Game 3: Tetris

Mac .app also!

This game was made in Lua, using the LÖVE library. I'm a big fan of tetris, especially the music.  I made my own music and sound effects using a GameBoy emulator which was great fun!

I hadn't used anything much like Lua before and it took me a while to start to get to grips with it. I kept being surprised when my Lua code actually worked! I miss Java's strictness and Eclipse's helpful touches. I found it interesting how Lua simulated classes but, ultimately, it felt like a big of a faff. I think Lua is cool but if I'm doing object-oriented programming then I'd rather use something that supports it a bit more natively.

LÖVE is a great library, their website and tutorials are a joy to use. I could instantly get started and the LÖVE hello world is comically easy. Importing images and sound was wonderfully simple and the only problem I had was that occasionally sound wouldn't play (that bug may still be in the game). The only problem with LÖVE is that it can't export very easily to run in a website. There are plans in the works for this but I was unable to get it to work. I wouldn't recommend LÖVE to new developers though, as I feel Lua is a bit tough for new starters although that may be because I'm used to Java.

I'm pretty happy with how the game turned out, considering I was a bit strained for time and spent a while getting a working knowledge of Lua. I thought it would be interesting to have the game present more difficult puzzles instead of getting faster so I added most of the 5-length tetrominoes and I think this worked pretty well.

Next week I haven't decided yet! I plan to use JavaScript and Phaser though.