Absolutely adore this game engine. It's simple, extremely flexible, and easy to pick up yet won't hold your hand on many tasks that other engines might. Plus, the love2d forums are still very active and you can always get the answer you need! This engine is ideal for anyone getting started with gamedev who also want to get their hands dirty with some of the more abstract programming problems you'll come across when making games. Love2d + Lua can do basically anything, but by extension, they won't do as much for you. Get into the weeds, read lots of documentation, and talk to other developers who are making libraries and modules to handle complex tasks.
I wanted to do a Love2D project but the whole environment and libraries and functions were so unfamiliar and thus frightening to me so I looked for tutorials on TH-cam and now after watching your video I feel so READY and CONFIDENT to start my Love2D journey! Thanks a lot for your awesome videos!!!!
As someone who's participated in a few gamejams, this is an awesome introduction to gamedev! The demo project is simple enough and very thoroughly expained. Great work!
Thanks for this video! I purchased your course and finished it earlier today. I’ve now made three basic games thanks to you, and I’m ready to make a _real_ game, with my blood, sweat, and tears. Thank you for the course! :)
For everybody who's file saved as txt despite changing the file to main.lua- set the file's name to default (naming it "newfile" works) open the file in notepad Save As- Type in "main.lua" Change " Save As Type" to "All Files" Change "Encoding" to "Unicode" (or ANSI) It should finally save as LUA file now
Thank you for putting this tutorial up for free! i will continue to learn from you in udemy (even though i like udemy as a platform). You 100% deserve my support!
It was such a surprise to hear your voice in this random tutorial I looked up! I have been loving your game dev videos. Now I love your tutorials as well! Thanks.
the fact that Love lets you write programs in Lua language without actually needing Lua itself is pretty fascinating. Truly a marvel of technology if you ask me.
This is a really cool course! What I recommend to people following this is in between lectures you should mess around with the functions yourself and make sure you fully understand what's going on.
I've been trying to get into game dev for awhile and I tried Unity, GDevelop, Godot, GameMaker, and now Love. I think I'm gonna stick with love for now good tutorial
What a great tuturial,and it's also ez to convert this into mobile.I wish there was more tuturials about Love2d like this one,bcs I am going to need Love2d for a gamejam.
Thanks for this, I am new to any type of programming, this was nice to complete, looking forward to doing all of the Udemy course, this was a great advertisement for it!
Free clue: When finding distances, never use square root, it´s slow, expensive to the cpu (of course in this example, no problem AT ALL, but sometimes you´ll be chacking hundreds, thousands... then you´d lose some fps. Simply do not calculate it... and compare to de radius squared instead. multiplication is much much faster than sqrt.
hi! i did what you suggested, and it worked! i was just wondering if you would mind briefly explaining the maths behind it? i know you made this comment a while ago, so i am not sure if you will see this or if you will reply if you do, but... i thought for sure that the score would increase even if you clicked outside of the circle because the radius and distance calculated were both squared. but they didn't! if you see this and would like to explain, i would really appreciate it 😊
@@prcs420 if you are checking whether a point is inside a circle, you dont have to compare whether d is less than the radius when you could (cheaply) compare whether d squared is less than the radius squared, as the expressions d = sqrt((x2-x1)^2 + (y2-y1)^2) is equivalent to d^2 = (x2-x1)^2 + (y2-y1)^2
I know lua from roblox(studio, roblox is my childhood game). And I still wrok in Roblox but I wanted to go outside. I am learning python but I already know lua. So I finnaly found A GREAT PERSON TO TEACH ME HOW TO USE LUA OUTSIDE ROBLOX. Thank you.
Awesome video, one small tip, you did mention at the start of your video that you have tutorials about tables. Later in the video when you get to the target table, I would mention it again that you have information about that on your website! Keep up the good work :)
I LOVE (all puns intended) your content! Your Monogame course on Udemy was fantastic as well. By chance, could you do a tutorial on Tiny ECS and LOVE2D sometime? This framework + that library seems like an awesome starting point on the "new industry standard" using ECS to build games!
At leas on this very basic example, it does look simpler then PyGame, specially the mouse handling is cleaner in my view, I'm going to keep watching and trying more tutorials to get an idea, maybe I'll even switch from Python's PyGame to Lua's Love.
