Distribution

Edit

LÖVR projects can be exported to standalone executables. This guide will teach you how to export and distribute a project.

Creating an Archive

The first step is to create an archive of your project, which is a zipped up version of its contents. On Windows you can select all the files in a project (not the project folder), right click them, and choose "Send to" -> "Compressed (zip) folder". On Unix systems, the zip utility can be used:

$ cd /path/to/project
$ zip -9qr project.lovr .

By convention, zip files containing LÖVR projects use the .lovr extension. A zip archive can be run with LÖVR but isn't a standalone executable yet.

Creating an Executable

Once you have a project archive, it can be appended to the LÖVR program to create a standalone executable. On Windows, this can be done using the command prompt:

$ copy /b lovr.exe+MyProject.zip MyProject.exe

On Unix systems, the cat utility can be used to concatenate the two files:

$ cat /path/to/lovr MyProject.zip > MyProject

macOS

To create a .app on macOS, first get the stock LÖVR.app, either by downloading it here or by setting the -DLOVR_BUILD_BUNDLE=ON flag when building with CMake.

Then, to get the .app to run a custom project instead of the nogame screen, put a .lovr archive in the LÖVR.app/Contents/Resources folder (right click and use "Show Package Contents" to get to the Contents folder).

Next, the Contents/Info.plist should be modified. The CFBundleName entry should be changed from "LÖVR" to the name of the project, and the CFBundleIdentifier should also be changed to a unique ID for the project/studio name. The Resources/lovr.icns file can be replaced with a custom icon as well.

Finally, LÖVR.app can be renamed to Awesome VR Project.app and distributed as a zip.

Android

When the LÖVR APK runs, it will search for and load a project located in the assets folder of the APK. Distributing an APK with a custom LÖVR project involves adding the project files into the assets folder. However, Android requires that the APK is resigned after it's modified.

LÖVR's build system has options for including assets in the APK. For CMake, specify the -DANDROID_ASSETS=/path/to/project option on the command line. For tup, specify the CONFIG_ANDROID_PROJECT=/path/to/project config variable in tup.config. See the Compiling guide for more info.

(TODO: Mention other approaches like aapt add, apktool, or manually unzipping/rezipping).