Game Development with LÖVE

39.1 About LÖVE

LÖVE (love2d.org) is a free 2D game framework using LuaJIT. It provides graphics, audio, input, physics (Box2D), shaders (GLSL), filesystem, threads, and networking. Games like *Balatro* were built with it.

love mygame/            # run the folder containing main.lua

39.2 A Minimal Game

-- main.lua
local player = {x = 400, y = 300, speed = 200, radius = 20}
local enemies = {}
local score, spawn_timer = 0, 0

function love.load()
    love.window.setTitle("Dodge!")
    love.graphics.setBackgroundColor(0.1, 0.1, 0.15)
    math.randomseed(os.time())
end

function love.update(dt)                         -- dt: seconds since the last frame
    if love.keyboard.isDown("left", "a")  then player.x = player.x - player.speed * dt end
    if love.keyboard.isDown("right", "d") then player.x = player.x + player.speed * dt end
    if love.keyboard.isDown("up", "w")    then player.y = player.y - player.speed * dt end
    if love.keyboard.isDown("down", "s")  then player.y = player.y + player.speed * dt end

    spawn_timer = spawn_timer - dt
    if spawn_timer <= 0 then
        enemies[#enemies + 1] = {x = math.random(0, 800), y = -20, speed = math.random(100, 250)}
        spawn_timer = 0.5
    end

    for i = #enemies, 1, -1 do
        local e = enemies[i]
        e.y = e.y + e.speed * dt
        local dx, dy = e.x - player.x, e.y - player.y
        if dx * dx + dy * dy < (player.radius + 10) ^ 2 then
            score = 0; enemies = {}; break
        elseif e.y > 620 then
   
…

-- conf.lua
function love.conf(t)
    t.window.width, t.window.height = 800, 600
    t.version = "11.5"
end

39.3 Game Development Concepts in Lua

The game loop (load/update/draw), delta time, sprite sheets and animation (anim8), tweening (flux, tween.lua), cameras (hump.camera, gamera), state machines / scene management (hump.gamestate), collision (bump.lua, Box2D via love.physics), entity-component systems (tiny-ecs, Concord), tilemaps (STI for Tiled maps), UI (SUIT), and serialization for save games (bitser, binser).

Packaging: a .love file (a zip of the game) fused with the LÖVE executable for distribution. Tools: makelove, love-release.