It means that somewhere in your program (the error message should tell you in which line this is happening) a function you're calling probably loads or interacts in some way with another file and so it needs the path to it as a string. eg: love.graphics.newImage("../path/to/your/image") notice the "" those are what makes it a string. Hope this helps! maybe, I know it's a month old comment but still
i have noticed that you didnt add timer to it so using knowledge i got from your video i did it so you need to put code 1 below into function love.draw() Code 1: love.graphics.setColor(1, 1, 1) love.graphics.setFont(gameFont) love.graphics.print(timer, 90, 0) then you need to put Code 2 into function love.update(data) Code 2: timer = timer + 1 Fun Fact: it might be a bit too fast lol
That notation in the DistanceBetween section put me off, I've been struggling to understand this for two days now and I don't get it. I suddenly feel like I need advanced maths to understand Love2D.
final part of the tutorial doesn't work, the target still goes out of bounds. edit: erased the code and typed it in exactly the same again and now it works. Super strange!
Lol i was watching your tiktok and think : thats will be cool if he had a youtube channel and made tuto i searched on google : how to make 2D game with love2d and i found your channel in first
Would you say that this style is idiomatic for Lua libraries? I'm used to Python, Go, C#, JS, etc and pretty new to Lua. The way I have written libraries in other languages is typically to accept callbacks to library functions rather than dynamically set/monkey patch the library functions themselves. Is there some performance benefit to using monkey patching instead of passing in a callback?
So when I see this particular part 13:36, I see that u use the "method" .graphics, my question is how do u know what does each method do, or is this just an experienced programmer thing? P/S: Nice video, loving all the hard work u put into this
This is a good question, and really the answer just comes down to experience with the framework. As a newcomer, you would ask "how can I draw text to the screen in Love2D?", and if you Google that exact question, you'd eventually end up at the documentation for love.graphics.print: love2d.org/wiki/love.graphics.print
Can someone help me understanding functions? I see functions that are defined such as love.draw() that seem to just execute automatically but then there is the function, for example, distanceBetween(x1,y1, x2, y2) that is defined and called to return a value like I would expect. So are all functions always executed in lua and it's whether it influences the state is what matters? If I never use distanceBetween(...) does it still execute? And how come the function love.load() seems to execute only once where love.update() executes at the frame rate? What determines this?
Here after 6 months but The functions that contains love are built-in functions that you can directly use, however you can make your own function to do something or return something.
If I wanted to make the circle into a square, what would I use instead of if mouseToTarget < target.radius then ? I wanted to make a square version, but not sure what to replace radius with, adding the height and width alone doesn't seem to work.
There is this idea in game development, of a "box collider". Love2d has native support for those, but if you want to hack them in yourself, what you need to do is: replace the single comparison with 4 separate comparisons have two of them check whether x_pos is in between square_x +- width/2 and the other two whether y_pos is in between square_y +- height /2 It's a bit finicky, but you'll find much faster than using circle colliders
@@angrymurloc7626 ooh! I was able to figure it out after a bit too many hours, but I'll definitely try that way when I have time! Thank you so much! Trying/figuring this out seems like fun, be well!
I've been struggling with everything. How do you get the Loved Console to show its black window as opposed to the dammed error screen? I only got the console a few times. But now I even have another question. What commands are you doing to get it to run after you establish the code as you did for the rectangle? As a complement I'm glad you're doing this in Visual Code on a 2021 vid. I have the latest Asus laptop. So this seems fitting.
The drag-and-drop method is foolproof to get the black window. Create a new folder, put a file in it called 'main.lua', and drag the folder onto the LOVE shortcut. Make sure your main.lua is actually a Lua file, and not a different filetype. If you do that, and main.lua is empty, I guarantee you'll see the black window. If you see the error screen, read the error it tells you and see if you can fix the problem. If it says the project is invalid, then you don't have a main.lua file in the folder. And the command to run code through VS Code is Alt+L. See 8:58 for that.
Did it all. Got nothing. Well it tells me I might have to reinstall as it can't recognize certain software properties, when clearly in the LOVE folder with all its downloads they are right there. Running out of time.... been attending a course on this. With NO results but newly bought software and hardware plus new and newer downloads. I practice coding but with NO game to apply it to in LOVE. Which is of the course.
