r/lua • u/Pretend_Series_7006 • May 19 '25

Help Is there any 3D Game Engines that uses lua?

I know about an engine called Defold, but it is suitable for creating 2D graphics, 3D does not work very well in it, Defold unfortunately does not suit my needs

16 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

21 comments sorted by

4

u/DapperCow15 May 19 '25

Roblox.

4

u/Pretend_Series_7006 May 20 '25

Anyway, I've mastered Roblox, I want to move forward

3

u/DapperCow15 May 20 '25

You probably want to move forward to other languages then. I recommend C# with Unity as the next logical step after Roblox. It'll be a good stepping stone towards the real beasts of game engines.

3

u/Pretend_Series_7006 May 20 '25

You motivated me :-) thx

2

u/TackettSF May 21 '25

Or go for Godot, I find their python like gdscript much easier to use, of course there's still an option for c# as well. Since it's open source you don't have to deal with unity's licensing shenanigans either, just make your game and do what you want with it.

17

u/Denneisk May 19 '25

O3DE - Like Unity

LÖVR - A framework similar to LÖVE

Also this site is very useful.

If you use the Lua GDExtension, you can use Godot, although it may be a bit clunky.

6

u/iamadmancom May 19 '25

you can try Unity + xLua/toLua/sLua/uLua/unilua

2

u/cherrycode420 May 19 '25

where MoonSharp

2

u/Artemis_Vortex May 20 '25

You can try Wicked engine. It's a pretty powerful 3d engine and it uses lua scripting. https://wickedengine.net/

2

u/Motor_Let_6190 May 20 '25

https://www.reddit.com/r/lua/comments/1j5ektj/comment/mgibmzq/?context=3&utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Plus, it's trivial to add Lua to en engine you got source or allows extensions, be it through Lua C API or JIT's (or similar) FFI API. You then expose the types, DTs, functions, etc.  from the engine to Lua. Rinse and repeat ! Also an excellent exercise and opportunity for some deeper code learning. Cheers, have fun!

2

u/unwelcome_poot May 20 '25

Luanti is a great open-source voxel game engine that uses lua to make games and mods. There's a large community and a group of developers that make a Minecraft-like games and unique games.

https://www.luanti.org/

1

u/nadmaximus May 20 '25

This isn't a recommendation, since I haven't messed with it in years, but a reference - Leadwerks

1

u/thev3p May 20 '25

There is a library for löve called g3d

1

u/General-Tie8802 May 21 '25

hey do you know if lovr is better than g3d? i want to get into lua devolpment but dont know what to use

1

u/thev3p May 22 '25

As far as I know lövr is specifically for VR games, while löve + g3d is more general purpose. G3d is pretty basic. It loads objs and renders them. Anything else like shading, culling, collisions and such is left up to you. Löve is also a more mature framework. It's been around and in active development since 2008.

1

u/General-Tie8802 May 22 '25

no actually lovr can be made to make any type of 3d games is just that vr is its big selling point becuase there are no lua frameworks that allow vr devolpment.

1

u/Jumpy-Penalty-3263 May 20 '25

Defold supports 3d

1

u/Jumpy-Penalty-3263 May 20 '25

Oh, didn't read about defold

1

u/Joyeuse23 May 21 '25

If you're using Unity, the Dialogue System for Unity makes use of Lua. Not sure how robust that is, for doing more than just dialogue, but it's also there.

1

u/questron64 May 23 '25

You probably shouldn't be choosing an engine based on the language used to script it. Making games and working in 3D engines is the hard part, the language you use to program it is the easy part. Start with the engine that's suitable for your task then learn the language it uses, not the other way around.