Hot Reload

[racarate]

Hey everybody!

I just watched this video:

http://vimeo.com/36579366

and I also re-watched a little bit of Notch's Ludum Dare 22 live stream, and both environments seem to rely on code updating without restarting the program.

I imagine this is possible with LOVE2D -- has anybody tried it?


-Nick

[Robin]

I haven't tried it, but I think it should be possible if you have a scaffolding in your main.lua, and the actual game is located in a subdirectory or something.

It would probably be a good idea to reload the code once focus has been returned to the game:

Code: Select all

function love.focus(f)
    if f then
        -- reload code
    end
    fakelove.focus(f) -- this calls the love.focus in the game
end

[Petunien]

There's a library called LICK: https://github.com/headchant/lick
It enables live coding for LÖVE.

But it doesn't work that well on all projects, respectively on advanced ones.

[Inny]

I had a thread about this recently (it's on page 2, link), and the summary of it is basically use LICK, or use the love.load version that accepts an arg table parameter, and read out an option that'll move you to the level you wanted to test. I think I like the second option better.

live-coding still sounds sweet though, if you figure out anything, let us know.

[paulclinger]

I have live coding in the IDE I've been working on ZeroBraneStudio and did a screencast based on Bret Victor's presentation about three months ago (http://notebook.kulchenko.com/zerobrane ... ctor-style). The IDE also provides Löve integration and the same live coding can be used with Löve too, as shown in this screencast: http://notebook.kulchenko.com/zerobrane ... -with-love.

The mechanism is different from Lick as the application doesn't have any Löve specific logic and runs under a "normal" debugger, which has its own advantages and disadvantages. The main disadvantage is that I can't intercept run-time errors at the moment (which is something I'm working on). All the compilation errors are intercepted and reported in the IDE.

[racarate]

Thanks for all the replies! Looks like I have a lot of reading to do...

[dusoft]

Thanks for all the replies! Looks like I have a lot of reading to do...

This enables hot reload:
package.loaded[state]=false
require(state)

state = e.g. "main"

[josefnpat]

I'm surprised no one mentioned RXI's Lurker project

https://github.com/rxi/lurker

[dusoft]

I'm surprised no one mentioned RXI's Lurker project

https://github.com/rxi/lurker

very nice, josefnpat! basically same idea as mine, just somebody spent more time on prototyping it for actual debugging :-)

[Ranguna259]

LICK is outdated, LoveDebug uses LICK's (updated) code for hotswapping.