LÖVE Snap Template

Introduction

This template is designed to make it easier for developers of games based on LÖVE to package them up as snaps.

Snaps allow you to "Package any app for every Linux desktops, server, cloud or device, and deliver updates directly."

Once you have built a snap, it can be published to the Ubuntu Store where it will be almost immediately available to millions of desktop users.

tl;dr

On a machine running Ubuntu 16.04, install snapcraft:-

sudo apt update
sudo apt install snapcraft

Clone this template and modify occurrances of 'lovegame' throughout to match your game title. Update metadata and version of LÖVE required in snapcraft.yaml. Add an icon and update the desktop file in snap/gui and rename & modify the last line of launcher/launch_lovegame.

Drop your .love file in lovegame directory.

Run snapcraft to build the .snap file.

Install the resulting snap package:-

snap install lovegame_0.1_amd64.snap

Run it either by searching for your application in the menu, or from the command line directly.

Publish it to the store.

Template Contents

Below is (I think) a comprehensive overview of the files contained in this repo along with how they should be modified for any given LÖVE game.

Once you're happy with the changes, run snapcraft from the top level directory on an Ubuntu 16.04 system to build a snap.

Further documentation about snaps can be found at snapcraft.io.

lovegame/

The lovegame folder contains a basic 'hello world' LÖVE 'game'. Replace this with your game love file. Modify the launch_lovegame and snapcraft.yaml files as appropriate below.

Desktop File & icon

snap/setup/lovegame.png

Replace the default png file with your own icon.

snap/setup/lovegame.desktop

Rename this to match the name at the top of the snapcraft.yaml - your short game name. Edit the file to reflect the name, description and executable (short game name), and icon name.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=LOVEGame
Comment=A Description of LOVEGame
Exec=lovegame
Icon=${SNAP}/meta/gui/lovegame.png
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Game;Simulation;
GenericName=
Keywords=game

snapcraft.yaml

snap/snapcraft.yaml

This file is consumed by snapcraft. Modify it as below:-

Metadata

Game Name & Description

This section is pretty self-explanitory. The short and long description will appear in the store. The 'name' is just a short unique name for the package.

name: lovegame
version: "0.1"
summary: A Description of LÖVEGame
description: |
  A longer description of LÖVEGame.

Confinement policy

By default snaps are confined, with access to resources defined by the interfaces (plugs/sockets) in the next section. Leave this bit alone.

confinement: strict
grade: stable

Commands

Commands list the executable items in the snap. We're only going to have one executable (although more are possible), which is the launcher we use to setup the environment and launch the game.

The plugs list the resources that the game will have access to. Audio, graphics and network are common resources, so we wire up those plugs here.

Note: The network-bind is listed here, but probably isn't needed. It's used when binding to a network port, such as when running a game server.

apps:
  lovegame:
    command: bin/launch_lovegame
    plugs:
      - pulseaudio
      - x11
      - network
      - network-bind
      - opengl

Parts

Snaps consist of multiple parts, pulled together at build time and compressed into a single squashfs file. There are three parts in this template.

• Love Runtime
• Game itself
• Launcher script

LÖVE Runtime to include

The snap will contain both the game, support libraries and the LÖVE runtime. Comment / uncomment the relavent two sections for the version of LÖVE (and liblove) required by the game.

Note: This section has multiple entries, most of which are commented out, as a convenience so you can choose which version of LÖVE you built for. Only uncomment one love and one liblove stanza.

parts:
#  love0.10.2:
#    plugin: copy
#    source: https://bitbucket.org/rude/love/downloads/love_0.10.2ppa1_amd64.deb
#  liblove0.10.2:
#    plugin: copy
#    source: https://bitbucket.org/rude/love/downloads/liblove0_0.10.2ppa1_amd64.deb
#  love0.10.1:
#    plugin: copy
#    source: https://bitbucket.org/rude/love/downloads/love_0.10.1ppa1_amd64.deb
#  liblove0.10.1:
#    plugin: copy
#    source: https://bitbucket.org/rude/love/downloads/liblove0_0.10.1ppa1_amd64.deb
#  love0.10.0:
#    plugin: copy
#    source: https://bitbucket.org/rude/love/downloads/love_0.10.0ppa1_amd64.deb
#  liblove0.10.0:
#    plugin: copy
#    source: https://bitbucket.org/rude/love/downloads/liblove0_0.10.0ppa1_amd64.deb
  love0.9.1:
    plugin: dump
    source: https://bitbucket.org/rude/love/downloads/love_0.9.1_amd64.deb
  liblove0.9.1:
    plugin: dump
    source: https://bitbucket.org/rude/love/downloads/liblove_0.9.1_amd64.deb

Game

Here's where your game is pulled into the snap. You can leave this as-is, or optionally change 'lovegame' to your game name.

Listed in 'stage-packages' are some dependencies which will be required in the snap to allow the end-user machine to run a LÖVE game. Leave this alone, unless you know you depend on some additional packages from the Ubuntu 16.04 archive. In which case add them to the list.

  lovegame:
    plugin: dump
    source: ./lovegame/
    stage-packages:
      - libgl1-mesa-dri
      - libgl1-mesa-glx
      - libglew1.13
      - lua-socket

Launcher

This adds the final part. A shell script which sets up the environment on the end user PC before launching the game.

  launcher:
    plugin: dump
    source: ./launcher
    organize:
      'launch_lovegame': 'bin/launch_lovegame'

launch_lovegame

launcher/launch_lovegame

Launching the game

The only line which should need modification is the last one. Simply change the name of the parameter from 'lovegame.love' to whatever your game .love file is.

$SNAP/usr/bin/love $SNAP/lovegame.love

Thanks

I used a version of this template to publish 'Oh My Giraffe' to the snap store. Thanks to those people who tested the game to help make this template.