@@Challacade Now its another day. The code doesn't want to run again like it did yesterday. I even reinstalled. Seriously why is this so hard? I can follow directions and type things just fine. But now, its just nothing. I cant find the settings fr the Love2D Support the same way. Oh wait now its here. But the moment I click off what will happen?
@@Challacade Okay. I just finished the vid. And now I've successfully done it. However the case. Is there a right way to save all this so I don't have to redo this video all over again? Ah..... I won't question you too much more. I'll keep at it until again.
I followed this all the way through I’m even enrolled in your Udemy course and this is still not working I cannot get alt l to work nor does dragging the file to the love window work. I’m about to just give up on love all together
@@Challacade it works but it'd be nice to be able to not have to go to the desktop everytime i want to test it. i think the extension may have an error in its settings code
How does one add little notes in your code without it running? On rublox you can type in ## and then you’re message..I think.. I dunno, it’s been a while since I did silly coding .u. Turns out you need to type “- -“ and BOOM :D (don’t put a space like I did thought ,u,)
On my Mac, it automatically set the shortcut to be Command + L. If you go to the Extensions section in VS Code, and then click on Love2D support, there's a tab called "Feature Contributions" which shows the different commands associated with Love2D Support. The shortcut for pixelbyte.love2d.run is what you're looking for. Keep in mind that the shortcut only works when you have a game folder open in VS Code; if you don't have a proper project open, it won't work
There should be more Love2d tutorials on TH-cam. I love this program. (no pun intended)
It’s ok
@@kaiser9321 What do you prefer?
@@DevineInnovations I didn’t see this at the time, but I use unity with C#
I love löve
Absolutely adore this game engine. It's simple, extremely flexible, and easy to pick up yet won't hold your hand on many tasks that other engines might. Plus, the love2d forums are still very active and you can always get the answer you need!
This engine is ideal for anyone getting started with gamedev who also want to get their hands dirty with some of the more abstract programming problems you'll come across when making games. Love2d + Lua can do basically anything, but by extension, they won't do as much for you. Get into the weeds, read lots of documentation, and talk to other developers who are making libraries and modules to handle complex tasks.
The wiki is pretty useful too.
I wanted to do a Love2D project but the whole environment and libraries and functions were so unfamiliar and thus frightening to me so I looked for tutorials on TH-cam and now after watching your video I feel so READY and CONFIDENT to start my Love2D journey! Thanks a lot for your awesome videos!!!!
As someone who's participated in a few gamejams, this is an awesome introduction to gamedev! The demo project is simple enough and very thoroughly expained. Great work!
Someone give this man a reward for giving us such a good tutorial.
Thanks for this video! I purchased your course and finished it earlier today. I’ve now made three basic games thanks to you, and I’m ready to make a _real_ game, with my blood, sweat, and tears. Thank you for the course! :)
For everybody who's file saved as txt despite changing the file to main.lua-
set the file's name to default (naming it "newfile" works)
open the file in notepad
Save As-
Type in "main.lua"
Change " Save As Type" to "All Files"
Change "Encoding" to "Unicode" (or ANSI)
It should finally save as LUA file now
Also he mentions you can enable viewing the file extension. Then that way, you can change the extension that appears.
And thats one of the many reasons why I don't use the cancer that is windows
Thank you for putting this tutorial up for free! i will continue to learn from you in udemy (even though i like udemy as a platform). You 100% deserve my support!
It was such a surprise to hear your voice in this random tutorial I looked up! I have been loving your game dev videos. Now I love your tutorials as well! Thanks.
Thanks so much for this. Was stuck trying to install it but with VSCode for about an hour haha. You saved my life.
the fact that Love lets you write programs in Lua language without actually needing Lua itself is pretty fascinating. Truly a marvel of technology if you ask me.
Why is that fascinating?
roblox also does that buddy
@@likekebab-qg3yr frame works usually need for you need download the programming language. Roblox is more game engine than framework.
i dont usually comment on youtube videos but i couldnt help myself from commenting on this one !! such an amazing tutorial !! thank you so much
this is easier than any programming language i learned before
how crazy, easy to learn, easy to understand
This is a really cool course! What I recommend to people following this is in between lectures you should mess around with the functions yourself and make sure you fully understand what's going on.
