lovr-docs/guides/Distribution.md

Distribution

LÖVR projects can be exported to standalone executables or WebVR projects. 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:

$ zip -9qr .

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 binary 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.

Once you have an executable, be sure to distribute it with all the .dll files that came with the original LÖVR download.

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.

WebVR

To package a game for use in a browser, you can use the file_packager script that comes with the Emscripten SDK:

$ python "$EMSCRIPTEN/tools/file_packager.py" game.data --no-heap-copy --preload /path/to/game@/ --js-output=game.js

This will output two files: game.js and game.data (note that the @/ suffix is important). The game.js file downloads the game.data contents and mounts it into the Emscripten filesystem, which LÖVR will then run at startup.

For full instructions on creating a web-enabled build of LÖVR, see the Compiling guide. You can also use lovr-webvr-server to develop a WebVR project locally with live-reloading support.