Not installable from google play store

[BrotSagtMist]

So i bought a phone specifically to test how my stuff would run on android.
Searching the stock repo for löve gives no returns, so i used the link from the home page, this one https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... 2d.android
and the install button is greyed out with the error message: "This app was created for an older version of android".
Is this a problem with this phone, eg reporting a wrong version, or is there something wrong with that repo entry?

The phone is a zte blade with a not that old android, the apk, using manual install, runs well.

My concern here is that i want to be able to tell others how to start my programs on their phones and i thought i just tell them to install löve from this play store thing but in my case this hides the entry and only shows dating stuff. They may think i try to troll them.

[kbmonkey]

I cannot speak to why the Löve app is no longer on the play store.

There is however a direct link to the APK available on the main page (https://github.com/love2d/love/releases ... ndroid.apk) and from Releases (https://github.com/love2d/love/releases). Not ideal for the average user, admittedly,

Can I put out a call to the Löve team to consider adding this lovely project to https://f-droid.org please? It's not a perfect solution, but Löve will be in good company on F-Droid, while providing an upgrade path for everyday users.

[slime]

and the install button is greyed out with the error message: "This app was created for an older version of android".
Is this a problem with this phone, eg reporting a wrong version, or is there something wrong with that repo entry?

The original maintainer of the Play Store version of love is no longer around.

My concern here is that i want to be able to tell others how to start my programs on their phones and i thought i just tell them to install löve from this play store thing but in my case this hides the entry and only shows dating stuff. They may think i try to troll them.

The typical way to do that (regardless of whether love is downloadable on the Play Store or not) is to publish your program on the Play Store so the only thing people need to install is your program. What's currently available lets you do that.

[tpimh]

Publishing on F-Droid is the way to go, it's not as popular as Play Store, but for some people it's the preferred way of getting their Android apps.

[BrotSagtMist]

I think missing maintainer is the information i needed. Thanks

I am currently doing some personalized stuff for a bunch of neighbours, IOT, webcam access etc, so the program itself is something i dont want to have too public.
And i assume publishing on the official repo is neither an easy job to perform, bunch of signups and validations i suppose.

Regarding F droid, people who are not able to install apks from the internet are also unable to find that.
Ppas simply dont work for the masses.
But nevermind, everyone was a trustworthy fool so far and had me let install it by hand.

Still there is the matter of why the existing version is shown for some devies and not others? I dont see anything indicating a version range in which this is installable.

[SugarRayLua]

@BrotSagtMist,

I think it would be wonderful if Love app somehow made it back to the PlayStore. I recently bought a mobile Chromebook to use as my daily driver instead of my iPad Pro and was quite surprised that the Love app is off of the PlayStore and was a bit ironic: Love 2D is now available on the more restrictive Apple App store as the "love2d-studio" app but not on the less restrictive Google PlayStore. Initially, I didn't think that would be too much of a problem because the Chromebook enables users to install Linux virtual machines, and so I just installed Love on Linux in my VM on my Chromebook. However, it seems that the virtual graphics drivers cause a noticeable drop in love graphics performance. For example, I just installed the latest version of @Bobble68's great 'In the Heavens' project, and the poor happy dragon now runs noticeably slower as compared to running the project in Love natively either in the love2d-studio app or the older Android Love app on my Android phone. As @kbmonkey mentioned, I could install the apk outside of the PlayStore but that then defeats part of the reason I bought the Chromebook as my replacement daily driver-- I value the Chromebooks native additional security given the personal information I have/access with my Chromebook and installing the app outside of the Google PlayStore would decrease that level of security which I don't want to do.

(My additional thoughts)

Have a good upcoming weekend :-)

[knorke]

The typical way to do that (regardless of whether love is downloadable on the Play Store or not) is to publish your program on the Play Store so the only thing people need to install is your program. What's currently available lets you do that.

I am not happy without Love on the Play Store.
It is cumbersome to pack different game versions for each OS. (Windows, Linux, Mac, Android,..)
And then you have to upload them to different websites. (for example itch.io for PC and Play Store for phones)
Every new gameversion/bugfix you need to do all that again.
Also I am not so interested in going through the review-process of google for every new shitty game, I think it is enough if LÖVE itself passes once.

It does not seem elegant. It feels like packing myphoto.jpg with paint.exe for Windows and XnView for Linux.
A .love file can be run on every device that has LÖVE installed. Nice.
With LÖVE 11.5 there is now a "Android LÖVE Loader" which seems very useful for that.

One game.love for all systems seems so much better.
I had thought that this how LÖVE-games were meant to be shared. But without LÖVE in App Stores and often outdated in popular packet managers it is hard.
I do not know how any of this works so I just clicked donate button on love2d.org and typed $25 to pay for Play Store fee maybe. Or for beer or a large bag of googley eyes idk.

Publishing on F-Droid is the way to go, it's not as popular as Play Store, but for some people it's the preferred way of getting their Android apps.

Reading this comment:
https://github.com/love2d/love-android/ ... 1891822737
Makes me think LÖVE 11 is not planned to be on F-Droid but LÖVE 12 might be.

[marclurr]

It does not seem elegant. It feels like packing myphoto.jpg with paint.exe for Windows and XnView for Linux.
A .love file can be run on every device that has LÖVE installed. Nice.
With LÖVE 11.5 there is now a "Android LÖVE Loader" which seems very useful for that.

I've always thought it's highly unlikely that a user will bother installing prerequisites just to play my game. They probably don't even know what LÖVE is most of the time. If they can't download the thing and run it straight away it will probably not get played. So I actually prefer the more bloated packaging option as it removes the friction for the user. The paint.exe analogy doesn't hold water for me as image viewing software is ubiquitous while LÖVE is highly niche.

I can see why someone on these forums might want the generic install though, if only to try out people's files without booting up a PC. It's pretty easy to build and install yourself, or there's a rebuilt .apk on the github that you can just download and install.

[knorke]

That is valid reasoning, I had the same thoughts.
However, I think installing LÖVE is not such a big deal.
Not long ago people also installed Flash to play games. Now they install all kind of steam-like launchers and shops.

LÖVE might be niche but one sentence is enough to explain why you need to install it.
Users might be scared to install such a sketchy niche app that they have never heard of before - but our games are even more niche.
Once LÖVE has some ratings and downloadnumbers it will appear more trustworthy.
I think LÖVE does not need to be ubiquitous, it just needs to be easy to install.

I think if we could rely on LÖVE being easily installable on every platform then it would lower the barrier to publishing and trying out LÖVE games.
When trying many LÖVE games (for example in context of a game jam or just because there are so many) I would prefer downloading a dozen .love files over installing a dozen apps.