
LÖVE 0.10 released with iOS and Android support - AlexeyBrin
https://love2d.org/wiki/0.10.0
======
keyle
Lack of native mobile support was one of the reasons I dropped LOVE for other
frameworks.

This is fantastic, and LOVE/Lua is really fun to work with, I highly recommend
this framework.

~~~
vbit
Does love work well with moonscript?

~~~
thegeomaster
While we're at it: everyone, check out MoonScript [1]. It's a great, succinct
and featureful compile-to-Lua language, although sadly not very widespread at
the moment. It features significant whitespace, syntactic sugar to reduce
keyword noise in programs, table and list comprehensions, line (statement)
decorators, classes, _export_ and _import_ for working with modules, implicit
return, JSON-like table literals and much, much more. I, for one, absolutely
love working with it.

[1]: [http://moonscript.org](http://moonscript.org)

~~~
tedajax
I tried but the \ syntax for calling an instance method on an object is
asinine and I hate it.

~~~
vbit
Heh yes, a very common complaint. I don't like it either, but the trade off
still seems worth it.

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hughes
Site is hugged to death. Google cache/mirror:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://love2d.org/wiki/0.10.0)

~~~
mkagenius
You mean Loved to death? ;)

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supernintendo
This is wonderful. I'm quite fond of Lua and while I've tinkered with LÖVE
here and there, the lack of mobile support turned me off from using it for
serious projects. I'll be giving it another look soon.

As an aside, I'd like to plug a Lua library I have nothing to do with called
middleclass [1]. I've used it with LÖVE and it's handy for game dev!

[1]
[https://github.com/kikito/middleclass](https://github.com/kikito/middleclass)

~~~
fit2rule
Middle-class is awesome, thanks for sharing that .. I'll put it on my lab
bench for hacking over the next few days.

Continuing the list of 'handy little Lua libraries that others in this thread
might be interested in', I'll add that I think that a lot of newcomers to Lua
from languages like Ruby and Python might enjoy having lua-enumerable around
as well, which provides a set of enumerable ops that fit in quite well with
Lua's tables .. check it out:

[https://github.com/mikelovesrobots/lua-
enumerable](https://github.com/mikelovesrobots/lua-enumerable)

Hanappes' got a few nice Lua classes in its lang folder too:

[https://github.com/makotok/Hanappe/tree/master/projects/hana...](https://github.com/makotok/Hanappe/tree/master/projects/hanappe-
framework/src/hp/lang)

Useful for newcomers to Lua and pro's alike, imho ..

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aidenn0
LOVE uses LuaJit, right? How does that work with mobile where you may be
denied execute access to the data segment?

~~~
aidenn0
To answer my own question, here's a quote from the LuaJIT website:

> Note: the JIT compiler is disabled for iOS, because regular iOS Apps are not
> allowed to generate code at runtime. You'll only get the performance of the
> LuaJIT interpreter on iOS. This is still faster than plain Lua, but much
> slower than the JIT compiler. Please complain to Apple, not me. Or use
> Android. :-p

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eljimmy
Anyone got any games written using LÖVE to show HN?

~~~
kneeko
I made oh my giraffe [1] in LÖVE and released it for iOS and Android using
these ports.

[1] [http://www.ohmygiraffe.com](http://www.ohmygiraffe.com)

~~~
eggy
Very simple but beautiful! The LÖVE wiki on the Android port has an example of
running from adb, but how did you create and apk for your Android port?

~~~
kneeko
Thank you! This page has documentation for packaging an apk:
[https://bitbucket.org/MartinFelis/love-android-
sdl2/wiki/Gam...](https://bitbucket.org/MartinFelis/love-android-
sdl2/wiki/Game_Packaging)

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smacktoward
I would love to tinker with LÖVE, but I don't know the first thing about Lua.
Anyone have pointers to good introductory resources they can share?

~~~
Gracana
"Programming in Lua" is Lua's K&R. It is a very well written technical book.

The Lua reference manual is also very approachable.

[http://www.lua.org/pil/](http://www.lua.org/pil/)

[http://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/](http://www.lua.org/manual/5.3/)

~~~
Franciscouzo
Löve uses luajit by default, which is Lua 5.1 with some 5.2 sprinkled on top.

