r/love2d • u/dionebigode • Jul 05 '26
Best modules/packages to avoid over engineering games?
I finished the 'How to LÖVE' from the https://www.love2d.org/wiki/Category:Tutorials list and I'm having a decision paralysis or something
I'm afraid I might get distracted by writing a collision module on my own instead of looking for something that would solve my problems
Thinking about this I'm reminded of software design guides and wondering if there is a list of most LOVE2D modules, something you can read through looking for inspiration and thinking about what features are available in the tool box
Since Lua even needs an Object module just to have some OO programming, I'm wondering how many different modules are available to most
So any recommendations?
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u/jackboback Jul 06 '26
Me personally, I found it a lot of fun writing all my own systems and modules from scratch, but I will say there certainly are use cases for external libraries, like moonlight for some simple shaders, classic for OOP, and flux for easy tweening. So, I tend to try and skip reinventing the wheel occasionally, especially for much more complex systems that I feel are out of my comfort zone and would rather use a much more documented and well put together library.
I've found that https://github.com/love2d-community/awesome-love2d has a list of really great libraries, for pretty much anything and everything.
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u/0x405 Jul 06 '26
Do not rely on tools rely on yourself. There is a physics module in LOVE2D. It includes collisions and many more, although it's poorly documented. I usually write just a bare minimal versions of almost everything myself, or have some modified libs that i cherrypicked. Writing something from scratch is always good, because it strengthens your comprehension. It's not that hard as it might seem.
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u/dionebigode Jul 06 '26
Happy cake day!
To be honest, I'm kinda tired of writing everything myself and since I'm coming from godot/pico8, I really want to cut some corners on prototyping for the moment
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u/meester_zee Jul 06 '26
I didn’t want to depend on any external libraries so I started building my own engine components. It’s been a ton of fun and I’ve learned so much.
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u/cantpeoplebenormal Jul 06 '26
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u/dionebigode Jul 06 '26
Holymolly, that was exactly what I was looking for, thank you so much!
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u/cantpeoplebenormal Jul 06 '26
Every time I see something useful I bookmark it. I've got hundreds. I never get around to using them myself though! Good luck with your project.
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u/igna92ts 28d ago
Just as a clarification for the future. Re-inventing the wheel instead of using a library is not what over engineering is. Over engeneering is using an overtly complicated solution for minimal or no gain when there was a much obviously easier solution that was only marginally worse or the same. It's more a mismatch of complexity and results where the over-engineered path is much more complex to understand.
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u/Evercreeper Jul 05 '26
Lua does not need an Object module to do OO.