Commercial games in Löve. Is anything missing?

[murks]

Hi there,

I noticed that there appears to be at least one commercially successful game made in Löve, "Move or Die".
I did not try it since to this day I refuse to buy games on Steam. However, from the videos it seems incredibly well done and great fun.

It has stuff like steam workshop integration, online multiplayer and so on, which makes me wonder: Is it just Löve, modified Löve, Löve and some other stuff?

I'm also asking because I sort of decided to make a game. I have several decent ideas, now I just need to work on those for some years...

[raidho36]

LuaJIT can load external librariers, and they provide those along with manual. Alternatively you can custom build LÖVE with those.

[murks]

Well, using the FFI has the obvious downside that the thing is no longer cross platform. With some additional effort per platform (five supported by Löve currently) and architecture it can be made to work I guess, but that's less than ideal.

So you'd say there is nothing missing?

[Fenrir]

Yep I confirm, you won't be stuck by using LÖVE, on the contrary you'll have plenty of solutions if you need external tools/libraries.

[raidho36]

You don't get source code from Steam integration libraries, they only provide binaries for the three OSes they support and the manual about using them. You also get an NDA so you can't share your integration code as source. So no there isn't anything missing.

[murks]

I knew that Steam and GOG Galaxy worked through some sort of libraries, but you can't even share your integration code? What sense does that make? It's a bit harsh.

Fenrir, good to see that your game is released. It looks interesting. Also good to hear that your experience with Löve was good. You should get Wanderer put on the Löve start page

What you guys write is encouraging.
I have also solved the really important issues, which is what I am going to call the "studio" and the first game, so I'm 90% there already

I'm seriously quite happy with Löve and how it is progressing. Not too long ago it did not support any mobile platform, now there's both official Android and iOS support, so most platforms are there, with maybe missing web and consoles (but who cares about that?). The biggest weakness, audio, is being addressed and great commercial games are not only possible but have been made. This is fantastic!

[zorg]

Now that you mention it, i wonder how that's adressed by all the Löve games on steam that had steam stuff integrated; i mean, the games themselves are technically still decompilable, so what's stopping someone from looking into the source and seeing just how they integrated Steam into the games? Would those be compiled modules or something?

[raidho36]

There's nothing stopping anyone from disassembling the library itself and re-implement something similar in arbitrary language.

It's about license, not any tangible stuff.

[zorg]

so basically the devs themselves shouldn't make the source available; gotcha.

[Fenrir]

Fenrir, good to see that your game is released. It looks interesting. Also good to hear that your experience with Löve was good. You should get Wanderer put on the Löve start page

Wanderer is not yet released! But a first version should be available soon.
And about LÖVE, the only thing I'm not using is the audio module, instead I'm using FMOD through FFI, as my sound designer is a big fan of FMOD Studio. I also made a binary module to be able to use IMGUI (https://love2d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=82467), as being able to quickly create edition and debug tools is critical when your project starts to grow. For both integrations, it required a bit of work to stay cross-platform (I'm only targeting desktop platforms), but nothing serious. And well, of course I'm also planning to add Steamworks integration in a near future, and I'll go through FFI too.

The only "unknow" left for me will be consoles ports, as I should soon discuss this topic with publishers, but I'm starting to be quite familiar with LÖVE codebase, and as I'm primary a C++ developer, I don't think it's something insurmountable.