Compiling LÖVR

You might want to compile LÖVR from source so you can use LÖVR on other operating systems or create a custom build. Below is a guide for setting up all the dependencies and compiling the code on various operating systems.

Dependencies

Lua or LuaJIT
GLFW (3.2+)
OpenGL (3.3, ES3, or WebGL 2)
assimp
OpenVR (1.0.9, for lovr.headset)
PhysicsFS
OpenAL (1.17+ recommended for HRTF support)
FreeType
msdfgen
ODE (for lovr.physics)
Emscripten (optional, for compiling for web)

These can be found as submodules in the deps directory of the repository. To initialize the submodules, clone LÖVR with the --recursive option or run this command in an existing repo:

git submodule update --init

Windows

From the lovr folder, run these commands to create a build folder and compile the project using CMake:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .

The executable will then exist at /path/to/lovr/build/Debug/lovr.exe. A LÖVR project (a folder containing a main.lua script) can then be dropped onto lovr.exe to run it, or it can be run via the command line as lovr.exe path/to/project.

macOS

Install the dependencies using your package manager of choice:

brew install assimp glfw3 luajit physfs freetype openal-soft ode

You may need to set the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable for OpenAL to be located properly. If you run into this, see Troubleshooting below for more info.

Next, build using CMake, as above:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .

The lovr executable should exist in lovr/build now. It's recommended to set up an alias or symlink so that this executable exists on your path. Once that's done, you can run a game like this:

lovr /path/to/myGame

Linux

First, install the dependencies using your package manager of choice.

Arch Linux

pacman -S assimp glfw-x11 luajit physfs freetype2 openal ode

Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install build-essential cmake libassimp-dev libglfw3-dev libluajit-5.1-dev libphysfs-dev libfreetype6-dev libopenal-dev libode-dev

Then, build with CMake:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .

On Linux, LÖVR needs to run within the Steam Runtime. To do this, first install Steam. Next, install the Steam udev rules. Then, run LÖVR within the Steam runtime:

~/.steam/steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/run.sh lovr

If you receive errors related to libstdc++, set the LD_PRELOAD environment variable when running the command:

LD_PRELOAD='/usr/$LIB/libstdc++.so.6 /usr/$LIB/libgcc_s.so.1' ~/.steam/steam/ubuntu12_32/steam-runtime/run.sh lovr

WebVR

First, install the Emscripten SDK. Make sure you're running this branch of Emscripten.

Unix:

mkdir build
cd build
emcmake cmake ..
emmake make -j2

Windows (from a Visual Studio Command Prompt, make sure the Emscripten SDK is on PATH):

mkdir build
cd build
emcmake cmake -G "NMake Makefiles" ..
emmake nmake

The above commands will output lovr.js and lovr.wasm. To package a game, run:

python /path/to/emscripten/tools/file_packager.py game.data --preload /path/to/game@/ --js-output=game.js

Which will output game.js and game.data. You can then include lovr.js and game.js on an HTML page with a canvas element. Check out lovr-webvr-server for an example.

Troubleshooting

If you get "CMake no CMAKE_CXX_COMPILER found" on Windows, then install Visual Studio and create a blank C++ project, which will prompt you to install the compilers and tools necessary to compile LÖVR.
On macOS, if you run into an error message about not being able to find OpenAL, make sure you've added the proper OpenAL directory (usually something like /usr/local/opt/openal-soft/lib/pkgconfig) to your PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable. Installing openal-soft with brew will print out a message telling you how to do this.

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