Game Development with LÖVE 2D and Lua – Full Course

Storyline / Game Structure

This course doesn’t tell a single narrative “story,” but it builds complete systems that culminate in several playable mini-projects, finishing with a full Asteroids-style game.

The Asteroids game is driven by a loop of:

• Menu → New Game
• Level-based waves of asteroids
• Player can shoot (lasers)
• Collision outcomes
  • Lasers destroy asteroids (splitting them into smaller ones)
  • Player collision costs lives
  • When lives reach 0 → Game Over (with fading + high score saving)
• Next level once all asteroids are cleared
• Invincibility/blinking at level start to prevent immediate unfair hits

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Gameplay Highlights & Key Systems Implemented

Core Gameplay (Asteroids)

Player movement

• Rotates in continuous degrees (implemented using radians + FPS-based rotation speed).
• Thrust uses keyboard input (W / Up / Numpad 8) and applies velocity in the facing direction.
• Friction slows the ship when thrust stops.
• Screen wrap / re-entry keeps player on-screen by repositioning when leaving edges.

Shooting / Lasers

• Fire with Space, Down, Numpad 5, or right mouse button.
• Lasers move at a velocity derived from the player’s angle.
• Lasers have:
  • Max on-screen count
  • Max travel distance, then self-destruct
• Laser collisions:
  • Detect when a laser enters an asteroid’s radius
  • Laser enters an exploding state (orange/yellow expanding effect)
  • Asteroid is destroyed and can split into smaller asteroids (until minimum size)

Player collisions / lives

• Asteroids collide with the player via distance-to-radius logic.
• Player explodes when hit (red/pulsing effect).
• Player restarts with remaining lives until lives are exhausted → Ended state.

Levels

• Clearing all asteroids triggers the next level.
• New levels:
  • Spawn more asteroids and increase difficulty
  • Spawn asteroids far enough away from the player using a distance-check loop (retry spawn until safe)
• Player becomes invincible after level start:
  • Ship blinks for a set number of cycles
  • Collision damage is ignored while invincible
  • Invincibility also fades the ship visually

Menu + UI

• Menu built from reusable Button components (hover + click detection).
• Buttons: New Game, Settings (homework), Quit.
• Game state transitions: menu / running / paused / ended
• Game Over screen uses Text component fade-in/out.

Scoring

• Score increases when destroying asteroids (more points for smaller asteroids).
• High score tracked across runs.

High score persistence

• Uses Lua Rocks + luna json to save/load save.json.
• On game over: write a new high score if surpassed.

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Love2D Framework Concepts (Used Throughout)

• Game loop functions:
  • love.load() (initialization)
  • love.update(dt) (simulation steps, runs ~every frame)
  • love.draw() (rendering every frame)
• Rendering basics:
  • Drawing text, rectangles, circles, polygons
  • Color via RGB (0–1 range)
• Input:
  • Keyboard (thrust/rotation/shoot)
  • Mouse (shoot + UI button clicking)
• Timing:
  • Uses dt for consistent movement where appropriate (FPS-based timing used in some early player examples).

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Gameplay / Implementation Strategies & Key Tips Mentioned

• Use variables and tables to reduce repetition
  • Functions save copy-paste; tables act like arrays/lists and also like “objects” (named tables).
• Prefer local scope unless you intentionally need globals
• Use dt for time-based movement
  • Ensures consistent speed across FPS differences.
• Clamp behavior with game states
  • Menu/running/paused/ended states control whether movement, collisions, drawing, etc. happen.
• Laser/asteroid splitting
  • Split only if asteroid radius is above minimum size.
• Laser destruction
  • Either remove after max travel distance or after explosion resolution.
• Spawn safety for new levels
  • Use distance checks (retry spawn) so asteroids don’t appear on top of the player.
• Invincibility
  • Prevents immediate death unfairness after respawn/level transitions.
• UI components
  • Build reusable Button and Text objects instead of hardcoding UI for each screen.
• Sound system
  • Centralized SFX manager with modes like single/slow, looping music, and per-effect play/stop.

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Gamers / Sources Featured (as mentioned)

• Steve (course instructor/teacher)
• LÖVE 2D documentation / wiki (love2d.org referenced)
• Lua.org (Lua language website referenced for downloads)
• Windows Subsystem for Linux / Ubuntu (WSL + Ubuntu) (installation method referenced)
• GameArt2D (sprite sheet resource referenced: www.gameart2d.com)
• GitHub “YouTube Projects / love2d folder” (course code repository referenced)