Flixel 2.0 vs Love2d

02 Mar 2011

Choose Flixel over Love2d.

I recently made a post about Pygame vs Love2d. I declared love2d a winner by a whisker (unless the project you are working on is huge). That post didn’t mention details, eg: setup time, language and art resources.


Flash builder environment, it’s based on Eclipse so it’s good.

Why Flixel is awesome:

  • Making a game takes 5 minutes. Really.
  • You can run it on anything (ex iPhones)
  • It looks pro, (choosing pixel art = fast dev and looks cool)
  • ActionScript 3.0 rocks, it’s a better version of Java
  • You spend more time thinking about your game, instead of how it works
  • Graphics things (eg blend modes) to make your game pretty

If you’re participating in a game jam, expect to get 2,000 hits on a flash page instead of 30, people hate downloading .exes. If you want to $ell your game, you can can make an .exe or .app to distribute and no one will know you cheaped out.


Love2d working environment. Scripts and tabbing, yuck!

Why Love2d sucks:

  • Lua is not a game dev language (eg: lacks basic ADTs)
  • Lua’s documentation/API is crap
  • Love2d lacks optimizations, (eg: no sprite group, so bliting 1,000 objects is slow)
  • The Garbage Collector is shit, it will delete at random times causing choppy behavior & crashes
  • Distributing takes ages (expect to waste 1 hr for both mac & PC)
  • No good examples
  • Most IDEs don’t support lua (setting up an environment is nasty)

I admire both their licences: Love2d = zlib, Flixel = “do what ever you want”. Flash is of course proprietary and is needed to run Flixel. So you may have to display a Adobe Flash logo if your game becomes the next Minecraft. These details are pedantic, but something to keep in mind.

So try Flixel 2.0 today. It’s awesome.

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Pygame vs love2d

29 Dec 2010

The pygame vs love2d debate is a new one. They both specialise in 2d and are fast at pumping out games.

I started making a few games in pygame.

  • python language is great, and has many libraries
  • python is more object-oriented and popular (finding help is easy)
  • medium – large games are best made in pygame
The new kid on the block, love2d has some good points too:
  • distribution is easier
  • coding in lua is faster
  • love2d’s API is better
  • love2d is being updated
I love2d is the winner. Especially if you’re participating in a gamejam. However, if you’re making a more serious game, make it in pygame. You’ll run into less trouble, as coding OO in lua is a bit finicky. I also noticed there are some garbage collection issues, this should be fixed soon (as of this writing love2d is at v.7)

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