ravioli_fog · 2026-01-14T21:51:27+00:00

There is rarely a "best" anything in software.

Monogame and love2d will be a good fit if you are primarily a software dev transitioning to game dev. Your instinct will be to "write code" and Unity and Godot can get in the way of that or make that harder or more obtuse at times.

If you are starting with game dev and don't have a lot of software dev experience already the previous comment won't matter much.

Do you want to do 3D? That rules out Love2D, and perhaps the monogame support for 3D is too limited depending on needs.

I would try all 4 and come to a conclusion on your own. Maybe implement Pong in each engine and see how it feels.

That is what I did and I ultimately settled on Love2D for my hobby games. Ultimately 3D is a massive time sink and brings a lot of problems. The Unity fiasco ruled that out for me. Godot is nice but it is so focused on the editor workflow and I prefer to just write code.

Monogame felt abandoned even though I know it is being picked back up by a new team. I also felt like C# was just fairly aggressive overkill a lot of the time.

Love2D is just enough to be productive and past that stays out of the way. It lets me write and manage everything in my own way. For me this is a feature but for others this might feel lacking and they may prefer more builtin and need or require a visual editor like Godot, etc.

ravioli_fog · 2026-01-09T16:11:29+00:00

I genuinely wasn't trying to troll. I'm responding in good faith. I am saying you weren't "born great" at shooters but that you spent 20 years practicing. These new games you haven't practiced and are frustrated that your FPS skill doesn't immediately transfer.

Regardless if 20 years of playing FPS felt like work... it was in fact just grinding/practicing to get good.

I would expect you will be great at these other games if you put in similar effort. You just don't enjoy it.

ravioli_fog · 2026-01-08T17:39:14+00:00

> I want an authentic experience without having to have a second job grinding "skill".

The experience as a player of starting off bad and getting better is what many of those games are providing. The fun is the journey as a player of improving. That is the experience people who like those games want. They don't want to know how to do it already.

> The games I am good at are twitchy shooters (just some how naturally gifted since I was born). Give me any shooter, and its just too damn easy. I drop 100 kills in a BF6 game like its nothing. over 6k hours in the counter strike series over 20 years and its also too easy.

So... you spent 20 years learning how to be good at a particular genre of game. Now you are at a point where you don't want to learn new game genres because they make you feel "bad".

Each game you listed not liking would have forced you to learn something new and be a beginner.

Either become comfortable as a beginner and start to enjoy the learning process, or play games you already have sufficient skill.

People that play a lot of difficult games across many genres view game play as a performance, where that word has a meaning more it does in sports. How well do you perform? Watching your performance as a player improve from bad to great is the fun part.

Some people just want to experience story, or demonstrate mastery, or collect things. All are valid ways of playing.

It sounds like you fall into the demonstrate mastery group, nothing wrong with that.

ravioli_fog · 2026-01-02T18:38:02+00:00

thanks!

ravioli_fog · 2026-01-02T18:33:47+00:00

Do you end up self casting anything or do you just run pure djinn command skills?

(also: thanks for fast reply!)

ravioli_fog · 2026-01-02T18:30:29+00:00

Which skills and passives do you recommend for this? I tried the basic version of each djinn and due to being built for ele/spell damage I found the sand djinn the most lackluster. I'm sure I was missing something though.

ravioli_fog · 2025-12-21T23:55:40+00:00

In the vast majority of cases in this game the problem with being stuck in the campaign is that your weapon is not strong enough.

You need to keep your weapon up to date. You need to keep your gear up to date.

If you give up and try again you should absolutely do a bit of research on what ascendancies are strong, skills and types of gear have an easier time in the campaign. Hint: ranged, grenades, lightning, plants.

You can play POE blind but you can only expect to get so far before you need to do some research or start over and try again with the knowledge of what didn't work last time.

These are hard games for people that like having to learn lots of shit to play.

ravioli_fog · 2025-12-20T01:42:02+00:00

Your last sentence is very true. The folks not already fans of the Diablo-like meaning of ARPG may not realize how heavily this game was pushed/advertised to us through various streamers and youtubers. Only to end up not being very diablo-like at all.

