Getting Started

This article is a guide to the Love gameplay.

If you have not installed Love, or purchased a game voucher, please read Installing Love.

What is Love?

Beginners may find What is Love? a useful starting point. It is also suggested you watch Eskil's Official Tutorial

Controls

To traverse the world, you can use your WASD keys for forward/back and left right strafing.

Your MOUSE1 (left click) button is used to activate or fire whatever tool is currently activated, and the MOUSE2 (right click) button is used for jumping. The spacebar can also be used to jump.

Number keys 1-4 are bound to your tools, and keys F1-4 are bound to inventory items. See Ingame HUD below.

The Esc or MOUSE3 (middle click) buttons bring up your chat display and releasing your mouse.

The Q key projects some of your power as a power pod in the direction you are facing.

Ingame HUD

This section discusses the basics of the HUD. Please read more at HUD Advanced.

The player's health is represented by the color of the bars at the top and bottom of the screen, black being full health and brightening shades of red indicate increasing severity of the player's condition. Players can heal by respawning at the monolith (see below) or picking up power pods. For more advanced information and other ways to regenerate health, see the Health page.

HUD Example

  • Tool Slots (1)
    Love gives you four tool slots, the example shows blaster in the first slot, and smooth edit in the second slot. Slot 3 and 4 are both empty (small squares). Each slot is bound to your number keys 1-4.
  • Power Meter (2)
    Shows your personal power levels. The first figure is your current power level, the second is how much the current tool uses, per shot. In the example, the blaster tool is selected, it therefore costs 1 unit per shot.
  • Monolith and Checkpoints (3)
    The monolith pointer will be made when you are a member of a settlement. The rounded side of the pointer is the direction to the settlement. A checkpoint pointer is made active when you click on a checkpoint in the world.
    Opening your chat screen and clicking on either one of these icons will teleport you instantly its the location. Note that you will drop any tokens and pods in your inventory. However, your power levels will remain.
  • Frames per Second (4)
    The frames per second figure of your client is shown here. This is mostly for debugging purposes.
  • Coordinates (5)
    Love will tell you where you are, whenever you are looking at something other than the sky. Clicking Coordinate will automatically add a Location Bookmark (see HUD Advanced for more).
    The text "###:###:?" is your current position in the world.
    The text after the position is the type of object that you are looking at.(e.g token smooth edit)

For more in-depth information on the HUD, see HUD Advanced

Unlocking Tokens and Pod Slots

Each player's character starts out not knowing how to use any tokens. As players explore and do things, more tokens get "unlocked" and can then be equipped. To see the progress of the tokens, simply hold tab and illuminated icons are tokens that your character has already unlocked, whereas dim ones have yet to become so. This prevents new players from being overwhelmed with all of the different tokens and options at the beginning, and can help ease them into the game. Once a token is unlocked, it will stay that way. Characters can only unlock tokens that the settlement owns at the time. Once all of the settlement's tokens are unlocked, the player will start unlocking pod slots, which will be explained in a different guide {link needed}. Keep in mind that the pod slots will be unlocked even if the player hasn't unlocked all of the tokens, as long as he/she/it has unlocked all of the tokens that the settlement currently possesses. In addition to viewing your unlocks, holding tab will also allow you to locate players (including yourself). Currently, the list updates when players join, but does not remove them after they log off.

Getting tools

Upon entering love's world, your tool belt will be empty. If a developed settlement already exists on the server, you can equip tools from the tokens already placed there, otherwise you will have to find the tokens yourself, and place them in a settlement first. To place a token that you have already picked up, select it using your F1-F4 keys, or releasing the pointer and clicking on the icon, then clicking on a tile in the world (for a monolith) or in the settlement. The wire-frame model of the token will turn blue to indicate a valid location. To equip an already placed (and unlocked) token, look at the token until the blue wire-frame appears around it and press one of the corresponding tool slots you want the token to be placed in. If instead light blue vertical lines appear around the token, it means that you have not unlocked the token yet.
Rastabon is a jerk
Blaster token in the settlement.

Basic tools to get when first entering are the smooth edit which allow you to edit the ground and the blaster, the basic weapon token

The world is set up in 6 grids with dimensions of 128x128 tiles, these grids are called pyrospheres. Each of these pyrosphere's are given a name:

  • N (Nove)
  • S (Sota)
  • E (Ereca)
  • F (Widas)
  • I (Idra)
  • R (Rile).

Each of these grids are transformed onto the the faces of a cube, and then the cube is rounded so it becomes a sphere. This sphere is the planet that you play on. The N pyrosphere, is located at the top of the world (North), and S is located at the opposite side. The tile located in the exact center (64:64:N/S) of the N and S pyrospheres are the poles, like the axis of Earth. A good thing to do when beginning the game is to type "64:64:N" into the console (hit esc then type) so that you have a compass needle that always points North.

For more information about the region located within pyrospheres, see Regions.

Collaboration and Cooperation

Now that you've selected a server, you can feel free to explore the world, fight some AI, join a settlement, or join up with some other players and build your own! This brings us to the most important facet of Love: Collaboration. If you don't get along with the other players it's hard to have any fun. The best way to cooperate with other players is via Teamspeak (TS). If no one is on Teamspeak, don't fret. Several of us idle throughout the day to help new players and play with old friends. Don't be afraid to ask questions. We're generally nice on the Atlanta Server.

Joining a Settlement

When you load the world, Love will automatically spawn you at the heart of a player settlement. Unless there are no player settlements, in which case your inventory is automatically given a monolith token, which allows you to place a monolith and start your own settlement.

There are some occasions where you are spawned outside of player settlements. A settlement pointer indicator will appear in the center of your screen, directing you to player settlements on the server.

Videos

Eskil's Tutorial:

Legacy:
Here's an old video guide that I made for new players a while ago. It was cool and new back then, but a lot of updates re-worked game mechanics have made them a lot less relevant (e.g. no more config tool).
* Part 1: http://www.livestream.com/rawrkite/video?clipId=pla_0ce134f0-fc0b-47ce-8...
* Part 2: http://www.livestream.com/rawrkite/video?clipId=pla_cd2e879a-2d56-4dd5-8...
* Part 3: http://www.livestream.com/rawrkite/video?clipId=pla_8fd70e40-013c-470a-a...

Here are some other useful videos.

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