love

When beginning to write games using LÖVE, the most important parts of the API are the callbacks: love.load to do one-time setup of your game, love.update which is used to manage your game's state frame-to-frame, and love.draw which is used to render the game state onto the screen.

More interactive games will override additional callbacks in order to handle input from the user, and other aspects of a full-featured game.

LÖVE provides default placeholders for these callbacks, which you can override inside your own code by creating your own function with the same name as the callback:

-- Load some default values for our rectangle.
function love.load()
    x, y, w, h = 20, 20, 60, 20
end

-- Increase the size of the rectangle every frame.
function love.update(dt)
    w = w + 1
    h = h + 1
end

-- Draw a coloured rectangle.
function love.draw()
    -- In versions prior to 11.0, color component values are (0, 102, 102)
    love.graphics.setColor(0, 0.4, 0.4)
    love.graphics.rectangle("fill", x, y, w, h)
end

Modules

love.audio	Provides of audio interface for playback/recording sound.
love.data	Provides functionality for creating and transforming data.	11.0
love.event	Manages events, like keypresses.	0.6.0
love.filesystem	Provides an interface to the user's filesystem.
love.font	Allows you to work with fonts.	0.7.0
love.graphics	Drawing of shapes and images, management of screen geometry.
love.image	Provides an interface to decode encoded image data.
love.joystick	Provides an interface to connected joysticks.	0.5.0
love.keyboard	Provides an interface to the user's keyboard.
love.math	Provides system-independent mathematical functions.	0.9.0
love.mouse	Provides an interface to the user's mouse.
love.physics	Can simulate 2D rigid body physics in a realistic manner.	0.4.0
love.sound	This module is responsible for decoding sound files.
love.system	Provides access to information about the user's system.	0.9.0
love.thread	Allows you to work with threads.	0.7.0
love.timer	Provides high-resolution timing functionality.
love.touch	Provides an interface to touch-screen presses.	0.10.0
love.video	This module is responsible for decoding and streaming video files.	0.10.0
love.window	Provides an interface for the program's window.	0.9.0

Third-party modules

lua-enet	Multiplayer networking module for games.	0.9.0
socket	Module for HTTP, TCP, and UDP networking.	0.5.0
utf8	Provides basic support for manipulating UTF-8 strings.	0.9.2

Functions

love.getVersion	Gets the current running version of LÖVE.	0.9.1
love.hasDeprecationOutput	Gets whether LÖVE displays warnings when using deprecated functionality.	11.0
love.isVersionCompatible	Gets whether the given version is compatible with the current running version of LÖVE.	0.10.0
love.setDeprecationOutput	Sets whether LÖVE displays warnings when using deprecated functionality.	11.0

Types

Data	The superclass of all data.
Object	The superclass of all LÖVE types.
Variant	The types supported by love.thread and love.event.

Callbacks

All callbacks are only called in main thread.

General

Config Files	Game configuration settings.
love.draw	Callback function used to draw on the screen every frame.
love.errhand	The error handler, used to display error messages.		11.0
love.errorhandler	The error handler, used to display error messages.	11.0
love.load	This function is called exactly once at the beginning of the game.
love.lowmemory	Callback function triggered when the system is running out of memory on mobile devices.	0.10.0
love.quit	Callback function triggered when the game is closed.	0.7.0
love.run	The main function, containing the main loop. A sensible default is used when left out.
love.threaderror	Callback function triggered when a Thread encounters an error.	0.9.0
love.update	Callback function used to update the state of the game every frame.

Window

love.directorydropped	Callback function triggered when a directory is dragged and dropped onto the window.	0.10.0
love.displayrotated	Called when the device display orientation changed.	11.3
love.filedropped	Callback function triggered when a file is dragged and dropped onto the window.	0.10.0
love.focus	Callback function triggered when window receives or loses focus.	0.7.0
love.mousefocus	Callback function triggered when window receives or loses mouse focus.	0.9.0
love.resize	Called when the window is resized.	0.9.0
love.visible	Callback function triggered when window is shown or hidden.	0.9.0

Keyboard

love.keypressed	Callback function triggered when a key is pressed.
love.keyreleased	Callback function triggered when a keyboard key is released.
love.textedited	Called when the candidate text for an IME has changed.	0.10.0
love.textinput	Called when text has been entered by the user.	0.9.0

Mouse

love.mousemoved	Callback function triggered when the mouse is moved.	0.9.2
love.mousepressed	Callback function triggered when a mouse button is pressed.
love.mousereleased	Callback function triggered when a mouse button is released.
love.wheelmoved	Callback function triggered when the mouse wheel is moved.	0.10.0

Joystick

love.gamepadaxis	Called when a Joystick's virtual gamepad axis is moved.	0.9.0
love.gamepadpressed	Called when a Joystick's virtual gamepad button is pressed.	0.9.0
love.gamepadreleased	Called when a Joystick's virtual gamepad button is released.	0.9.0
love.joystickadded	Called when a Joystick is connected.	0.9.0
love.joystickaxis	Called when a joystick axis moves.	0.9.0
love.joystickhat	Called when a joystick hat direction changes.	0.9.0
love.joystickpressed	Called when a joystick button is pressed.
love.joystickreleased	Called when a joystick button is released.
love.joystickremoved	Called when a Joystick is disconnected.	0.9.0

Touch

love.touchmoved	Callback function triggered when a touch press moves inside the touch screen.	0.10.0
love.touchpressed	Callback function triggered when the touch screen is touched.	0.10.0
love.touchreleased	Callback function triggered when the touch screen stops being touched.	0.10.0

See also

• Snippets

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