LNVL implements a simple visual novel component for use in games based on the LÖVE engine. LNVL provides only basic functionality and works best as an addition to another program which provides actual gameplay. The great Ren’Py engine is the main inspiration for LNVL, but this project does not attempt to be an all-encompassing visual novel engine like Ren’Py.
As of 25 August 2014 you must re-clone the repository because we
rewrote the entire history to remove the superfluous lnvl.love file.
You can build it from the makefile now.
In order to use LNVL you first need to unzip it wherever you intend to
use that engine, i.e. where you will use require("LNVL") in your
code. You must also initialize LNVL, providing (if necessary) the
path to the LNVL module. For example:
local LNVL = require("LNVL")
LNVL.Initialize("game.src.LNVL")This example assumes that LNVL is in the ./game/src/LNVL/ directory
from the root of the game incorporating the engine. The documentation
at the beginning of the LNVL.lua file explains this process in more
detail, as does the commentary for the function LNVL.Initialize(),
which is in that same file.
Within the src directory is the src/settings.lua.example file.
Read through it to see how you can configure LNVL. However, do not
edit that file directly. LNVL expects to find a src/settings.lua
file, which is not part of the repository so that each installation
can have their own configuration. If you have GNU Make then you
can create this file by running make settings from the project’s
top-level directory.
The docs directory contains documentation for LNVL. Users who want
to write stories with LNVL will want to read the Howto.md document.
The rest of the documentation is useful to computer programmers who
wish to extend or expand the engine. If you have the Pandoc
program then you can create HTML versions of these documents for
(arguably) easier browsing by running the make docs command.
The examples directory has scripts that demonstrate and test
different features of LNVL. However, they currently will not run
because most of them rely on images which are not included in the
repository. These images are currently assets borrowed from another
game project in development, but eventually they will be part of the
LNVL source. My apologies until then for the inconvenience in being
unable to run any of the examples.
Copyright 2012, 2013, 2014 Plutono INC.
LNVL uses the GNU General Public License.
However, one file, src/rgb.txt, comes from the
XFree86 project and therefore uses
version 1.1 of their license.
- Yusuke Tanaka for providing compatibility with LÖVE 0.9.1.
- The code for
LNVL.Debug.TableToString()uses the work of Julio Manuel Fernandez-Diaz.