I've been trying to get into game dev for awhile and I tried Unity, GDevelop, Godot, GameMaker, and now Love. I think I'm gonna stick with love for now good tutorial
I came from the old Version
Your voice is sooo crisp now lol
Thank you so much for the wonderful tutorial!
It's amazing how much of a difference a better recording setup can make!
Love takes me way back to the days of BASIC on Tandy Color Computer II.
You are so unique. I wish more tutorials would be like your tutorials.
What a great tuturial,and it's also ez to convert this into mobile.I wish there was more tuturials about Love2d like this one,bcs I am going to need Love2d for a gamejam.
Thanks for this, I am new to any type of programming, this was nice to complete, looking forward to doing all of the Udemy course, this was a great advertisement for it!
Free clue: When finding distances, never use square root, it´s slow, expensive to the cpu (of course in this example, no problem AT ALL, but sometimes you´ll be chacking hundreds, thousands... then you´d lose some fps.
Simply do not calculate it... and compare to de radius squared instead. multiplication is much much faster than sqrt.
how to do it? im dumb
hi! i did what you suggested, and it worked! i was just wondering if you would mind briefly explaining the maths behind it? i know you made this comment a while ago, so i am not sure if you will see this or if you will reply if you do, but... i thought for sure that the score would increase even if you clicked outside of the circle because the radius and distance calculated were both squared. but they didn't! if you see this and would like to explain, i would really appreciate it 😊
@@prcs420 if you are checking whether a point is inside a circle, you dont have to compare whether d is less than the radius when you could (cheaply) compare whether d squared is less than the radius squared, as the expressions d = sqrt((x2-x1)^2 + (y2-y1)^2) is equivalent to d^2 = (x2-x1)^2 + (y2-y1)^2
this guy needs a raise...
I love Lua with Love2D! 💕
I know lua from roblox(studio, roblox is my childhood game). And I still wrok in Roblox but I wanted to go outside. I am learning python but I already know lua. So I finnaly found A GREAT PERSON TO TEACH ME HOW TO USE LUA OUTSIDE ROBLOX. Thank you.
easily explained and totally satisfied with the output..great sir
Best tutorial on Love2D around, great pacing
Thank you!!
Awesome video, one small tip, you did mention at the start of your video that you have tutorials about tables. Later in the video when you get to the target table, I would mention it again that you have information about that on your website!
Keep up the good work :)
That's a good idea; thanks for the feedback!
Thank you for this video Kyle, it was a great intro to Love2D!
Great tutorial! I wish Love and Lua were more popular, it looks like it has a lot of potential.
Lua is popular, its legit what developers use for coding in Roblox.
@@GVN.13 roblox uses a modified version called luau, not lua
@@realmanbenfake999 o lol
Balatro was made in LÖVE.
love your tutorial. very detail and clear explanation. keep up the work, we want more from you. thanks
I LOVE (all puns intended) your content! Your Monogame course on Udemy was fantastic as well.
By chance, could you do a tutorial on Tiny ECS and LOVE2D sometime? This framework + that library seems like an awesome starting point on the "new industry standard" using ECS to build games!
At leas on this very basic example, it does look simpler then PyGame, specially the mouse handling is cleaner in my view, I'm going to keep watching and trying more tutorials to get an idea, maybe I'll even switch from Python's PyGame to Lua's Love.
I am thankful for this tutorial as it helps out alot with a game im working on, and once again Thank you.
Thanks for the edit extension part, it was such a hassle creating ".love" files before
thank you so much for showing me about love2d and VSCode
Amazing video , your tutorial has helped me to build a game of my own👍👍
Great tutorial and game dev introduction! Helped me a lot :)
Thank you Kyle for your effort ! Great course, indeed
Amazing explanation, i learned alot. And you made me intressted in what you were saying! thanks.
am hav doubt what is 'The "path" argument must be of type string. Received undefined'
It means that somewhere in your program (the error message should tell you in which line this is happening) a function you're calling probably loads or interacts in some way with another file and so it needs the path to it as a string. eg: love.graphics.newImage("../path/to/your/image") notice the "" those are what makes it a string.
