Preface

LÖVE is a popular open source 2D video game framework that allows you to leverage the simplicity of the Lua scripting language in developing game prototypes quickly and easily. LÖVE's robustness and active community support make it a viable framework for game development. It has empowered a lot of indie developers of various ages around the world, giving them an edge in tapping into the lucrative video game market.

Its simplicity and "write less build more" nature make it easy for both experienced and novice developers.

This book is a comprehensive tutorial, demonstrating the full potential of LÖVE framework. It takes you through building a prototype to packaging games quickly with LÖVE.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with LÖVE, gets you up-and-running with LÖVE and shows you how to install LÖVE framework and run a LÖVE game.

Chapter 2, LÖving Up!, takes you through drawing a 2D object, moving objects, and animating a game character.

Chapter 3, Before You Build a Game, takes you through the necessary things you need to know before you develop your game.

Chapter 4, Making Your First Game, sets the magic rolling! The chapter will take you through designing and loading a game level, and setting up your game characters and assets.

Chapter 5, More About Making the Game, introduces you to game physics—adding collisions and gravity to game objects—and a more efficient way to animate characters.

Chapter 6, Meeting the Bad Guy!, explains how to set up the enemy character.

Chapter 7, Pickups and Head-Up Display and Sounds, explains how to set up the extras: pickups, sounds, and Head-Up Display (HUD).

Chapter 8, Packaging and Distributing Your Game, explains how to package and distribute our game to various platforms, now that your game is ready to ship.

What you need for this book

To run the examples in the book, the following software will be required:

• Operating systems:

  • Windows XP or above (for Windows users)

  • Ubuntu 10.10 or above (for Linux users)

  • Mac OS X (for Mac users)

• LÖVE framework 0.80 or above (www.love2d.org)

• Tiled Map Editor (www.mapeditor.org)

• Notepad++ Text Editor (www.notepad-plus-plus.org)

Who this book is for

This book is for aspiring game developers with a decent understanding of Lua scripting language, and anyone who wants to learn video game design. If you are looking for a step-by-step approach to learn how to design a game from idea to prototype quickly with a robust and easy-to-understand game engine, this book is for you.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows:

"We can configure the screen size and program title using the love.conf(w)"

A block of code is set as follows:

function love.conf(w)

w.screen.width = 800

w.screen.height = 600

w.screen.title = "Goofy's Adventure"

end

A comment within a block of code starts with a double hyphen "--"

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

findSolidTiles(map)
  for i, obj in pairs( map("Objects").objects ) do

    if obj.type == "player" then PlayerSpawn(obj.x,obj.y-8) end
    if obj.type == "enemy" then EnemySpawn(obj.x,obj.y-14,obj.properties.dir) end
    ---insert items here
    if obj.type == "diamond" then DiamondSpawn(obj.x,obj.y-16) end
    if obj.type == "coins" then CoinSpawn(obj.x,obj.y-16) end

    if obj.type == "life" then LifeSpawn(obj.x,obj.y-16) end

  end

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

# cd c:/users/DarmieAkinlaja/My Documents/My game 

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: " for example on my computer, the My game folder is stored in My Documents folder ".

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

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