Helium

a main menu demo made with helium, in action, find it here

Basic overview:

Helium is practically more like a UI framework than a fully fledged UI library. The idea is to build custom and build simple.

Getting started:

Load helium with local helium = require 'helium' or check out the pre-configured demo repository

The structure of an element's function is:

function(param, view)
	--State/setup/load
	return function()
		--Rendering zone
	end
end

and you can make that function into an element 'factory' like this:

elementCreator = helium(function(param, view)

	return function()

	end
end)

then you call the element factory with a table of parameters that will get passed to the element and optionally width and height:

element = elementCreator({text = 'foo-bar'}, 100, 20)

this will create a new instance of the element, and then you can draw it to whatever position you wish (x, y):

element:draw(100, 100)

A quick detour in to 'scenes' which are a collection of elements to be drawn onscreen

A scene is necessary to start drawing elements, so let's create one like this and set it to active:

local scene = helium.scene.new(true)
scene:activate()

Then you can draw and update the scene in love's functions:

function love.update(dt)
	scene:update(dt)
end

function love.draw()
	--drawn below the ui element
	scene:draw()
	--drawn above the ui elements
end

Let's draw a rectangle with text with the previous skeleton and functions:

local helium = require 'helium'
local scene = helium.scene.new(true)
scene:activate()

local elementCreator = helium(function(param, view)

	return function()
		love.graphics.setColor(0.3, 0.3, 0.3)
		love.graphics.rectangle('fill', 0, 0, view.w, view.h)
		love.graphics.setColor(1, 1, 1)
		love.graphics.print('hello world')
	end
end)

local element = elementCreator({text = 'foo-bar'}, 100, 20)
--Needs to be called only once, to draw and then :undraw to stop drawing it onscreen
element:draw(100, 100)

function love.update(dt)
	scene:update(dt)
end

function love.draw()
	scene:draw()
end

As you can see, you can use regular love.graphics functions inside the element's rendering function, furthermore you don't have to worry about coordinates, as x:0,y:0 inside the element's rendering function will always be the element's onscreen x,y, and the element's dimensions are passed in the view table.

Also whatever you pass to the factory here

local element = elementCreator({text = 'foo-bar'}, 100, 20)

is accessible in the param table like so:

local elementCreator = helium(function(param, view)
	return function()
		love.graphics.setColor(0.3, 0.3, 0.3)
		love.graphics.rectangle('fill', 0, 0, view.w, view.h)
		love.graphics.setColor(1, 1, 1)
		love.graphics.print(param.text)
	end
end)

View the resulting hello world repository here

Or continue on to the State and Input guide: Here
If you are using gamestates, scene guide will be of interest: Here
For a more general overview of the whole library: Module index

Also check out the helium configuration values: Config

There's also a main menu example project available here: Project