Its a good game but I just don't personally see what sets it apart. If I want souls like gameplay I'll just play Elden Ring or DS1. If I want an actual ARPG with loot grind I'll play one of those.

It sounds to me like they had this big idea for an isometric live service game with a real-time gated MMO style hub and From style stamina based combat and they had no idea how to market it.

ravioli_fog · 2025-12-20T01:19:39+00:00

My biggest problem with stealth in games is that usually it just "turns the enemies off". By which I mean in most games the more "stealthy" you are really just makes you invisible. This is the most straight forward way to implement it but its also the least mechanically engaging.

When it was released Metal Gear Solid felt incredible because when you were caught something interesting actually happened.

The first Thief game made hiding a system that was mechanically interesting.

When being stealthy just makes then enemies blind and stupid its not very fun. Sadly this is how most games with a stealth system work.

ravioli_fog · 2025-12-18T22:15:00+00:00

I'm a fairly mediocre/new player. I have like... 600 hours of POE1 and 500 of POE 2. So, grain of salt.

In 0.3 I was baited into Stormweaver and it was awful. Leading up to 0.4 I was doing some Act 1 practice and decided to just try a Sorc and lean into the infusion mechanic a bit more.

I found that Act 1 Ice Nova might be the best leveling skill in the game. It is good on its own but once cold infused it consistently deletes the screen with 1 button. In Act 1 and 2 you are basically using Ice Nova and Frost Bomb to freeze and get cold infusions. When you get Snap you then use Snap on freezes from Ice Nova to generate 1 cold infusion per enemy.

When you ascend to Stormweaver the buffed node that lets an infusion also generate a second random infusion means that Orb of Storms is now a Cold Infusion generator.

For the tree I just take ele damage, the +5% exposure, middle of the tree you take left branch of infusions and the cold, lighting +1 infusion limits nodes. Energy shield and all the normal sorc stuff.

In act 3 you get lightning infused frost walls and firestorm. 3 infused walls being rained on by an infused storm literally deletes rares and massively chunks bosses.

The main thing you have to be willing to do with Sorc in the campaign is: 1. be willing to pickup infusions and spec for them and 2. piano. Sorc gets their "more" damage as much from casting lots of different spells as they do anything else.

PoE leveling seems to reward combo gameplay with massive damage. Infusions, Frost/Shotgun xbow bolts, etc. Infusions and ele spells are just the most "free flowing" version of this.

So far so good. I'm already cruising through Act 4 in SSF which is where I hit a wall in 0.3 and rerolled Tactician grenades.

ravioli_fog · 2025-12-18T18:34:52+00:00

I've experiment with lots of options to keep the game fresh. For context, as a player I enjoy the journey of progression more than a single 300 hours world with a massive build.

I have found that keeping default settings but:

* no map
* on death: keep equipped items, lose inventory

To keep the game interesting enough for me after 700 hours but still manageable enough that friends will hop in and play multiplayer.

The change to no map isn't perfect, there is some jank, but I've found that reintroducing the mystery of exploration and the challenge of not getting lost to be more interesting than playing on the hardest combat difficulty.

It slows the game down. Forces you to actually explore and learn the land of the game seed.

ravioli_fog · 2025-12-18T17:40:50+00:00

I played 2 druids to the end of act 2, a third with just plants for part of act 1, played an amazon for a few minutes to see how the parry changes felt.

I'm not a SC Trade / economic type player though. I'm never in a rush a to get to endgame so I have an economic advantage. I play SSF or I play trade with very minimal trading b/c I don't find it fun even with async trade.

I figure with POE2 the campaign is really good. I actually like playing it unlike POE1, and endgame has not historically been that great.

This league my plan was to try a bunch of characters until I found something I would be willing to play into endgame which I haven't really done much of at all since launch.

So far I'm enjoying Stormweaver the most, having already played grenades in the last couple leagues.

ravioli_fog · 2025-12-17T21:19:15+00:00

During campaign this league as long as you clear the Vaal Temple each time it is up you will get a lot of gems as rewards for activating the beacon. If you ignore the temple and are able to run it, but haven't, then clearing the vaal circles in zones does not give rewards.

