Gideros for a total beginner?

simonl · February 2018

Hello people. I really need your opinion. Im new to game development. I have some experience in programming. I'm decent with Python. Played a little with C#, JS, Java.
I always wanted to try game development. Not planning this as a career, just first i want to build something for myself and have fun doing it. I want to go with 2D because I have this fun idea for a simple game. So I did some research and engines like Unity or Unreal looks like a total overkill for my project.
So first I tried to build something with Python... built some prototypes with Pygame, with Kivy. It was fun, but I really want to finish my project and then export it for example to Windows. And to make an *.exe file from your Python game... its not fun. Actually Kivy helps with that, but Im not a big fan of the framework itself. So I started to look for alternatives. Like Libgdx, Godot, Cocos2D-x.

And then I discovered Lua. I heard about it couple times before, but never tried it. But now it looks for me like I would feel most comfortable switching from Python to Lua. So I searched for Lua game engines, frameworks. Found Corona, Love2D and Gideros. And I want to ask you people, why you stick with Gideros? Why not Godot or other Lua based engines like Corona, Love2d? Also is Gideros really beginners friendly? I know you guys like Gideros, but maybe for a total beginner like me it would be better to go with some other tool? Oh and I also tried Construct. But I also want to become better at programming, so no visual scripting for me.

oleg · February 2018

try all the engines, and choose the one that suits you

totebo · February 2018

Also try out Defold, it is now a pretty complete package. I use Gideros because it was the best option when I started making mobile games, for the community and because it's so lightweight and without dependencies (Defold requires you to log in with Google to work at all).

kinrpg · February 2018

I use gideros because I think he's a sweetheart.
Joking aside, I searched and experimented with various engines and frameworks in various languages, and even did some experiments with javascrip, delphi and html5 pure, with java and very quick basic and darkbasic.
But then I knew the language moon and I found it very interesting and I started looking for tools that used it to program.
Had an old call apocalypse X that even moved with 3D shaders etc, love, crown etc ...
But I liked how Gideros goes straight to the point. You install or compile the app and you already have editor, interpreter and exporter that is easy to access with a click. A dark theme that lets you write a code a more upscale system.
I use other tools for work, but I do prototypes, videos and tests using giders in a very fast and practical way.
For those who like scripting more than clicking and dragging I recommend.

Gideros, simple and functional code editor.

kinrpg · February 2018

totebo said:
Also try out Defold, it is now a pretty complete package. I use Gideros because it was the best option when I started making mobile games, for the community and because it's so lightweight and without dependencies (Defold requires you to log in with Google to work at all).

True, defold has evolved a lot and has a lot of cool appeal. I recommend for more "big" projects.
It's just bad a few dependencies online from him.

Apollo14 · February 2018

Found Corona, Love2D and Gideros. And I want to ask you people, why you stick with Gideros? Why not Godot or other Lua based engines like Corona, Love2d? Also is Gideros really beginners friendly? I know you guys like Gideros, but maybe for a total beginner like me it would be better to go with some other tool? Oh and I also tried Construct. But I also want to become better at programming, so no visual scripting for me.

@simonl among Lua-based 2D frameworks Gideros is the most powerful.
Just skip Corona&Love2d, Gideros is much better.

Scirra Construct also should be skipped, it instills bad habits, very unhealthy. It's painful to get rid of them later. I started with C2, at that time I thought it was a good for the beginner. While it's actually pretty harmful.

If you wanna try engines, Defold/Unity/UE4 etc. all are worth trying. Maybe some of them will suit you very well.

Is Gideros newbie-friendly?
Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

First, Lua basics should be studied real quick. Just some introductory tuts.
I recommend this or that.
Later on definitely this book should be read: 'Programming in Lua' by Roberto Jerusalimsky. Nobody can avoid it, it's classic.

After getting familiar with Lua syntax, these are newbie-friendly videos by Tom Vencel.
These are a little more advanced.

These books are also very cool:
https://www.apress.com/br/book/9781430246626
https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/gideros-mobile-game-development
(first one is more newbie friendly, second one is not for an absolute utter beginner)

Any question on Gideros asked on forum is usually answered within few hours. This is extremely helpful.
Also forum contains HUGE amounts of information hidden inside old topics.
I use google everyday:
'site:giderosmobile.com some info I need to know'

One thing I can say for sure: Gideros is worth trying. By trying it you don't lose anything.
It just takes few days to get familiar with Lua syntax, and maybe a week to get the general idea of how does Gideros' OOP workflow look like.
Give it a try!

simonl · February 2018

People, really?

If this is the true face of Gideros community then I think I will stick with Gideros just for that. Amazing, thank you for such a fast and detailed responses. Especially @kinrpg and @Apollo14.

@Apollo14 thank you very much for all the information and your advice on Construct. I do not need to ask for more, you provided plenty of guidance for a newbie like me. Especially on Lua part. One of the reasons why I think I will skip Godot, because GDScript is just for Godot... I know its pythonish, but still I cannot use it anywhere else. And as I understand Lua community is growing now. At least thats what I read

Also thank you @totebo for mentioning Defold, first time hearing about this engine, looks interesting.

