Transparent window with borderless window

[ThiefOfPringles]

So what I'm trying to do is create a borderless window set by conf.lua and with transparency set by love.graphics.setBackgroundColor. But when the window opens there is no transparency. I saw other posts mention that SDL did not support transparent windows at the time of their writing, but a quick google search brings up that SDL does support transparent windows. Will LÖVE ever support transparent windows? Or does it already support it and I'm just missing something?

[zorg]

So what I'm trying to do is create a borderless window set by conf.lua and with transparency set by love.graphics.setBackgroundColor. But when the window opens there is no transparency. I saw other posts mention that SDL did not support transparent windows at the time of their writing, but a quick google search brings up that SDL does support transparent windows. Will LÖVE ever support transparent windows? Or does it already support it and I'm just missing something?

Good question; Löve currently doesn't support them. That said, it might never, since if it's also tied in to SDL's graphics module/whatever, then it's an issue since Löve uses its own set of functions that use OpenGL directly, as far as i know.

[ivan]

One of the strengths of Love2D is that it's cross platform.
You make your game and it works the same on desktops and Android, iOS, etc.
I doubt what you are trying to do will be supported since it doesn't make sense across different platforms.

[zorg]

One of the strengths of Love2D is that it's cross platform.
You make your game and it works the same on desktops and Android, iOS, etc.
I doubt what you are trying to do will be supported since it doesn't make sense across different platforms.

I mean, apart from the mobile ones, to me it does make sense, but again, support for it may not exist on all 3 desktop platforms even... nor with how löve uses OpenGL, maybe.

[raidho36]

Any half-decent composition manager would allow per-window transparency settings, so you shouldn't bother implementing that yourself.

[slime]

This is what SDL_SetWindowOpacity does. Is this really what you want? If so, what will you use it for specifically? It doesn't allow you to specify per-pixel opacity.

[zorg]

There are 2 somewhat relevant things regarding this topic: (and there were a few threads about this before)
- Window opacity, which is what slime showed you above,
- Custom-shaped windows, which would be transparent outside of anything not "masked"

The latter would allow, if the mask would be updated each frame, to have games or programs with "transparent background" while the foreground would be opaque, the first would only have limited usage.

[ThiefOfPringles]

This is what SDL_SetWindowOpacity does. Is this really what you want? If so, what will you use it for specifically? It doesn't allow you to specify per-pixel opacity.

There are 2 somewhat relevant things regarding this topic: (and there were a few threads about this before)
- Window opacity, which is what slime showed you above,
- Custom-shaped windows, which would be transparent outside of anything not "masked"

The latter would allow, if the mask would be updated each frame, to have games or programs with "transparent background" while the foreground would be opaque, the first would only have limited usage.

The latter is what I had in mind. Is there any way of going about that with LÖVE?

[raidho36]

No and you really shouldn't even if you could.

[Nixola]

No and you really shouldn't even if you could.

Why shouldn't you?