Getting Started

Get LÖVE

Download the latest version of LÖVE from the website, and install it. If you're on Windows and don't want to install LÖVE, you can also just download the zipped executables and extract them anywhere.

To find out which version of LÖVE is installed, run the following command: 

love --version

Making a Game

To make a minimal game, create a folder anywhere, and open up your favorite text editor. Sublime Text is a pretty good one for all operating systems, and it has Lua support built in. Create a new file in the folder you just created, and name it main.lua. Put the following code in the file, and save it. 

function love.draw()
    love.graphics.print("Hello World", 400, 300)
end

Running Games

LÖVE can load a game in two ways:

  • From a folder that contains a main.lua file.
  • From a .love file that has a main.lua file in the top-most directory level (aka root)

For creating .love files see Game Distribution.

Windows

ZeroBrane Studio, Sublime Text 2, Notepad++, and SciTE allow you to launch the game from within their code editors.

Otherwise, the easiest way to run the game is to drag the folder onto either love.exe or a shortcut to love.exe. Remember to drag the folder containing main.lua, and not main.lua itself.

You can also launch the game from the command line: 

"C:\Program Files\LOVE\love.exe" "C:\games\mygame"
"C:\Program Files\LOVE\love.exe" "C:\games\packagedgame.love"

You can create a shortcut to do this; simply make a shortcut to love.exe, right-click on it and select "Properties", and then put the command line you want in the "Target" box for the shortcut.

On Windows, there is a special command-line option which will attach a console to the window, allowing you to see the result of print calls (equivalent to setting t.console=true in conf.lua): 

"C:\Program Files\LOVE\love.exe" --console

Linux

On Linux, you can use one of these command lines: 

love /home/path/to/gamedir/
love /home/path/to/packagedgame.love

If you installed LÖVE system-wide, you can double click on .love files in your file manager as well.

Mac OS X

On Mac OS X, a folder or .love file can be dropped onto the love application bundle. On the Mac Terminal (command line), you can use love like this (assuming it's installed to the Applications directory): 

open -n -a love "~/path/to/mygame"

However, the above method will not output printed text to the terminal window. To do that, you will need to execute the love binary inside the application bundle directly: 

/Applications/love.app/Contents/MacOS/love ~/path/to/mygame

You can set up an alias in your Terminal session to call the binary when you use love by adding an alias to your ~/.bash_profile.

Open the file with 

open -a TextEdit ~/.bash_profile

You may have to run 

touch ~/.bash_profile

first if the file does not yet exist.

Then paste in the following code and save the file: 

# alias to love
alias love="/Applications/love.app/Contents/MacOS/love"

Now you can call love from the command line like Linux and Windows: 

love "~/path/to/mygame"

Android

See the Android wiki.

iOS

LÖVE must be built on a Mac OS X system in order to run games on the iOS Simulator or an iOS device. Xcode 7 or newer as well as the LÖVE for iOS source code is required.

To build LÖVE for iOS, open the Xcode project in love/platform/xcode/love.xcodeproj and select the love-ios target at the top of the window. You may want to change the Build Configuration from Debug to Release for better performance, by opening the "Edit Scheme..." menu from the same dropdown selection. Choose either an iOS Simulator device or your plugged-in iOS device in the dropdown selection to the right of the previous dropdown, and click the Build-and-Run button to the left.

To run a LÖVE game using the iOS Simulator, make sure it's already open and drag a .love file onto the simulator's window and drop it. LÖVE will launch if it's not open already. If a game is already running, you may need to quit and re-launch LÖVE.

To run a LÖVE game on your iOS device, open iTunes, go to your iOS device which has LÖVE installed, go to the 'Apps' section, scroll down and find love, and add your .love or game folder to the Documents section. If LÖVE is currently running on the device you may need to quit and re-launch it.

See the Game Distribution page for creating Fused LÖVE games on iOS and distributing them.

Next steps

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