LÖVE

Do you know of any 2D game frameworks similar to LÖVE? Write about them here! Lua ONLY please, otherwise this thread will never end.

I'll go first:

AGen - http://2dengine.com/
AGen is a project driven by forum user Ivan, and I know some of you already know about it. It provides more or less the same features as LÖVE, but things are done a little differently - maybe more to your liking? If you're using Windows, there are a lot of cool builds available on the webpage.

Well ... I'm sure Ivan can tell us more about AGen.

Yey, we got a free plug.
I think our projects are quite similar. The major difference is in the rendering where we tried to build an abstract OO framework with sprites, layers, etc... whereas Love is more down to the hardware, where you draw all the geometry yourself per frame.
Another thing is the licensing, Love is open-source, zLib (right?). On the other hand, we're closed source and we plan to have a custom license that's free for hobby use with a small fee for commercial projects (although, I doubt this will take off)
Both of our projects use box2D except that you decided to modify the box2D interface so that it is integrated within Love. In our case, it seemed to simpler to just preserve the original box2D interface in a package that can be loaded directly from Lua (in fact, it could be loaded in Love as well). An advantage to our approach is that you can use the original box2D documentation and with slight modifications all the box2d code and examples should work.
Input is fairly rudimentary in both AGen and Love. Neither of us has input device enumeration.
Audio support is at about the same level. Love has seperate objects (music and sound) for streaming and non-streaming files which we want to avoid since this is purely a hardware-relevant difference.
That's all I can think of for now, rude might point out other things as well.

Anyways, enough about AGen. One of the biggest 2D projects right now is Fife (you probably know that already)
http://fifengine.de/
They have Lua support I believe via SWIG although by default the engine uses Python

On the PSP, there is an engine similar to Löve called PGE (Phoenix Game Engine).
More infos can be found here: http://pge.luaplayer.org
It uses an API close to the one of Löve but it has some specificities for the PSP (system-calls, USB access...).

The biggest problem with PGE is that it is not open-source and that there is (for now) no way to test the code on the PC.
I'm currently developping a small game for PSP, and to do that, I'm using Löve during the development for testing, and I port it regularly to PGE.
But a port of Löve to PSP would be really nice And a port to the iPhone could be great too...

MoOm wrote:On the PSP, there is an engine similar to Löve called PGE (Phoenix Game Engine).
More infos can be found here: http://pge.luaplayer.org
It uses an API close to the one of Löve but it has some specificities for the PSP (system-calls, USB access...).

The biggest problem with PGE is that it is not open-source and that there is (for now) no way to test the code on the PC.
I'm currently developping a small game for PSP, and to do that, I'm using Löve during the development for testing, and I port it regularly to PGE.
But a port of Löve to PSP would be really nice And a port to the iPhone could be great too...

Oh, that's nice. I've been looking for an alternative to LuaPlayer, as it seemed kind of messy. Will try this out.

i think novashell is similar. here is the spheel...

Novashell is a high-level 2D game maker that tries to handle all the hard work behind the scenes allowing you to whip up sweet games using pathfinding, dialog, persistant dynamically sized maps with contruction/decontruction, save anywhere, and especially features that adventure and RPG type games would use. It's also built to allow easy sharing of games you make and modding of them. The underlying concept is everything is cut and pastable and can be added and removed even during play.

it uses lua scripting, and box2d physics. it takes a sort of photoshop or dtp metaphor to game design.

oh, uh, hi everybody...

Kaze wrote:

MoOm wrote:On the PSP, there is an engine similar to Löve called PGE (Phoenix Game Engine).
More infos can be found here: http://pge.luaplayer.org
It uses an API close to the one of Löve but it has some specificities for the PSP (system-calls, USB access...).

The biggest problem with PGE is that it is not open-source and that there is (for now) no way to test the code on the PC.
I'm currently developping a small game for PSP, and to do that, I'm using Löve during the development for testing, and I port it regularly to PGE.
But a port of Löve to PSP would be really nice And a port to the iPhone could be great too...

Oh, that's nice. I've been looking for an alternative to LuaPlayer, as it seemed kind of messy. Will try this out.

its made by the same people, its even abit more messy, but quite a bit faster

on the pc theres also brain damage
http://codetank.com/wiki/index.php/Brain_Damage
which is simmilar to the traditional lua type systems, i like it, but there's not much activity over there, and no sound support

Another alternative is using LuaSDL/LuaGLUT/LuaGL. But they're ultra complicated compared to LOVE.

Its made for 3d games though. http://www.igame3d.com

There is an Engine on Nintendo DS that has similar concepts like Löve called MicroLua.

http://microlua.risike.com/

They will also make the source open source. I also thought of an Löve on DS port.
They are also writing an Lua-JavaVM that is able to run MicroLua games in Java on any Platform. Also as Applet in Webbrowser.

It would be cool, if we don't have an Engine for every Plattform. I mean, what if MicroLua and Love would be more compatible, that i can run my game with little modifications also on Nintendo DS or PSP or Webbrowser Java-Applet?

How cool would that be.

thats kind of why i liked brain damage, which is now dead, but it was so simmilar to luaplayer on the psp it took next to no time to convert

but aside from LOVE's semi odd callbacks its really not all that hard to convert game API's to and from love