Code Changes Aren't Reflected when Running Love

[sjyn291]

Hi All,
I'm relatively new to Love, so I hope I'm not making some dumb mistake here. I'm running Lua 5.3.5 on macOS Catalina and have made a "class" in a file at renderer/renderer.lua in my project. It currently looks like

Code: Select all

local Renderer = {}

function Renderer:Create(o)
  print('creating')
  t = o or {}
  setmetatable(t, self)
  self.__index = self

  return t
end

-- setup the renderer state based on the engine state
function Renderer:Update(engine)
  print('update renderer')
end


-- pass in the engine and choose the correct renderers to draw based on engine.states
function Renderer:Draw(engine)
  print('draw renderer')
end

return Renderer

Originally, I did not have an Update function, and was just calling the Draw function in the main.lua as such:

Code: Select all

local Renderer = require('./renderer/renderer')
local renderer = nil

function love.load()
  renderer = Renderer:Create()
end

function love.update()
  -- no updating here, yet
end

function love.draw()
  renderer:Draw()
end

After implementing the Update function in the Renderer table, I changed the update method to

Code: Select all

function love.update()
  renderer:Update()
end

All files have been saved and I've even restarted my machine, but running love . in my project directory just pops up the game window with the error

Code: Select all

Error: main.lua:16: attempt to call method 'Update' (a nil value)
stack traceback:
        [string "boot.lua"]:777: in function 'Update'
        main.lua:16: in function 'update'
        [string "boot.lua"]:612: in function <[string "boot.lua"]:594>
        [C]: in function 'xpcall'

Additionally, changes to Renderer:Draw are no longer recognized. Changes to other files are seen by Love. What the heck is going on here? Is this a Love issue or a Lua issue? I was unable to find anyone else who's had this issue. Any help would be appreciated!

[zorg]

Hi and welcome to the forums;

A few things i notice that may or may not play a role in the issues you're having, but are still errorenous:

- Löve by default uses luaJIT, which is lua 5.1 with some 5.2 features; i'm not sure why or how you're using "Lua 5.3.5", since löve should include luajit with itself, unless you built it yourself deliberately like that.

- require takes in module names, not paths; instead of './renderer/renderer' you want 'renderer.renderer'

Apart from these, we'd probably need to ask for you to share the whole codebase (or better yet, a minimal one that still reproduces the issue) to actually know why file changes aren't recognized... assuming the changed files are saved, your folder structure is correct, etc.

[sjyn291]

Thanks for the quick reply!
Apologies for the Lua version misunderstanding. I assumed Love was using whatever Lua was on my path.

Also, this is indeed not a Love issue. Turns out the t variable in the Renderer:Create() function is at a global scope, and another module is performing similar logic with a variable named t, so the metatable was getting overwritten. Making those variables local fixed the issue.

Thanks again!