Possible to port Löve to WinRT/WP?

[T-Bone]

The OpenGL ES branch of LÖVE used for the Android and iOS ports should (in theory) work on WinRT as well via ANGLE, if the latest version of SDL is used.

I've tried to look more into this but I find it very hard to find any information about SDL on Windows RT and Windows Phone. The SDL developers (mostly some dude called Ludwig) are working on it and it's merged into the main SDL repository, but I haven't been able to find any info about anyone actually trying to use it for anything, and how mature it is right now.

Also, I am curious about how this would (in theory) work. I assume the WinRT/WP version of SDL uses ANGLE in itself, would Löve also have to use ANGLE as well? Isn't it enough to just depend on SDL? Or maybe Löve also uses some OpenGL stuff directly?

I have quite a lot of C++ experience but I've never tried to do something like this before, but I thought that if I tried I'd at least learn a thing or two. I would want to know a bit more about how these things work before diving into the coding though.

EDIT: This seems to be the place to find out how far SDL for WP/RT has come: https://bitbucket.org/DavidLudwig/sdl/issues
That Ludwig guy is currently looking into distributing binary builds of SDL using NuGet, Visual Studio's package manager. That would simplify development of any SDL app.

[slime]

Also, I am curious about how this would (in theory) work. I assume the WinRT/WP version of SDL uses ANGLE in itself, would Löve also have to use ANGLE as well? Isn't it enough to just depend on SDL? Or maybe Löve also uses some OpenGL stuff directly?

love.graphics is all OpenGL-based. The iOS and Android ports of LÖVE both use my GLES branch of 0.9.x, which adds OpenGL ES 2 support to the love.graphics backend.

SDL is used in LÖVE for handling events and keyboard/mouse/joystick input, creating the game window, and creating the OpenGL Context so that OpenGL can be used by love.graphics.
On Windows (and WinRT/WP8 via Microsoft's ANGLE fork), SDL's OpenGL ES 2+ context creation backend has the ability to optionally try to use ANGLE when creating the GL context. It'd basically be another dll next to SDL2.dll.

[clofresh]

I found a little more info from DLudwig on the sdl forums:

To note, SDL/WinRT does have some experimental support for rendering content via OpenGL ES 2.x, via a Microsoft Open Technologies driven port of Google's ANGLE library (which emulates OpenGL ES 2.x on top of Direct3D), to the WinRT family of platforms. The port is available at https://github.com/msopentech/angle, if you'd like to take a look. Getting it running is a matter of compiling it's various components, packaging the .dll files in your app, then using SDL to create an OpenGL content. SDL will attempt to load the appropriate DLL files, and create an OpenGL context via ANGLE (which'll issue appropriate Direct3D calls). A few notes on this though:

1. I've never tried using OpenGL ES via ANGLE on Windows Phone 8, only Windows 8 (in it's 'Metro' environment). I suspect that it would work off the bat, but haven't explicitly-tested this.

2. If you're compiling a Windows Phone 8.0 app (as opposed to a Windows Phone 8.1 app), and end up using ANGLE, you'll need to precompile your shaders, as WP 8.0 doesn't allow store-distributed apps to compile shaders at runtime. A shader compiler can be packaged into developer-only/non-store builds, however store-distributed apps must precompile the shaders. More details on this are on MS Open-Tech's ANGLE page (https://github.com/msopentech/angle).

So pretty much what slime said. T-Bone, have you had a chance to dig into getting LÖVE to work on WP8? I don't have much experience with the Windows stack, but I do have a Windows Phone, so I'd be happy to test stuff out.

[jjmafiae]

I heard Microsoft gives 500 dollars to app developers for a finished app, that would be more than enough to buy a windows phone have some money to spare.

[Jasoco]

That seems like a terrible business practice. Also a desperate one.

[jjmafiae]

It is. windows phone lacks apps, alot of scammers claim to have finished apps and get money from microsoft.

[Jasoco]

Is there a citation for this? It sounds like an urban legend. Do they really truly give devs $500 for an app? Surely there has to be some sort of safety in place. I can't see them giving every dev that creates a quick Flappy Bird clone money like that. Surely it would be just for major apps?

[jjmafiae]

Is there a citation for this? It sounds like an urban legend. Do they really truly give devs $500 for an app? Surely there has to be some sort of safety in place. I can't see them giving every dev that creates a quick Flappy Bird clone money like that. Surely it would be just for major apps?

I heard it on the WAN show a while ago, they are some pretty reliable guys that talk about tech.

[T-Bone]

I'm fairly sure they don't give any dev $500 (although I hope they do, I could use the cash). I haven't had the time to look into it and I probably won't have anytime soon. It'd be pretty nice to wait for the SDL port to mature a bit more too. Last time I looked, there weren't even any info on how to actually run SDL on WP that I could find (there was a tutorial for RT though).

[jjmafiae]

One thing is sure though, Microsoft is really desperate to get more apps in their app store.