Again, really cool. Did not expected that much of info. Thank you guys.

SinisterSoft · February 2018

@simonl Hi, I'm glad you are making the move from Python to Lua, they are quite similar, but Lua is better!

You will love the customisations we have made to the Lua language (for games programmers), here is a list: http://docs.giderosmobile.com/reference/enhancement

simonl · February 2018

hi @SinisterSoft

Thank you for the url.

Sorry, i know this is a bad question to ask. But im interested only in your personal opinion. Why do you think Lua is better than Python?

Apollo14 · February 2018

this article is very nice: Lua: Good, bad and ugly parts

antix · February 2018

@simonl welcome aboard!
When I was searching for an engine I tried a few other Lua based ones before I found Gideros. I first tried Marmalade Quick and it was there I just decided I wanted to program in Lua for the rest of my life

Unfortunately Marmalde Quick was buggy as heck and on device performance was very slow (single digit FPS mostly).

I then found Corona which I didn't mind but at the time it required an internet connection to compile which wasn't great.

Lastly I found Gideros and discovered it was blazingly fast and I've been here for about two and a bit years now. The community is friendly and helpful and Gideros is improving all the time. Compared to other Lua frameworks it leaves them in the dust.

We are now upgrading the Gideros infrastructure (website, documents, tutorials). If you came across Gideros in maybe a few months it would be a little different looking. Hopefully in the next month the new website will be online and some new tutorials will be created.

Stick around, it is an interesting time in the history of Gideros to be sure

simonl · February 2018

@Apollo14 thanks, I just done reading this article "...Good, bad and ugly parts". As a beginner I need to be honest, not all the things were clear to me. But yes, in general I have some understanding now. Especially when comparing Python with Lua.

Another question, do you guys use Lua professionally? At your company or as a freelancers?
Im currently working as a junior Unix sys admin. Im enjoying myself, also sometimes I need to use Python at work. Not much, but still need to use it. And I'm enjoying those little moments. But for now im not thinking about switching jobs, becoming a developer. I think I do not have the correct mind for it. Im trying and slowly improving, but only as a hobbyist. But who knows what's in the future. So im also interested in Lua as a tool outside game development. I read that its growing, unfortunately I cannot post a link here of the article. But the problem of that article is that it does not offer a very deep explanation on why its growing. For example Python is huge now and keeps growing in many areas. Especially data science.

Edit:
Thank you @antix for your answer, really enjoyed reading it. I found Gideros like yesterday, followed the name from some post on Reddit. And about Lua I am reading for couple days now. Today after work will be sitting with the tutorials @Apollo14 provided, also during the weekend

You mentioned that you came to the conclusion that you wanted to code in Lua for the rest of your life

So same question, do you use Lua professionally?

antix · February 2018

@simonl if the post from reddit was by rampagingrabbit, then that would have been me

I'm a freelancer and I've been making games with Gideros for a year and a bit. I've published 4 games so far and am working on a Gideros book currently.

oleg · February 2018

@simonl "use Lua professionally?"
In the labor market, lua is used as an additional language, not as a basic one

keszegh · February 2018

hi, when i was looking for a good cross-platform engine some years ago, gideros looked best in many ways, especially for a beginner, as it had (and now it's even better):
-easy export
-quick on-device testing
-full ide suite with simple install (though you can try zerobrane studio for coding in lua, long term)
-lua is a very beginner-friendly and fun language to work with

since then gideros became open-sourced, which is even better and made the community even livelier and active too. new features are added regularly, while the core remains to be very trustable, has no bugs etc.

about other competitors, nowadays there are more good ones, like haxe-based ones (openfl, haxeflixel, etc) look nice, i don't know about defold, etc. but after years i'm still happy with my choice and do not feel the need to change from gideros to something else.

Apollo14 · February 2018

I've been working full-time online since 2009. At first I worked as web developer, mostly with my own projects. But in the last few years webdev became extremely overcrowded, so I left it for good. Many websites suffered huge losses because of social networks, youtube, aliexpress, etc.

App market is also overcrowded, definitely it's not as good as it was 8 years ago

but at least it is trending now. We have at least few years before market becomes too overcrowded.

I'm also newbie mobile developer

@simonl Lua does not to be a life-time investment

We don't have to choose either Lua or %langname%

As far as I know Python is great for one stuff, Lua is great for another, we don't even need to compare them.

It is considered that LuaJIT is good for backend, faster than Node.js for example, but if I was interested in backend web development, I would most likely choose Node.js or something extremely popular so it would be easy to find a freelance job if needed.
Lua is also used in bigdata&machine learning (Torch framework)

Now I'm interested in 2D mobile games so I'll play with Lua. If something else will start trending in the coming years, I will have no problems to put aside app development and try my luck there on the new grounds.