Hope this helps! maybe, I know it's a month old comment but still
First thing i learn is Osu, Holy the vibes are real.
i have noticed that you didnt add timer to it so using knowledge i got from your video i did it so you need to put code 1 below into function love.draw()
Code 1:
love.graphics.setColor(1, 1, 1)
love.graphics.setFont(gameFont)
love.graphics.print(timer, 90, 0)
then you need to put Code 2 into function love.update(data)
Code 2:
timer = timer + 1
Fun Fact: it might be a bit too fast lol
Error when i try to open
Good work bud. Was really helpful! thanks
love2d vs godot vs other engines , you could do a video about that? , it would be cool
for macOS you should use Command+L
I was looking online everywhere for the solution to Alt+L. Thank you!!
Love this tutorial!! thank you so much!
This is just like pygame, love it just like my dear python
this is the greatest programming video on youtube
Thank You For The Love2d Tutorial :D
This was a superb tutorial 10/10.
Bought your course ✌
Thank you, you've helped me so much.
Wow, thank you so much!
"mom can we have osu at home?"
"we already have osu at home, wdym?"
osu at home :
btw it was a really goood tutorial about love, i love it!
thnx a lot, its realy intresting type of programming ! more some tutorial !
That notation in the DistanceBetween section put me off, I've been struggling to understand this for two days now and I don't get it. I suddenly feel like I need advanced maths to understand Love2D.
final part of the tutorial doesn't work, the target still goes out of bounds.
edit: erased the code and typed it in exactly the same again and now it works. Super strange!
Now make someone knowing nothing about programming or game development listen to this without context 💀
Jokes aside this is a great tutorial
Lol i was watching your tiktok and think : thats will be cool if he had a youtube channel and made tuto i searched on google : how to make 2D game with love2d and i found your channel in first
41:51 bro used Pythagoras's theoreme formula in simple game. Math is based.
After i made my folder, i am not able to add a text file. It is a magic text document instead. Please help me.
it shouldn't matter, since you're making it a main.lua file anyway
Would you say that this style is idiomatic for Lua libraries? I'm used to Python, Go, C#, JS, etc and pretty new to Lua. The way I have written libraries in other languages is typically to accept callbacks to library functions rather than dynamically set/monkey patch the library functions themselves. Is there some performance benefit to using monkey patching instead of passing in a callback?
OMG I LOVE YOU THANK YOU SO MUCH
So when I see this particular part 13:36, I see that u use the "method" .graphics, my question is how do u know what does each method do, or is this just an experienced programmer thing?
P/S: Nice video, loving all the hard work u put into this
This is a good question, and really the answer just comes down to experience with the framework. As a newcomer, you would ask "how can I draw text to the screen in Love2D?", and if you Google that exact question, you'd eventually end up at the documentation for love.graphics.print:
love2d.org/wiki/love.graphics.print
@@Challacade Dang, I never thought people would reply me this fast, thank you so much man!!
could you make a more advanced tutorial? :D
How did you get the parameter hints working for VSCode?
Can someone help me understanding functions? I see functions that are defined such as love.draw() that seem to just execute automatically but then there is the function, for example, distanceBetween(x1,y1, x2, y2) that is defined and called to return a value like I would expect. So are all functions always executed in lua and it's whether it influences the state is what matters? If I never use distanceBetween(...) does it still execute? And how come the function love.load() seems to execute only once where love.update() executes at the frame rate? What determines this?
Here after 6 months but
The functions that contains love are built-in functions that you can directly use, however you can make your own function to do something or return something.
you are the best
Thank you! I love you.
Bro you are amazing 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🤝🏼👌🏼👌🏼
tip: if it dosnt work in the brackets on load put dt
It won't open the file in Love2D when I click run or when I drag the file over love.exe. Any solutions?
You just got a new subscriber :)
Thank you!
awesome content, saved me!
how do I setup the pathway for the love app if I'm on Mac? It keeps telling me the app can't be verified so it can't be opened.
Thanks for creating this but there is just one problem I didn't know the link comes with a discount so I wasted it
Thanks! I was wondering why I had no game engine
Thanks that helped so much
for some reason my rectangle turned to a square.. couldn't get it to change back.
Eu amei esse tutorial! Parabéns!
bruhh my circle target stops every time i click i have to reset the engine what do i do
thanks man really helped
how great the framework is!it makes a big difference to such me a noob(by the way,are there any Chinese programmer?)
my text document didn't change to a lua file. am i doing something wrong?
cool tutorial! very helpful :)
Is love2d only for small projects, can it do medium size projects?
