What exactly *is* LÖVE 2D?

[Noba]

I see that it says an engine on the website and wiki, but to me that conjures up images of built in support for entities, scenes, collisions etc... Is Love like that, or is it more of a framework, giving you a main loop and options for rendering, playing audio and things, with the developer building up the game framework themselves?

I've been working on a game framework in Picotron, which works as I described above, but considering bringing it over to Love instead.

[BrotSagtMist]

It is whatever you want it to be.

[Ross]

It's more of a "framework". There is no built-in scene tree, game objects, draw ordering, GUI system, or anything like that.

There are some main lifecycle callbacks (load, update, draw, etc.) and input callbacks, and then various modules with functions to help you do what you want. See: https://love2d.org/wiki/love

It's definitely not a fantasy console like Picotron or Pico-8, there are no GUI tools/editors or specific workflow (but also there are no limitations with Löve).

[Noba]

It's more of a "framework". There is no built-in scene tree, game objects, draw ordering, GUI system, or anything like that.

There are some main lifecycle callbacks (load, update, draw, etc.) and input callbacks, and then various modules with functions to help you do what you want. See: https://love2d.org/wiki/love

It's definitely not a fantasy console like Picotron or Pico-8, there are no GUI tools/editors or specific workflow (but also there are no limitations with Löve).

I know there's no GUIs or interfaces or anything, I more meant how it just gives you the basic functionality and you implement everything yourself. That's cool though, pretty much exactly what I was hoping for. Thanks.