Retro Gadget - A Gadget Creation Station

[jztemple2]

After discussing this game (Steam link) over on the Video Games Randomness thread I went ahead and picked up this game through Green Man Gaming to get the 20% discount. Archinerd showed some interest in the game so I thought I'd take the bullet for the forum and start giving impressions once I get more up to speed.

I've barely scratched the surface of the game, having watched a tutorial video and realized that just like when in my real world job back in the late seventies I had to learn a new coding language, it was easiest for me to just copy, paste and tweak rather than study .

[Archinerd]

I did end up grabbing it too.
I have pretty much zero coding experience, and not much more in electronics. We'll see if I can wrap my head around any of it.

[jztemple2]

I've put in a couple of hours and it is clear to me that this is a Lua coding game. Sure, you can build cool gadgets, but everything needs at least one Lua file to run. Now it seems that there would be three type of people who are attracted to this game:

1. People who know Lua and would enjoy a game where they could put that knowledge to use.

2. People who don't know Lua but have done some coding and like it and are mentally young and agile enough to learn a new language.

3. Sixty-nine year olds who have not done any coding since the first Reagan administration but for some reason thought that buying a game that actually requires learning a new coding language would somehow be fun.

I'll leave it up to the reader to decide which category I belong to .

There are a number of gadgets already in the Workshop and while some are protected so you can't directly copy their code, at least you can look at it for examples. However, I'm still at a great loss to understand why things are coded a certain way. My plans to just do some copy and paste have failed miserably. I'll actually have to find some online tutorials to introduce me to the basics of Lua.

[Anonymous Bosch]

I'll actually have to find some online tutorials to introduce me to the basics of Lua.

The following video was posted seven years ago, but it provides a terrific outline of Lua basics that you may find helpful:

[jztemple2]

I'll actually have to find some online tutorials to introduce me to the basics of Lua.

The following video was posted seven years ago, but it provides a terrific outline of Lua basics that you may find helpful:

Thanks, I'll give it a look.

[coopasonic]

Now that I am not programming every day as part of my job I wonder if I could convince myself to program in my leisure time. I never wanted to do it before because it jsut felt like I was still working, but now it would be different from going to meetings, typing up emails and creating slide decks.

[hitbyambulance]

i'm still not sure why Lua didn't catch on more than it did - it seems mostly used for game scripting now. Python just kinda steamrolled over it*

EDIT: from an answer on Quora:

Lua is not without some problems.
Some of these limitations are:

1) All variables are global by default.
Most variable should be local NOT global. Adding local everywhere creates messy code.
And not adding local everywhere causes people to get variable scope wrong and many errors occur as a result.

2) Does not handle binary and hex numbers correctly.
Binary number display is limited to 32bit signed. The only way to use the 32bit or larger binary numbers is to perform all calculations in decimal and avoid binary. As result you end up rewriting a lot of library code to fix this stupidity.

3) Numbers can only be floating point.
Fix point calculations which are necessary in some mathematical formulations require unnecessary hacks flooring at the “right” time in the calculations.

I have used Lua for several years. And because of these faults, NO one in our group will ever voluntarily use Lua again.

* and a bunch of other languages. anyone hear where Ruby is these days?