vudu

visual unified debug utility for LÖVE2D

vudu is a simple to use in-game debugging system for the LÖVE2D game engine.

vudu is currently in version 0.3.0, it has only recently been released publicly. Some amount of bugginess, unfriendliness, or instability is possible, and is being worked on. If you have any issues or suggestions, I would greatly appreciate your feedback on the issues page!

vudu currently supports Love2D versions 0.10.x and 0.11.x

Using vudu

Setup

Setting up vudu is quick and easy! Drop the vudu folder into your project, and then add the following to your game code

vudu = require("vudu")

function love.load()
  vudu.initialize()
  --Your Game Code
end

That's it! Just hit the ` key to toggle the GUI!

While basic setup is simple for you, it's complex for vudu, so if your game changes love.update, love.draw, love.keypressed, or any other love callback or lua builtin at runtime, vudu may need to be notified of this by calling vudu.hook()

GUI Navigation

Press ` to show/hide the vudu GUI.

In the top right is a small button, pressing this will open a dropdown with a few settings, currently these settings only filter what variables are shown in the browser

On the left side of the screen is the Browser, it allows you to browse through all of variables in your game. To show or hide the contents of a table, press the button to the left of its name. To edit a string or number, click its value in the browser, type a new value, and press Enter. To edit a bool, simply click it to flip its value. Sometimes values push their way out of range of the browser, to see these values you can scroll left/right with shift+scrollwheel.

By right clicking the name of a value in the browser, you can either ignore (remove from the browser) that value, or create a watch window for it.

On the bottom right of the screen is the Console, it allows you to enter lua code to be interpreted and run. The output of this code (or any error in its compilation) is shown in the console. The output of print() is also shown in the console. You can click a bubble in the console output to copy it to your clipboard. When typing in the console, autofill options will appear, and you can press tab to autofill with the lowest option on the list.

On the bottom left of the screen is the Controller, the speed of execution can be adjusted with the slider, and the game can be switched between running, paused with 0dt updates, and paused without updates. The camera can also be moved and zoomed, to get a look at things being rendered off-screen, or to zoom in on small details.

In the top right corner of the screen is the settings menu, under which you can find the following settings to tailor your vudu experience:

Hotkeys

To set up a hotkey, call vudu.hotkey.addSequence()

function love.load()
  vudu.initialize()
  vudu.hotkey.addSequence({'lctrl', 'lalt', 'escape'}, love.event.quit)
  vudu.hotkey.addSequence({'lctrl', 'lalt', 'p'}, function() vudu.control.setPauseType("Pause") end)
  vudu.hotkey.addSequence({'lctrl', 'lalt', 'r'}, function() vudu.control.setPauseType("Zero") end)
end

You can call vudu.initializeDefaultHotkeys to enable the following set of hotkeys:

lalt can be replaced with any other specific modifier key you like by passing its keycode to initializeDefaultHotkeys

Graphics

The vudu.graphics module allows you to render simple visual elements over-top of your game. All vudu.graphics objects have a color and a duration, they will be drawn with the given color (duh) and will fade out over the given duration. Objects drawn with duration 0 will exist for the frame they are drawn on.

function love.update(dt)
  vudu.graphics.drawText({1,1,1}, 0, 20, 20, dt)
  local mousex, mousey = love.mouse.getPosition()
  vudu.graphics.drawCircle({0.5,0,0}, 0, mousex, mousey, 10)
end

function love.mouspressed(x, y)
  vudu.graphics.drawCircle({1,0,0}, 1, x, y, 8)
end

For a full list of things you can draw, see the Full API below.

Physics

The vudu.physics module renders the given physics world in wireframe, including joints and contacts. Use vudu.physics.setWorld(world) to set the world to be rendered, and vudu.physics.setTransformation([x, y, z, r]) to control the offset and scale at which it is rendered.

Full API

This list is not exhaustive, there is more functionality which is currently internal, but will be exposed down the line.

###Some Useful Bits

Nothing described below is part of the official API, but the functionality is intended to be accessible via an official API at some point. For now, as vudu is in early stages, here are some internal things you might find useful to tap into:

vudu.control.SetPauseType(pauseType) : pauseType is a string, and can be "Play", "Zero" (For 0dt updates), "Stop" (For no updates), or "Freeze" (For no updates or draw calls, the last rendered frame remains on screen)

vudu.timeScale : a number representing the log2 of the factor by which vudu multiplies dt. 0 is 1x, 2 is 4x, -2 is 0.25x, etc. Currently, the slider on the control window goes from -3 to 3 (0.125x to 8x).