As long as the game is 2D, it can handle larger projects, absolutely.
If I wanted to make the circle into a square, what would I use instead of
if mouseToTarget < target.radius then ?
I wanted to make a square version, but not sure what to replace radius with, adding the height and width alone doesn't seem to work.
There is this idea in game development, of a "box collider".
Love2d has native support for those, but if you want to hack them in yourself, what you need to do is:
replace the single comparison with 4 separate comparisons
have two of them check whether x_pos is in between square_x +- width/2
and the other two whether y_pos is in between square_y +- height /2
It's a bit finicky, but you'll find much faster than using circle colliders
@@angrymurloc7626 ooh! I was able to figure it out after a bit too many hours, but I'll definitely try that way when I have time! Thank you so much! Trying/figuring this out seems like fun, be well!
Thank you sir
Very usefull tutorial....
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤👍
Cheers mate
I'm not able to run,,, at 13.59 please help
I've been struggling with everything. How do you get the Loved Console to show its black window as opposed to the dammed error screen? I only got the console a few times. But now I even have another question. What commands are you doing to get it to run after you establish the code as you did for the rectangle? As a complement I'm glad you're doing this in Visual Code on a 2021 vid. I have the latest Asus laptop. So this seems fitting.
The drag-and-drop method is foolproof to get the black window. Create a new folder, put a file in it called 'main.lua', and drag the folder onto the LOVE shortcut. Make sure your main.lua is actually a Lua file, and not a different filetype. If you do that, and main.lua is empty, I guarantee you'll see the black window. If you see the error screen, read the error it tells you and see if you can fix the problem. If it says the project is invalid, then you don't have a main.lua file in the folder.
And the command to run code through VS Code is Alt+L. See 8:58 for that.
Did it all. Got nothing. Well it tells me I might have to reinstall as it can't recognize certain software properties, when clearly in the LOVE folder with all its downloads they are right there. Running out of time.... been attending a course on this. With NO results but newly bought software and hardware plus new and newer downloads. I practice coding but with NO game to apply it to in LOVE. Which is of the course.
@@Challacade Nevermind XD. Thank you for everything. Had a breakthrough. I've got catching up to do now. Thanks.
@@Challacade Now its another day. The code doesn't want to run again like it did yesterday. I even reinstalled. Seriously why is this so hard? I can follow directions and type things just fine. But now, its just nothing. I cant find the settings fr the Love2D Support the same way. Oh wait now its here. But the moment I click off what will happen?
@@Challacade Okay. I just finished the vid. And now I've successfully done it. However the case. Is there a right way to save all this so I don't have to redo this video all over again? Ah..... I won't question you too much more. I'll keep at it until again.
I'm facing issue it's only show blank screen anyone know how to fix this issue
Make tutorial on accesing file like txt to parsing and printing it to the screen
I followed this all the way through I’m even enrolled in your Udemy course and this is still not working I cannot get alt l to work nor does dragging the file to the love window work. I’m about to just give up on love all together
What happens when you drag the folder on to the LOVE shortcut? What happens when you double-click on the shortcut?
@@Challacade it works but it'd be nice to be able to not have to go to the desktop everytime i want to test it. i think the extension may have an error in its settings code
how do i do serialization?
you are the only love 2d youtuber i know past 2018
tysm
Thank you.
for some reason, it only moves once when I click it.
How does one add little notes in your code without it running? On rublox you can type in ## and then you’re message..I think.. I dunno, it’s been a while since I did silly coding .u.
Turns out you need to type “- -“ and BOOM :D (don’t put a space like I did thought ,u,)
Im using Macbook, I dont have ALT on my keyboard. I tried option, command, and control + L, but didnt work. Any suggestion?
On my Mac, it automatically set the shortcut to be Command + L. If you go to the Extensions section in VS Code, and then click on Love2D support, there's a tab called "Feature Contributions" which shows the different commands associated with Love2D Support. The shortcut for pixelbyte.love2d.run is what you're looking for. Keep in mind that the shortcut only works when you have a game folder open in VS Code; if you don't have a proper project open, it won't work