LOVEConsole

This is an in-application debugging and command console created for the LÖVE2D game framework. The console allows for rapid game testing by allowing the execution of user defined commands as well as native Lua functions. It also displays a useful overlay indicating a count of warnings and errors printed to the console to notify the user of any events that occur during execution.

Installation and use

Getting LOVEConsole to run is a fairly simple and straightforward task. All that needs to be done is to put the loveconsole folder somewhere in you LÖVE2D project and to then require the folder from your main.lua. It is suggested that you do it from there since LOVEConsole requires you to hook some of LÖVE's main functions to it. This way it can receive information such as key presses and also draw at the end of the main draw loop.

An example of how this can be seen in this repository's main.lua file or somewhat abstracted in the code below.

 -- Require the console script and assign it to a variable.
local console = require("loveconsole")

function love.draw()
	-- [Do main drawing operations before drawing the console.]
	love.graphics.pop() -- [Do this if you pushed any previous graphic translations.]
	console.draw()
end

function love.keypressed(key)
	-- [Handle key presses and then pass these on to the console.]
	console.keypressed(key)
end

function love.textinput(t)
	-- [Receive text input and pass it on to the console.]
	console.textinput(t)
end

function love.resize(w, h)
	-- [Resize the console if the window is resized.]
	console.resize(w, h)
end

From there on you can run your application as your normally would. At this point while your application is running you can hit F10 to bring up the console. This can be done assuming you are using the default key bindings and have not made any changes to the configuration file as explained in the next section. If you've gotten this far your console is pretty much ready to be used. If you want to take it even further you should check out the next section.

Configuring the console

Inside your loveconsole folder you will also find a file called config.lua. This is where LOVEConsole gets it's configuration from and it is crucial that the configuration file contains all of it's default values as specified in this repositories config file. If this is not the case the console will not be able to run and simply deactivate itself on load.

You can open the configuration file with your favorite text editing program and modify it to your liking. I've done my best to comment each configuration variable's use so it should be easy to edit and obtain your own personalized console. I also suggest that you define your custom console commands at the end of this file. You will find a sample command at the bottom of the file to see how commands can be created with ease. The benefit of using already defined commands comes with the fact that you have a lot more control over what they do and they are faster to type and perform over a native lua command which can be executed using the run built-in console command (further on that in the next section).

In the configuration file you will also find some variables which define the keys used to perform actions within the console window. You can find their default assignments in the table below.

Key	Action
F10	Toggle the console interface.
Page Up	Scroll up the console log.
Page Down	Scroll down the console log.
Home	Move to the very beginning of the console log.
End	Move to the newest message in the console log.
Up Arrow	Move up through the stack of previously entered commands.
Down Arrow	Move down through the stack of previously entered commands.
Left Arrow	Move the input cursor to the left.
Right Arrow	Move the input cursor to the right.

Built-in commands

LOVEConsole comes with a set of predefined commands which are declared towards the end of the init.lua file. Some of these are just to show what the console is capable of while others allow you to interface with native code. You can find a full listing of these commands in the table below.

Command	Description
help	Outputs the names and descriptions of all available console commands or just a single one - Arguments: [command to fetch information on]
clear	Clears the entire console.
quit	Attempts to close the application.
print	Prints trailing command arguments as a formatted string - Arguments: [string to print]
alias	Creates a new command list entry mimicking another command. Arguments: [command to alias] [alias name]
run	Executes the supplied lua function - Arguments: [lua command to execute]
set	Sets a supplied variable - Arguments: [lua assignment to execute]

License

This repository is released under the MIT license. For more information please refer to LICENSE