Löve (stylized in

all caps In typography, text or font in all caps (short for "all capitals") contains capital letters without any lowercase letters. For example: All-caps text can be seen in legal documents, advertisements, newspaper headlines, and the titles on book co ...

) is a free,

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

framework released under the

zlib license The zlib license is a permissive software license which defines the terms under which the zlib software library can be distributed. It is also used by many other open-source packages. The libpng library uses a similar license, libpng license, s ...

for developing

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

s. The framework is written in C++ and uses Lua as its

scripting language In computing, a script is a relatively short and simple set of instructions that typically automation, automate an otherwise manual process. The act of writing a script is called scripting. A scripting language or script language is a programming ...

and is still maintained by its original developers. The framework is cross-platform supporting the platforms

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

macOS macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

, Android, and

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

. The API provided by the framework gives access to the video and sound functions of the host machine through the

libraries A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

SDL and

OpenGL OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) is a Language-independent specification, cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D computer graphics, 2D and 3D computer graphics, 3D vector graphics. The API is typic ...

, or since version 0.10 also

OpenGL ES OpenGL for Embedded Systems (OpenGL ES or GLES) is a subset of the OpenGL computer graphics rendering application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D computer graphics such as those used by video games, typically hardware-accelerate ...

2 and 3. Fonts can be rendered by the FreeType engine. A version of the framework called piLöve has been specifically ported to

Raspberry Pi Raspberry Pi ( ) is a series of small single-board computers (SBCs) developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in collaboration with Broadcom Inc., Broadcom. To commercialize the product and support its growing demand, the ...

. The framework is frequently found in the compositions of video game development

competition Competition is a rivalry where two or more parties strive for a common goal which cannot be shared: where one's gain is the other's loss (an example of which is a zero-sum game). Competition can arise between entities such as organisms, indi ...

s, such as the game development competition Ludum Dare. In July 2018, it was the 10th most popular game development software used by independent game developers on the site Itch.io, holding a 1.97% share.

Version history

Features

The framework provides these features: * Supports

pixel shaders

GLSL OpenGL Shading Language (GLSL) is a high-level shading language with a syntax based on the C programming language. It was created by the OpenGL ARB (OpenGL Architecture Review Board) to give developers more direct control of the graphics pipe ...

. * Supports touchscreen for mobile devices. * Supports joysticks by providing interface for connected joysticks. * Supports

UTF-8 UTF-8 is a character encoding standard used for electronic communication. Defined by the Unicode Standard, the name is derived from ''Unicode Transformation Format 8-bit''. Almost every webpage is transmitted as UTF-8. UTF-8 supports all 1,112,0 ...

. * Supports image formats: PNG,

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

GIF The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF; or , ) is a Raster graphics, bitmap Image file formats, image format that was developed by a team at the online services provider CompuServe led by American computer scientist Steve Wilhite and released ...

, TGA and BMP. * Supports audio formats:

WAV Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced or ) is an audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on personal computers. The format was developed and published for the first time in 1991 ...

OGG Ogg is a digital multimedia container format designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of digital multimedia. It is maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation and is free and open, unrestricted by software patents. Its name is ...

, and

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

. * Supports video formats: OGV. * Supports the

physics engine A physics engine is computer software that provides an approximate simulation of certain physical systems, typically classical dynamics, including rigid body dynamics (including collision detection), soft body dynamics, and fluid dynamics. I ...

Box2D in games, which can be disabled to lighten the library. * Supports the LuaSocket library for network communications TCP/ UDP. * Supports the lua-enet library, another network library implementing Enet, a reliable protocol based on UDP.

Notable games

Some of the games that have been made with LÖVE: * ''

Kingdom Rush ''Kingdom Rush'' is a 2011 tower defense game developed by Ironhide Game Studio and published by Armor Games. In the game's medieval fantasy setting, players take control of a general serving under King Denas of Linirea, who must defend the lan ...

'' (2011) * ''

Mari0 ''Mari0'' (pronounced "mari-zero" or "mari-oh") is a 2012 side-scrolling platform video game developed by German indie developer Maurice Guégan with creative input from Sašo Smolej and released onto their website Stabyourself.net. It combines g ...

'' (2012) * ''Oh My Giraffe'' (2014) * ''Blue Revolver'' (2016) * '' Move or Die'' (2016) * ''Warlock's Tower'' (2017) * ''Aeon of Sands - The Trail'' (2018) * ''BYTEPATH'' (2018) * ''Metanet Hunter G4'' (2020) * ''Intravenous'' series (2021-2024) * ''Gravity Circuit'' (2023) * '' Moonring'' (2023) * '' Balatro'' (2024) * ''

Arco Arco may refer to: Places * Arco, Trentino, a town in Trentino, Italy * Arco, Idaho, in the United States * Arco, Minnesota, a city in the United States * ARCO Arena in Sacramento, California, home of the Sacramento Kings Companies * ARCO (b ...

'' (2024)

Libraries and implementations

There are various libraries and forks of LÖVE to improve basic functions, such as OOP with

inheritance Inheritance is the practice of receiving private property, titles, debts, entitlements, privileges, rights, and obligations upon the death of an individual. The rules of inheritance differ among societies and have changed over time. Offi ...

and overloading, interpolations, cameras, gamestates, etc. This is a small list of some: * The Simple Tiled Implementation library allows users to load levels as tiles, edit using Tiled and display them in games. It works in conjunction with Box2D for collision management with this decor. * The anim8 library allows users to load animations, for characters for example, from an image grid into a bitmap file ( PNG or

). * LIKO-12 is a free platform inspired by the PICO-8 ''fantasy console'' and uses LÖVE. It allows users to develop applications in a limited resolution, backup/restore in the modified PNG format, in the same way as video game cartridges or some of the first

microcomputer A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (P ...

s, and export them to

HTML5 HTML5 (Hypertext Markup Language 5) is a markup language used for structuring and presenting hypertext documents on the World Wide Web. It was the fifth and final major HTML version that is now a retired World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommend ...

or to systems supported by LÖVE. * Lutro is a Lua game framework for

libretro RetroArch is a free and open-source, cross-platform frontend for emulators, game engines, video games, media players and other applications. It is the reference implementation of the libretro API, designed to be fast, lightweight, portable and ...

, a partial port of the LÖVE API. ChaiLove follows a similar path by offering an implementation in ChaiScript, an embedded and cross-platform scripting language for C++ (C++14). * love.js is a port of LÖVE that aims to make it possible to run LÖVE games on the web via HTML5, WebGL, and Emscripten. * g3d is a 3D engine that simplifies 3D capabilities in LÖVE. It allows for 3D model rendering, .obj file loading, first person movement and camera controls, perspective and orthographic projections, 3D collisions and more.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Love Video game development software Video game development software for Linux Cross-platform software Free computer libraries Software using the zlib license Lua (programming language)-scriptable game engines