Tutorial – LÖVE Physics

In issue 234 of Linux Magazine [1], I introduced LÖVE [2], the Lua-based framework used for creating 2D games, by drawing a character, Cubey McCubeFace, who could walk across the screen. Now I'm going to explore another aspect of LÖVE by going back into an animated world and causing an object to fall out of the sky.

As long as your game characters are moving from side to side, things are more or less easy. The moment you need them to jump or fall, things get more complicated – that is, if you have to program a physics engine yourself. Luckily, LÖVE provides a way to simulate 2D rigid bodies in a realistic manner through its physics module. In this tutorial, I'll explore how that works [3].

Landscaping

First of all you need a playing field in which things can move around and collide with each other. I'll set up a "landscape" like the one you can see in Figure 1 and by drawing the outline of the terrain first (see Listing 1).

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