Deriving from Löve

[Helios]

Hi.

First of all, sorry if this is a duplicate question, but I wasn't really sure what search terms to use, so I couldn't find anything.

I'm working on an engine of mine, and had the idea of basing it off an existing engine rather than starting from scratch, so that's how I found Löve. The thing is, I don't really have control over the design at the interface level, as I need to stay compatible with existing code, so many of the features Löve offers are of no use to me. I was wondering how hard it would be to strip away pretty much anything that isn't graphics, sound, and IO. In particular, how deeply integrated is Lua?

Thanks.

Addendum: I'm looking for the opinion of someone who has handled the LÖVE source directly or has at least written a game engine before. Please do not suggest libraries, but I'm open to engine suggestions.

[TheScriptan]

LOVE is an open source engine, you can download the code, edit and compile it if you want something like that.

[Xugro]

If you do not need Lua at all you should not use LÖVE as a basis. Take a look at SDL (Simple DirektMedia Layer). Here is a overview of what SDL offers you:
http://wiki.libsdl.org/Introduction#What_can_SDL_do.3F
In short: You get cross-platform graphics, sound, IO, input and a few additional features.

[TheScriptan]

Love2D was made by using C++ and SDL

[Helios]

I've used SDL in the previous version of my engine and I was using it for the current version.

SDL only provides the most basic of building blocks for an engine. It doesn't provide stuff like resource management, a virtual file system (I'm aware of PhysicsFS, but still), etc. If I start out from SDL, I'll take me 2-3 months to write all the infrastructure for a proper engine, which is what I'm trying to avoid by using an existing engine.

I'm looking for the opinion of someone who has handled the LÖVE source directly or has at least written a game engine before. Please do not suggest libraries, but I'm open to engine suggestions.

[Tanner]

Most of the Lua interface exists in "wrap_*" classes. And the code is modularized so as to facilitate disabling or enabling features on a module by module basis as seen in the config documentation.

That said, I can't help but feel that, if you don't want to use Lua, this is the wrong engine to build off of. But it would probably be useful to look through the sections of the codebase relevant to what you want. The code is very readable.

[Helios]

I don't expect removing the scripting module of any engine would be trivial, so I'm prepared to do some work. At least, from what I see here, LÖVE appears to resemble in several aspects another engine I was working on, and Lua's responsibilities are quite cleanly limited.