The Challenge of New Tools

When I arrived at LEAP Game Studios I found myself in two projects that needed two very different tools which I had never used before: libGDX, a java based game development framework, and Defold, a lua based game development engine.

Starting with libGDX was very smooth. Guides were very easy to find and read and there were detailed explanations for anything you attempted to do. Furthermore, its workflow with a global scope and local screens was familiar to me so I was able to learn it quite fast.

On the other hand, starting with Defold was more difficult. My Windows installation had problems with Microsoft services like Edge which were needed to use the editor. I was finally able to download my project and start working after formatting the PC but, having limited experience with game engines, I also had to spend some time understanding the different interactions between game objects and collections and recoding solutions that didn’t make sense with this workflow.

Defold’s learning documentation contains clear explanations split between the manuals page, which has detailed guides on how the engine works and solves different problems, and the reference page containing every method available. The problem is that you have to look for the component you want to read about in each page individually. Also, information regarding very specific problems wasn’t as easy to find but the engine’s developers and community are very helpful on the forums and don’t leave questions unanswered.

The real downside with Defold is that it doesn’t support integration for services like game centers for leaderboards or ads with native SDKs. It does support ads but only with providers with a Javascript SDK which works with the webview component and have been slow to load.

All in all, learning new tools have been a very rich experience, they allow you to see people’s different perspectives on solving problems and put together your own creative solution, expanding your horizons.