Using Love files

[abishur]

Hopefully this is the right place to ask this question, my apologies if this is an old question but I couldn't find the right combination of words to search for either on this forum or via google to get my answer.


I'm using the raspberry pi and I'd like to try playing with some of the software y'all have done for the pandora. The Raspberry pi also uses openGL ES so it would seem like the two devices could benefit a lot from software done for each other.


My main issue is that I was hoping to try out some of the emulators your community has put together for the pandora but I can't find any of the source code just to compiled love files. I've seen on the wiki that it is "very easy" to use love files on debian, but then I can't find any informaiton on *how* to use the love files.


Can someone point me to the right location for either where to find the source code for the various programs or instructions on how to run love files off debian (squeeze to be precise)


Thanks!

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Kinda zipped files ?

 

[abishur]

I'm afraid I don't know what you're asking :-(

 

[Linux-SWAT]

What are those love files you're referring to ?

 

[kojack]

LÖVE is a 2d opengl sprite engine.


It uses files called *.love, which are just renamed zip files containing resources and lua scripts.


LÖVE is cross platform, but I haven't seen an arm / opengl es port of it. There might be, but the LÖVE forum is down at the moment.


To use *.love files, you need to already have LÖVE installed.

My main issue is that I was hoping to try out some of the emulators your community has put together for the pandora

The Pi and the Pandora use different cpus and gpus. Both are ARM based, but the features are different. The Pi has an ARMv6 cpu at 700MHz (an ARM1176JZFS), the Pandora has an ARMv7 cpu at 600MHz (an ARM Cortex A8). The Pi's cpu doesn't have NEON, which is required by some customised Pandora ports (NEON is like SSE on x86 chips).


So while the Pi has a higher default clock speed, it's cpu is using an older architecture (wikipedia says the Cortex A8 has double the instructions per clock cycle compared to the ARM11* chips).


For example, the Playstation emulator PCSX Rearmed has NEON optimisations. The Raspberry Pi has no NEON.


(I'm not saying no Pandora software will work, just that some of it is optimised specifically for the Pandora's hardware, which the Raspberry Pi may not have)

 

[Linux-SWAT]

Ok, thanks for these explanations.

 

[abishur]

Thanks Kojack I had thought LOVE files were opengl ES, but if it's just an openGL platform, there is, lamentably, no point in trying to get it to run on the pi. Thanks!

 

[kojack]

The love forum is back.


Apparently there's an Android port. This means it works on Arm and OpenGLES. So in theory a pandora or Raspberry Pi version should be possible (but will still need some porting).