love2d vs learning SDL

[Laughing Stock]

I've been trying to follow Lazyfoo's SDL tutorials and I'm understanding what's being written but it's a bit overwhelming to follow everything at the moment. I'll be taking an algorithms course this coming semester and I'll be using some tools to plot datasets so I'm thinking it'll be something I can ease myself into after that.

I'm writing my first game with Lua with love2d just to get more familiar with game logic but I'm wondering if there are limitations I'll run into or why I should be learning something like SDL or SFML.

[daigennki]

Lua is a scripting language, while C/C++ is not, so SDL would definitely be better in terms of performance and optimization. There are also more options with SDL, you could use its built in 2D renderer, or you could do what I did, use it as an easy way to make an OpenGL game on any platform.
I have used neither love2d nor Lua very much though, so sorry that I cannot do much of a detailed comparison for you.

[pedrus]

If your goal is to learn how to make games you should go with love2d first. Even if it's a somewhat limited engine it is a good way to get started on making games. And you should start with simple games anyway, so having a limited engine is an advantage in that case.

SDL is a low level library so you'd have to write a lot of code before having anything close to game. You basically have to make your own game engine first. So if your goal is to learn how to make a game engine or how game engines work, then go for SDL.

[Laughing Stock]

thanks yall

i've been looking and it seems i'll be able to do everything i want w/ love for now. I kinda felt like working with SDL was like rebuilding things I didn't have to worry about yet.

[Gmod4ever]

Another thing to consider is iteration.

A high-level engine like Love2D is great for rapid iteration of ideas. You can use it to quickly hammer out a game idea and get all the systems figured out, see how it plays, do balance and tweaking, and figure out how to make the game fun.

Then, once you're happy with it, you can rewrite it in SFML / SDL to get it much farther down to the metal, eeking out every bit of performance you can. At the same time, you can also take the rewrite as a chance to refocus your game's design in the back-end, to optimize the high-level structure and get it really lean.

[Bambo.]

Hey, if you're not an experienced programmer yet, go for love2d to learn the concepts. Then once you get better at programming switch to sfml/sdl c#/c++ but there isn't much of an advantage with them other than performance, 3d capabilities and language features to be honest.