Apollo14 · February 2018

depends on what you want
for robust lightweight mobile 2D apps&games, Lua&Gideros are pretty good
for everything else there are everything else

if one wants to get hired, Lua is not a great choice
Unity/UE4, especially VR/AR developers are in demand

simonl · February 2018

Thanks @Apollo14
You are right... You made me think. I guess now im focusing more on tools than on my goals. First i need to focus on my goal and then choose the best tool to achieve it.
After my research I see that Lua is mostly used in game development. So that says a lot and i think im making a good decision choosing Lua for my game idea.

SinisterSoft · February 2018

In the good, bad, ugly article the main for for me was bitwise operators not being present - to me there were also a few more things missing that are used a lot when coding games. But luckily Lua is open source and we added them to our 'flavour'.

As for Python, I don't like the way that it ends an IF statement, it's also slow.

In my normal work (not games) I use a mix, for quick utilities I use something called PureBasic that can produce small, tight executables, I also like to use FASM as I'm most comfortable in assembler.

antix · February 2018

For a 9-5 cubilcle grind, Java, C, and PHP are good languages to learn. For Game dev inside some AAA nightmare go for C. If you want to be independent and stick your fingers up at the establishment then for Lua all the way

It is good practice to pickup a little knowledge on different languages too. Sometimes when searching for a solution to a Lua problem I get results for Java, C and so on so it's good to be able to convert those to Lua on the fly.

oleg · February 2018

In my country, the demand for JS has risen sharply

simonl · February 2018

JS all the way in my country also. Also PHP and Java. Some C#, but not too much. And then Python, but mostly as a requirement for DevOps jobs. Anyway, found this really interesting opinion about Lua, future of Lua. But I cannot post links, so will try something with white spaces https:// www. quora. com /What-career-can-one-obtain-by-learning-the-Lua-programming-language

I especially liked this part: "...See, Lua at the moment does to applications what PHP and JS did to pure HTML under Web 1.0 during the 90’s. It transcended a pure text description language into something interactive, something intelligent and reacting..."

oleg · February 2018

Java and C # have few vacancies
JS and PHP-have many vacancies

hgy29 · February 2018

In the end once you know two or three languages, you know them all.

talis · February 2018

@simonl welcome on board. Let me share My Lua and Gideros experiences.
First time i met Lua in World Of Warcraft. WOW has an addon system which can be developed using it's own api in LUA language. I directly dived to it and wrote couple of addons. It is learning curvature is so much high up to some degree for me.(Advance topics are sometimes still a little bit mystery to me) Till now i like Lua and using it in my personal work also.

I have discovered Gideros in 2012 and loved the community and people in it. Even those times the framework itself was not so much powerful as now community was the same. In time Gideros developed rapidly and became so much powerful in many ways. Now i can easily say that with one or two alternatives around it is staying in the top 3 for mobile development.

Hope you will also enjoy your time using Gideros.

simonl · February 2018

Thank you @talis for your answer. I heard about Lua and WOW, but i started playing wow just recently on private Nostalrius and now on Elysium servers, so im really new to this whole wow thing

Anyway currently im learning Lua and I hope during this next weekend will be able to dive in to Gideros. Unfortunately because of my full time job i do not have as much time as i would like to. Yesterday after work was watching Black Panther, such a long movie. When i got back from cinema it was really late and I lost a day of Lua

So yeah, daily struggle of trying to learn something new on your limited personal time.

hgy29 · February 2018

My first attempt at lua occured while writing dissectors for wireshark. I found the language quite easy to learn, but its full power was revealed to me when I discovered gideros. There is nothing you can't do in lua:
- passing functions as arguments is something natural in lua, while it can be painful in C or Java
- you can create classes dynamically
- you can override or add any property to an object (table)
- you can redefine system API
- you can catch and modify internal operations through metamethods

Its only drawback to me is its lack of performance, which gideros is trying hard to mitigate though.

Unknown · March 2018

For a 9-5 cubilcle grind, Java, C, and PHP are good languages to learn. For Game dev inside some AAA nightmare go for C.

simonl · March 2018

Thanks for additional messages people, I get notified to the email and really enjoying reading them.

Have another question. What do you think about tools like this?

Is it good or they just making it worst? Because they are creating this illusion, that you do not need to code, its like coding is almost bad and just some wizards are actually doing it.

So look people, its just point and click now and you can make hundreds of dollars on Steam also. So lets create more Unity cancer in Steam shop or Google Play, lets create hordes of those poorly optimized games who looks and plays exactly the same

I personally think that you would learn much more about game development by just using Python Pygame or if you want to dive in to this more seriously then with Lua. I hate when these companies does this. I understand they need more users, they need to grow, money money money, but...
I remember I was doing this project, visualization with Unreal engine and because I know zero of C++ I tried to do my scripting with their visual scripting tools, called blueprints. It was a nightmare when I tried to do something more custom... I cannot imagine how you can complete your project only with tools like that. Just an illusion and misguidance. But there is always a possibility that I simple did not know how to use those tools properly...

oleg · March 2018

@hgy29 I like unity3d, but the unity creates a very large "apk" size

simonl · March 2018

I like Unity also, I like it more than Unreal because of C# and some features of their editor. I needed to help with scripting in couple interactive visualizations and it was quite fun. But I do not like some of their decisions. But I guess they need to grow their company...

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