Distributing your games (making a .love file)

[obur]

a blank command prompt pops up, then disappears, but nothing happens. a "nogame" animation didn't come this time. blank window comes and disappears, that's all. uhm. i don't want to disturb you guys, but yeah, i can't do it.
i also tried this stuff in my homemate's computer which is win7.
thanks for all your help. i hope no one is cursing me

[TsT]

For a Linux and Mac friendly version, here's a Ruby script.
Make sure you're in the project directory when executing, and that you provide a filename for the .love file (with or without the extension).

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#!/usr/bin/env ruby

if ARGV.length == 0
    print "Usage: ./make_love_file.rb love_file_location\n"
    print "Make sure you are in the project folder when using this command..\n"
    exit 0
end

unless File.exists? 'main.lua'
    print "Directory does not contain a main.lua file.\n"
    exit 1
end

if ARGV[0]
    file = ARGV[0]
    file += '.love' unless file.end_with? '.love'
    
    `zip -r #{file} *`
    
    if $?.exitstatus == 0
        print "#{ARGV[0]}.love created successfully.\n"
    else
        print "An error occurred file creating the file.\n"
    end
else
    print "Please give a name for the .love file.\n"
    exit 1
end

EDIT: On Mac OSX, a cool thing to do is add this to your ~/.bash_profile file:

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alias lovemake="path/to/where/you/placed/script.rb"

Then you can execute like this from anywhere:

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lovemake LoveFileName

I see your script and decide to do equivalent to shell (because I'm sure to have a sh environnement, not always a ruby one).
I change to my use.

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#!/bin/bash

if test $# -eq 0; then
        echo >&2 "Usage: $(basename "$0") <option|love_file_location>"
        echo >&2 "   dev      make a currentdir-YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS.love file"
        echo >&2 "   release  make a currentdir-YYYYMMDD.love file"
        echo >&2 "   auto     see dev"
        echo >&2 "   clean    remove the current *.love files"
        echo >&2 "Make sure you are in the project folder when using this command."
        exit 1
fi

if test ! -f "main.lua"; then
        echo >&2 "Directory does not contain a main.lua file."
        exit 2
fi

if test -z "$1"; then
        echo >&2 "Please give a name for the .love file."
        exit 2
fi

verbose=0
case "$1" in
        auto|dev)
                file="$(basename "$(pwd)")"-`date +%Y%m%d-%H%M%S`.love
                verbose=0
        ;;
        release)
                # calculate the current day (before sleeping)
                # like the day is changing at 5h!
                day=`date -d "-5 hours" +%d`
                file="$(basename "$(pwd)")"-`date +%Y%m`${day}.love
                verbose=1
        ;;
        clean|dist-clean)
                rm -i -- *.love
                exit 0
        ;;
        *)
                file="$1" ; shift
                if echo "$file" | grep -q -v -- '\.love$'; then
                        file="${file}.love"
                fi
esac

QUIET=""
if test $verbose -eq 0; then
        QUIET="-q"
fi

IGNORE=""
if test -f .release.ignore; then
        IGNORE="-x@.release.ignore"
fi

zip $QUIET -r "$file" * -x "*.love" -x "$file" -x .release.ignore $IGNORE
ret=$?
if test $ret -ne 0; then
        echo >&2 "An error occurred file creating the file."
        exit $ret
fi

echo "File created successfully : $file"

Usage :

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lovemake test

Produce a test.love file

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lovemake release

If you run it in /home/USER/love2d/toto/
It Produce a toto-20110429.love file (the date in YYYYMMDD format)

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lovemake dev

If you run it in /home/USER/love2d/toto/
It Produce a toto-20110429-193817.love file (the date in YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS format) to get a unique name for devel.

My lovemake also use a hiden file (named .release.ignore) as list of exclusion.
By this way you can build your love file without some test files easily.

Have fun!
EDIT: bug fixed

[knarF.se]

Hi, I uses this commando to package .love-files.

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echo My LÖVE precious game! | zip -zr9n .png:.jpeg:.jpg ../${PWD##*/}.love ./*

It is supposed to be executed from the ‘build’-directory (Where all files resides as they should, for distribution). It probably works on most *nix systems, including MachOSX.

