gabe VS batteries

I really like baton for input, flux for tweens, and gamera for camera. My projects use gabe as a base for hotloading code changes and it works wonderfully.

Gabe is a class and reloading system that I use with love2d but the class system has a local table of classes instead of putting them in global.

It uses Lua which I find to be more dynamic and expressive than C#, java, or C++. I use gabe to hot load my code so I can change enemy behaviour in code, hit ctrl R, and the enemy starts using the new functions starting from its old state. Tough to set that up with one of those compiled languages!

Second, hot reload actually works and is usually instant. (lume has one you can adapt, I use gabe's class system and reload since it's already integrated). Since an instance of an object is a table, and functions on the object are elements in a table, you can swap out functions for their new values and keep your current state. By comparison, Unity's C# hot code reloading requires you to serialize your state because it needs to unload the AppDomain. It needs to rebuild the world with the new types. Most serialization occurs automatically, but often it doesn't and you need to add special callbacks to make it work. Regardless, for projects of any real size, it's slow. Not sure how Unreal's Live++ (Live Coding) works, but seems like you can't edit .h files.

I prefer the table based approach because it allows hot reloading code for live objects. I use Gabe's classes to create objects and its hotreload code does the rest. Write some enemy code, playtest, find an enemy acting weird, write some debug UI, hotload, see your UI on the broken enemy without having to figure out how to repro. It's like magic.

change code on the fly. Try c# script reloading in unity or Gabe in love2d.

I use gabe because it's integrated into a hot reloading framework.

Lua is a small language and its "standard library" is very minimal. Lua's intended for embedding so usually the host program provides a broader standard library by exposing functions to lua. However, there are several standard library packages for lua: batteries and lume are focused on gamedev; Penlight aims at bringing the breadth of python's stdlib to lua; plenary.nvim for nvim plugins; and probably more for other domains. I'd definitely recommend checking these out to help get closer to functionality level of most other languages (I use both lume and batteries, but dropped penlight awhile back because I found some implementations confusing/overcomplicated/inconsistent).

Some are featureful like batteries, some are minimal like hump.

Making a lua-based distro might benefit from packing in an existing lua utility library instead of starting your own: lume (useful single file of utilities) or batteries (organized into modules).

Lua is a small language and its "standard library" is very minimal. This was one of my initial roadblocks. Lua's intended for embedding so usually the host program provides a broader standard library by exposing functions to lua. However, there are several standard library packages for lua: batteries, Penlight, or the aforementioned lume. I'd definitely recommend checking these out to help get closer to functionality level of most other languages (I use both lume and batteries, but dropped penlight awhile back).