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scotty79
I encountered LÖVE when I was searching for simple graphics engine that can do
60fps consistently without frame skipping. It worked very well.

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Dotnaught
How does LÖVE compare with Corona SDK, a commercial Lua-based mobile
framework?

~~~
AlexeyBrin
LÖVE is free, open source, runs on desktop and mobile, local builds and so on.
Also, it is based on SDL2 so, if you know C, you can modify the code.

That being said, Corona SDK is probably more mature for mobile. Personally I
prefer LÖVE because of the fast iteration cycle do to local builds (Corona SDK
builds the game on their servers).

~~~
rstupek
Only if you want to deploy it to a device. Otherwise you can reload instantly
when developing on PC/Mac

~~~
AlexeyBrin
I know you can use the simulator to test, but I prefer to test directly on the
device and when you need to wait ~1 minute per build it is a bit annoying. I
used Corona SDK for a small 2D game two years ago, maybe now the build times
is better ...

~~~
versteegen
Reposting what seany wrote 4 hours ago [dead]:

You can also use the "viewer" tool to sync your project with a application
shell on the device via dropbox.

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vbit
Can you make networked multi player games in love that work on mobile?

~~~
kneeko
Yes, LÖVE includes ENet and LuaSocket.

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wiradikusuma
A bit OOT, LibGDX is another game engine, but for the JVM (can use Java,
Scala, Clojure, Kotlin, etc), that runs natively on desktop, Android, Web
(transpiled to JS), iOS (using RoboVM). It has Lua support as well through 3rd
party.

Udacity has Nanodegree using it:
[https://www.udacity.com/course/mobile-2d-game-developer-
nano...](https://www.udacity.com/course/mobile-2d-game-developer-nanodegree--
nd011)

Disclaimer: I'm writing a game using LibGDX.

~~~
Veratyr
I tried LibGDX but the thing that troubled me was that while other engines had
a relatively straightforward approach to cross platform builds (click a button
or build a particular target), LibGDX required you to write a bunch of
boilerplate for each platform.

Is that still around?

~~~
badlogic
The boiler plate is 10-20 lines per platform, which is auto-generated for you
and let's you do platform specific things easily. Any production game needs
this capability to include things like ads, notifications etc.

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cmiller1
I tried Löve a few times as well as many others while searching for an engine
to make simple graphical/physical simulations using a dynamic scripting
language in for work (using other libraries). It was okay but my favorite was
Gosu (ruby/C++), I wish it saw more love.

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tommoor
Perfect timing to make a game over the christmas break :)

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desireco42
This is pretty grand news, and I never used Lua for game development.
Congratulations.

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jslakro
One of the most consistent frameworks in LÖVE I know is
[https://github.com/necrophcodr/fuccboiGDX/](https://github.com/necrophcodr/fuccboiGDX/)

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saintfiends
How does LÖVE users handle source being open when distributing games?

I would guess not everyone will be okay with their artwork, sound files and
other resources being available so easily.

~~~
james-skemp
HTML5 game development is much the same. Even with compiled applications
someone can get your code and resources if they want them, so ...

I think if developers aren't okay with their resources being that available,
they probably don't look at using frameworks like this.

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ing33k
as a non game developer, LÖVE was the only framework using which I was
actually able to create a small game . So simple it hurts.

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willvarfar
What is really staggeringly missing is a web port!

It should be a click-away to run a LÖVE game in your browser. Its not. A few
good prototypes have been made, but they are all abandoned? :(

~~~
fit2rule
We have this in MOAI (a competing framework) already, by way of the emscripten
tool .. which is awesome .. so it means that with MOAI you can write apps that
run on iOS/OSX/Windows/Linux/Android .. and HTML5 hosts. Pretty amazing times
..

(And we're about to do a new release of MOAI soon too..)

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geoffpado
Site's loading too slowly for me to get to the main page, so at the risk of
starting a Haddaway thread…

What is LÖVE?

~~~
p4bl0
It is a 2D game development framework for the Lua language.

~~~
fffrad
he meant, baby don't hurt me.

