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Welcome#

Introduction#

I began my programming journey at the age of 14, dabbling in web development projects. However, my true infatuation began with Love2D: an amazing little piece of software. It captivated me with its simplicity: no hefty installer, no dependencies, and a thriving community. Its embedding of Lua within the executable felt like magic. Love2D became my go-to for not just games but various projects.

Exploring Other Frameworks#

In my quest, I explored various engines and frameworks, each with its strengths and weaknesses:

  • Unity: Proprietary and bloated, I struggled to finish projects due to its vastness.
  • Unreal Engine: While powerful, it felt impractical for indie developers due to its resource-heavy nature.
  • Godot: A better alternative to Unity but overwhelmed me with its features.
  • Monogame/FNA: Similar to Love2D in philosophy but lacked a strong library community and robust documentation.
  • LibGDX: Great but reliant on large dependencies like the JVM and Gradle, causing complexities.
  • Game Maker: Reminiscent of Unity, loaded with features, but lacked intuitive polish.

Exploring even raw C/C++ and OpenGL, I found their productivity limited in comparison to existing rendering libraries.

Raylib - A Marvelous Find#

Raylib stood out like Love2D: simple, intuitive, with a great community. However, being primarily a C library, it lacks the ease of use of other higher level frameworks, and while it has many language bindings, they are not always up to date.

Love2D's Shortcomings#

While Love2D is what made me fall in love with programming, some things always bothered me:

  • Missing core features.
  • Reliance on external libraries.
  • Sparse learning materials and an outdated feel.
  • Absence of 3D support.

These are just minor things, and some are just design decisions of the framework itself, but I always felt like they were limiting.

Pesto Is Born#

After five years in game development, I dreamt of an ultimate game framework. Love2D and Raylib had their merits, but I envisioned a one-size-fits-all tool to empower anyone to bring their creative vision to life with ease.

Pesto aims to merge the best of Love2D and Raylib into a lightweight, fast, and Lua-scriptable framework. With a simple API, intuitive documentation, and examples, it seeks to be the perfect solution to build any type of program.

Limitless Creativity For Everyone#

In a tech landscape with many existing frameworks and engines, Pesto aims to emerge as an open-source, beginner-friendly, and feature-rich platform. It strives to empower users' creativity while maintaining simplicity and standards.

If all of this resonated with your aspirations, continue reading to discover all about Pesto!