Question: Does LÖVE (Love2D) use LuaJIT?

Answer

Yes, LÖVE (Love2D), the free and open-source 2D game engine, uses LuaJIT, which is a Just-In-Time Compiler for the Lua programming language. LuaJIT is designed to deliver higher performance compared to the standard Lua interpreter, making it a suitable choice for the performance demands of game development.

Here's a basic example that demonstrates how you might typically interact with Love2D, without directly interacting with LuaJIT:

function love.draw()
    love.graphics.print("Hello World", 400, 300)
end

In this example, love.draw() is a callback function provided by Love2D that is called each frame to draw things on the screen. The love.graphics.print function is used to render text. Underneath, LuaJIT compiles the Lua code into bytecode, which can be executed much faster than if it were interpreted at runtime.

Love2D uses LuaJIT by default where it is supported. However, on some platforms where LuaJIT is not supported or not optimal, Love2D will fall back to using the standard Lua interpreter.

The use of LuaJIT allows developers to write their games in Lua while still benefiting from performance that is often close to that of native code, particularly in compute-intensive scenarios like physics calculations, AI decision making, or handling large data structures.

To check if your version of Love2D is using LuaJIT, you can run the following code snippet within the Love2D framework:

function love.load()
    if jit then
        print("LuaJIT version:", jit.version)
    else
        print("This version of LOVE does not use LuaJIT.")
    end
end

If LuaJIT is being used, it should print out the LuaJIT version to the console. If not, it will indicate that LuaJIT is not in use.