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- Sparse learning materials and an outdated feel.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!