Slashdot Mirror

What constitutes indie is one questions (and AAA is even harder to come to a consensus, even among my work peers) but that said...

As a child of the 80's, who adamantly played video games (e.g., Apple ][, arcade, 2600, NES, etc...) and got into professional game development over 10 years ago (I work for a AAA studio and my have my own gig for nights/weekends) I'd agree with those who say now, 2014, is the best time for indie game development.

Powerful engines and Middleware tools are accessible with licenses that fit indie budgets (e.g., Unity3d, Unreal4, etc...) as well as a swatch of free software for development. (e.g. Phaser: http://phaser.io/ Blender http://www.blender.org/ Love https://love2d.org/ Flixel http://flixel.org/ Haxe http://haxe.org/ )

The internet, as-is, provides indies with a way for
- distance-collaboration (Skype, E-mail, Groups, etc...)
- community building (Twitter, CMSs, Facebook, etc...)
- fundraising (IndieGogo, Kickstarter, HumbleBundle, Paypal, custom web-based donation system, etc...)
- advertising (game communities, news outlets, etc...)

Organizations, such as the International Game Developer's Association (IGDA, http://igda.org/ ) and events like the Global Game Jam, PAX (IndieMegabooth), and MAGFest also contribute to the community of indie game developers.

It is a great time to be an indie game developer in terms of accessibility and ability to achieve a sustainable income.

If you like Lua, I'd try Love: https://love2d.org/

https://love2d.org/

You don't *have* to install it, I'm pretty sure you can get that running off a usb stick, it's just a LUA interpreter with a bunch of utility functions... but if you want to get stuff moving on the screen, it doesn't get much painless than this. Of course, LUA isn't super usable for a whole lot of things (not compared to javascript), but seriously... all programming at the core is the same fucking thing. It's just pushing around values in variables plus arithmetic operations and control logic, with various levels of syntactic sugar. Might as well start with something that's fun and then move on when you start feeling the limitations.

It might not seem "serious" enough for the workplace. But in the case your boss isn't a stuck up nolifer, you might still be okay ^_^

How many modules will you now have to load? How many APIs will you now have to learn?

Usually, you're one import('...') away from LINE, PLOT and CIRCLE likes.

Many are just packaged as "game engines". For example, Lua has LÃve - I think it's not much harder to save something like

function love.draw()
    for x=1, 255 do
        for y=1, 255 do
            love.graphics.setColor(x,y,0)
            love.graphics.line(x*2, y*2, x*2+1, y*2+1)
        end
    end
end

to main.lua and run it with "love ."

I've personally had some luck with something that's not on this list yet: Lua and LÃ-VE. Yes, it's 2d; but it's cross-platform, simple, and very very easy to use. As a bonus, it uses Lua, which has some traction other places in some games.

http://love2d.org/

http://www.ruby-lang.org/
http://love2d.org/

That is all.

it's down right now, but when it's not, it's a very easy way to get results very quickly without, you know, wasting your time learning crap:

http://love2d.org/

(mod as you wish, I'm posting this now since I might forget later)

Check this out -

Based around LUA, and its got a full online tutorial. He could be making simple games within a few days.

http://love2d.org/

Very neat stuff.

LÖVE might be a better start. It is a 2D game engine that uses LUA and has support for just about anything, physics included.