Trial and Error(Blog 1) - 7/14/21

Last Friday I decided to join a gamejam with a friend of mine since I had never done one before. Originally I had planned on using Python/Pygame because that is what I had been using lately to work on my Python skills. Once I had talked to my friend about it, they didn't really want to use it because they prefers Lua/Love2d. So I had thought about it a little bit and then was just like, ya know what who cares let us do it in Lua/Love2d, I had previously used it(a few years ago), just not a whole lot. My friend just basically explained to me that it does a lot, just people basically sleep on it.

I wasn't really going to argue, because I do agree. Lua as a whole is a really neat language, pretty similar to Python. And since I had previously used it, it wasn't a big deal to me to just go with that.

So since 7/9/21 we have both been working on the game. Over the weekend I ran into some issues just trying to get controller support working properly. The documentation for Love2d isn't terrible by far, but just some parts of the docs just don't explain it well enough, and some functions don't have any example code. After looking at the docs to implement the Dpad and not finding anything and after sifting through the docs, and surfing Google and Stackoverflow, I basically just did a lot of trial and error in order to get it all working.

I used what information I did have and just tried to go through the possible ways to make the joysticks work for movement. Eventually I figured it out for the most part, and with some help from my friend we tweaked it to work properly.

I guess that is the thing about programming. So many people think it is just knowing all these different things, or that all the answers will always be on the internet. When in reality, sometimes that just isn't the case. Sometimes you have to take what you do know, and combine that with just trial and error. The best way to learn or figure out something, is usually just trying. Doing something to work towards whatever it is you are trying to do/implement.

Anyway, the jam ends this friday 7/16/21. Once the game is done and up on my Itch.io I will definitely link it. I also may be adding it to my portfolio. So I'll keep y'all posted.

- Dandelion