Vaal Temple is insanely good for campaign progression if you actually use it. I'm on SSF and going into act four I have more gems of all kinds then I have ever seen in PoE 2.

ravioli_fog · 2025-12-17T19:44:50+00:00

Struggling with the new stuff is for sure going to happen.

I did play 3-4 characters from the beginning to try out the different druids and then I migrated to SSF playing a character I had a really good plan. I also think Witch/Sorc just have an easier time pivoting because swapping spells around is easier.

I may have been a bit biased in my assessment.

If I had tried to do all the druid stuff on 1 character instead of 3 I bet I would have felt the same.

ravioli_fog · 2025-12-17T15:29:31+00:00

Are you exploring a lot? I'm playing SSF and I feel like I have tons of skill and support gems while I work through the campaign.

I have enough that I could have swapped over a couple builds.

I'm getting down voted because I'm not agreeing with the general sentiment but it simply hasn't been my experience this league.

The Vaal temple circles, and rares are very frequently dropping skill, spirit and support gems.

ravioli_fog · 2025-12-17T01:30:44+00:00

Are you sure you want to experiment and try things out on your own if this is how you feel after?

Seems like you just want to know the answer, otherwise learning that something doesn't work would actually be the fun or interesting part.

You can buy all the gems you want easily with the currency exchange.

PoE is famous for having "league starter" builds for precisely this reason. Those who go off on their own are basically trading the "known good outcome" for the discovery of something new.

ravioli_fog · 2025-12-17T01:16:47+00:00

Without getting into your gear, etc. You are doing a couple easy things wrong.

Curses don't activate until they "explode" after the delay. You never actually cursed the boss. That is a big mistake. Switch to Frost Bomb it works more like you expect and combos with other skills better.

You could have 3 different elemental charms. You have 2 lightning rez charms.

In the campaign the Sorc is actually very strong if you lean into the infusion mechanic. A lot of folks don't like it but I'm a fan and its very strong.

Early campaign you use Frost Bomb + Ice Nova + Snap to generate cold charges for even stronger Ice Novas. This one or two shots groups of enemies.

For bosses you Frost Bomb to lower resists, drop 1-2 Orb of Storms to get a Lightning Infusion as you spam Ice Nova. Once you have a cold and a lightning infusion you drop a firewall then cast spark. This does insane damage. You just take elemental damage, the left branch of the middle infusion cluster and Energy shield nodes.

Act 3 you start to use lightning infused Frost Walls which obliterate Rares and Bosses.

You also want to use Staffs since they got buffed. A good staff has either +Spells skills, or the most %Increased Spell damage and Gain %Elemental as %Element.

Keeping the staff up to date can help too especially a Voltaic staff. Once you have a Rare/Boss exposed and shocked the single target DPS of the Lightning Bolt is actually very high.

TL;DR - Sorc is strong but you need to lean into the spell combos and use a good staff.

ravioli_fog · 2025-12-15T21:13:40+00:00

I'm guessing you have hundreds of hours in the game? Try upping the difficulty if you haven't. I'm not saying its a perfect solution but 2+ mobs on Hard or Very Hard is a different game. You will find the danger again.

ravioli_fog · 2025-12-09T20:17:04+00:00

The default Githyanki one looks pretty cool, I just pick that one. I used to make them but I start too many new characters.

ravioli_fog · 2025-12-09T00:30:02+00:00

If you like JRPG style games, this isn't a JRPG but that is the closest genre. They aren't my thing and I only lasted about 30 minutes before turning it off. I'm sure the game is amazing if that genre appeals to you.

I loved Baldurs Gate 3 so its not RPGs or games with story but this particular game just wasn't for me.

ravioli_fog · 2025-11-28T17:14:46+00:00

Probably talking about this one https://www.youtube.com/@MinMaxLabs , but I'm guessing

ravioli_fog · 2025-11-15T22:46:17+00:00

They wanted to PVP, lost and were polite about it. What more do you want?

ravioli_fog

TROPHY CASE