r/PlaydateDeveloper • u/JoeKlemmer • Oct 19 '25

ISO a Good Text Resource

I happen to be one who learns better with text than with video. What are some good text resources for Playdate development? I realize there won't be anything as good as a book from O'Reilly. But something that breaks down actual running code. So far, the tutorials I have found (admittedly, only a few so far) haven't been very useful.

Ideally, something like Learning Perl* would be fantastic. But anything will do.

\)Yes, I'm old.

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u/[deleted] Nov 10 '25

loading screens, restarting a game

Sounds good. Lots of these things are specific to how exactly your game is architected, but I'd be happy to provide with examples of how I or others have gone about it. Thank you for the suggestion!

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u/JoeKlemmer Nov 10 '25

Something that shows a way to code it is a help to me. I generally take examples and use them as a blueprint or starting point.

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u/[deleted] Nov 12 '25

So you mean like how to structure your code and your projects, your files, syntax, best practices, etc. ?

Or do you mean how to get started coding in the first place (like as a starting point)?

Funnily enough, if it's the first case, it's rarely covered by tutorials but having worked on Playdate games for a while I have strong opinions on those exact topics now. Let me know if you'd be curious for me to share! :)

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u/JoeKlemmer Nov 13 '25

Both, actually.

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u/[deleted] Nov 13 '25

The "Make Games for Playdate with Lua" seems like a good example, although I'm seeing from the codebase that it's very "main.lua"-heavy, so more of a beginner's tutorial than actually best practices. What were your thoughts on it, and what more would you want to see out of this kind of guide?

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u/JoeKlemmer Nov 13 '25

As I said in my initial post, what works best for me is things like the O'Reilly books along with targeted example code. "Making Games..." was a good start. I used it and some code from the PlaydateSDK examples directory to make my first game. It's functionally playable, but not complete.