The ‘-n .png:.jpeg:.jpg’-thingie prohibits compression of PNG- and JPEG-files (They are already compressed you know).

About the 16 pages in this thread, Teal Deer for now, Will probably read 'em later when I've got a more complex LÖVE-project and needs to compose a good script build-/debug-/test-/distribute-script (also the zip-command seems have good preferences 'bout symlinks).

[luminosity]

I've been working on my game for a while now, for commercial distribution at the end. At the moment I'm focused on Windows, though I'll be making a linux and mac version later. This meant amongst other things I didn't want to need to have users install the framework in addition to installing my game, and I definitely didn't want to override previously installed versions, or have future installed versions break my game.

At the same time, though, I didn't want to make a love.exe mygame.love merge -- I've programmed my game to do a lot of its loading by iterating over directories or files to load campaign files, or unit files, so I can easily drop in future campaigns, and hopefully users will be able to as well to create easy mods, etc.

So what I hit upon playing around today was:

• make an export of the game files for my game
• copy the love framework files on my computer to a LOVE sub directory of my game
• add a quick and dirty batch file that just contains "LOVE/love.exe ."
• convert that to an exe so I can make a fancy icon using this nifty program

Running the game works fine on my computer (win 7) with LOVE installed, and also on my brother's computer (XP) which doesn't have it installed. Everything seems to be working fine. I just thought it'd be a good idea to check if there could be any problems distributing my game like this?

Thanks.

[slime]

Why don't you just use the love.filesystem save directory for mod/campaign/data files?

[Robin]

Like slime said. Also, the way you're doing it may require administrative rights to add addons, mods, etc., which might not be what you want.

Doing it in the save dir, you can have a simple installer which doesn't need administrative rights, so each user can download their own new campains or mods.

[sanjiv]

Help? I've made .love files before, but all of a sudden this guy's refusing to run.

1) The folder with the main.lua, when dragged over the LOVE shortcut, runs just fine. (whoray!)

2) I move the contents of the folder (not the folder itself) into an empty zip file and rename the file to love (with main.lua at the root). (as usual)

3) I double click on the love file, and get nothing but LOVE and stars. (huh?)

Is there some rule I'm not following, or something particularly weird thing I've included in that folder? I'll admit there's a lot of extra and unused stuff in there, but I can't figure out what'd be getting in the way.

The love file I attached won't run, but if you convert it to zip and get it into a folder, it should run just fine.

[Nixola]

I renamed 'detect collisions' to 'detect_collisions' and it works, so I'd say that LÖVE doesn't like spaces... But then I noticed 'start point' (didn't rename it and it works anyway...)

[sanjiv]

That doesn't seem to be fixing things on my end. I went ahead and removed all the spaces from all file names, and still, no dice. Just so people don't have to open the whole thing to look at it, here's my main.lua. I assume if there's an obvious problem,this is where it'll be.

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require ('colors')
require ('level')
require ('player.player')
require ('player.moveplayer')
require ('collisions')
require ('level.impermeableobjects')
require ('startpoint')
require ('message')

function love.load()

	--level.load()
	player:load()

	note='-'
	scale=1.5--1.5
	collision=nil
	
end

function love.update(dt)
		startpoint:pulse(dt)
		if boxCollision(player,object,dt)
		then collision=boxCollision(player,object,dt) 
		else collision='-' end

		player:update(object,dt)
	
end

function love.draw()

	love.graphics.push()
	love.graphics.scale(scale)

	player:draw()	
	startpoint:draw()

		
--	for i=1,#object do	
		level.drawObject(object)	
--	end
	
	color(white)
	love.graphics.print("title? Perhaps I'll use these to keep track of progress",60,30)
	
	love.graphics.pop()
	
	color(white)
	love.graphics.print(player.x..', '..player.y,10,10)
	love.graphics.print(collision, 10,30)
	
	message()
	

	
	
end

function love.mousepressed(x,y,button)
	if button=='l' then
		player.x=x/scale
		player.y=y/scale
	end
end

function love.keypressed(key,unicode)
	if key==' ' then player.vy=-player.jump_v end
	if key=='return' then player.x=startpoint.x player.y=startpoint.y end

end

[sanjiv]

update: Best I can tell, my mistake was creating and renaming a rar file instead of a zip file. Things work fine now.