Is LÖVE2D a good framework for Windows desktop apps?

[MadDogDean]

Hello all,

Long time Lua scripter, but just coming NEW to LÖVE2D.

How would you rate LÖVE as a viable alternative to develop games & apps for Windows Desktop? Does it have enough goodies & bits. I know on the mobile side LÖVE is outstanding, but on the Desktop side...

Thanks for any suggestions,
Cheers

[zorg]

Hi and welcome to the forums!

How is it outstanding on the mobile side? (also, afaik löve was made first for desktop systems; mobile came later.)

Also, define goodies; if you want to make a good game, löve can help you do that; It uses a version of lua that's very fast, it uses OpenGL (currently, probably vulkan in the future) so you have access to fast hardware accelerated stuff, including shaders (and now 3D stuff as well, although that one takes quite some effort to pull off)

If you mean non-standard things like sprite walks out of the window, or stuff like that, not really.

Also, with a few libraries to cover a few shortcomings (filesystem stuff mostly), you can also use it to make applications as well (I myself am working on a music composing software with it)

[NobodysSon]

I myself am working on a music composing software with it

You never cease to amaze me, zorg

[MadDogDean]

Hi Zorg, thanks

My reference to outstanding is based on some of the LÖVE apps I've seen. The API is chock full and it does everything you need it to.

You hit it with the filesystem stuff (and there are libraries to overcome this), as well as Registry work (built in knowledge to deal with WOW6432 issues) and general accepted Desktop actions like resizing, drag & drop (this is an important one), Minimize, Maximize, and generally be co-operative on the Desktop environments (both Win & mac), and although I am not a C, C++ etc guy, to know that the plugin system is capable for most thing is good.

I guess primarily I am looking for input from people and devs that have used both LÖVE and specific Desktop authoring tools (Windows Forms, WPF, etc) and can compare the two.

BTW, your bio describes you as " and champion procrastinator." - but isn't that a trait that ALL devs have?? Why finish it today when we can power-code tomorrow

Cheers & thanks

[zorg]

IDK much about WOW64 being an issue with löve, since it has both 32 and 64 bit versions for windows already, and afaik any löve game (if they don't use arch specific stuff via dlls or whatever) will run with either build, the former probably having some memory limit notwithstanding.

As for filesystem limits (PhysFS being the virtual one löve uses, giving you two locations to read from and one of them being the write directory as well), grump made nativefs to circumvent that limitation (i made love-fml, another lib, that instead monkeypatches love.filesystem to mount all filesystem roots... it fails with multiple different simultaneous write locations though due to PhysFS' inherent limitations... wanted to incorporate nativefs for write support but... well, procrastination.

Not sure about registry sorely because löve's pretty cross-platform, and i'm not sure what equivalents there are on OSX and unix/linux OS-es. (You can keep config files either in the game's "install" folder, or if you want per-user, you can use the save folder already.

Löve projects can indeed be resized(through window borders, if one wants that; also supports borderless and non-resizable),minimized,maximized,restored, the window dragged, and they do support dropping files and folders (with some limitations that the wiki explains - circumventable with above mentioned alternate FS libs/solutions)

Unfortunately idk much about WPF either, though i did dabble a few years with Delphi and its forms... imo there's no "great"/one-size-fits-all GUI solution for löve purely because making a GUI is just that hard to do; there are quite a few attempts though.

BTW, your bio describes you as " and champion procrastinator." - but isn't that a trait that ALL devs have?? Why finish it today when we can power-code tomorrow

I guess that's my perception of myself; if i wasn't like that, we might already have another camera/viewport lib and even a gui lib for löve... who knows

Also, you're welcome.

You never cease to amaze me, zorg

Appreciate the sentiment but let's not hijack the thread for ego boosting... not that it works (Feel free to hit me up on discord though if you're interested or just wanna ask questions, can't promise to be there for 1-2 weeks though, pc issues)

[MadDogDean]

@Zorg << why doesn't that link to you??? Hmmmmm..

Thanks for your insights. Truly appreciated!

Cheers, MadDogDean

[pgimeno]

To be clear, LÖVE is an OpenGL application, and it only supports one window. Everything needs to be drawn inside the window. You can't make multi-window applications like you can with Delphi or Lazarus.

[MadDogDean]

To be clear, LÖVE is an OpenGL application, and it only supports one window. Everything needs to be drawn inside the window. You can't make multi-window applications like you can with Delphi or Lazarus.

Thanks for the input.
I'm not sure what you mean by a single vs multi-window app. A couple examples of one or the other would help this old brain.

Cheers

[hoistbypetard]

I'm not sure what you mean by a single vs multi-window app. A couple examples of one or the other would help this old brain.

Most games that you've played are single window. Meaning they can only have one window on the screen. Your web browser, for example, can have multiple windows. So can your word processor, your spreadsheet, your email program, your file explorer, etc.

[MadDogDean]

Ah, thanks for that. I *thought* that's what pgimeno meant, but needed to be sure.

Cheers