Lua Player

Lua for the PlayStation Portable is interpreted with Lua Player. Lua Player is a homebrew application which can run lua scripts and display them on the Sony PSP through graphical bindings. The current version is 0.20, however v0.17DK2 and Lua Player Mod, which are unofficial versions are still used by users on PSP Firmware version 2.00+. Most versions of the application can be downloaded from the LuaPlayer.org website. Lua Player can only run the source code of Lua scripts, and can not compile them into standalone software applications.

Programming

The programming language for Lua Player is almost identical to that of Lua programming language. Below is an example of a basic hello world program.

green = Color.new(0, 255, 0)
while true do
    screen:clear()
    screen:print(200,100, "Hello World!", green)
    screen.flip()
end

Authors

Lua Player is an open source project, and was originally maintained by Frank Buß (Shine) and Joachim Bengtsson (Nevyn), before being passed on to David Perry (InsertWittyName).

Lua Player Version History

Only the changes in the latest version are shown here.

• V 0.20

1. Updated for gcc 4.1 and Lua 5.1.
2. Sound.load doesn't crash any more on invalid filenames.
3. Fixed problems with daylight saving time.
4. Font:getTextSize fixed.
5. Blit operation from screen to image works now.
6. TTF font plotting to images now sets the alpha value to opaque.
7. new function Image.loadFromMemory for loading images from memory.
8. Image-to-image blitting now uses alpha full blending.
9. System.rename(oldName, newName) for renaming files and directories.

Libraries

To load a library in lua just add a dofile("libname.lua").

Some common libraries are:

• netlib which allows you to make a game online capable, send emails and send an sms made by youresam
• BMPlib which allows you to load bitmap images into lua made by youresam
• wavlib which allows you to easily integrate visual for audio data in a program made by youresam
• Animation Lib 4 which allows you to easily create animations in lua made by Grimfate126

Lowser

Lowser is the official PSP based browser for lua scripts. It is written in Lua Language itself however is quite basic. Lowser is what is set to autoload when LuaPlayer is started, however this can be changed.

• LuaOS created by Youresam is a shell for the PSP designed to replace Lowser. This has now been replaced (by him) with:
• LuaOS[hell]² Work had stopped on this, with just the mainframe (LuaX) in a usable state.
• Ys-OS This is a shell created by Yossi-Starz that was not designed to replace Lowser as it is not currently full speed, and is too "RAM hungry" for everyday use.
• LuaMainframe created by Alex Glynn (Glynnder) is a modification of the Lowser script, adding features but limiting speed somewhat. This has now been replaced (by him) with:
• interfaceLua A redesigned and optimised version of LuaMainframe. Work has stopped on it.

See also

• Lua Player HM — mod of the official Lua Player
• LuaPlayer Euphoria — a continuation of the Lua Player project

External links

• LuaPlayer.org — official homepage
• PSP Lua Player on psDevWiki — tutorials, etc.
• Bugz — sample game made with Lua Player
• Easy Game Console Hacking: An introduction to Lua Player on the PSP — presentation held at EuroOSCON 2005 about Lua Player (slides, notes)
• Communities:
  • EvilMana.com — PSP Lua game programming beginner tutorials & community forums
  • Xtreamlua.com (french) — PSP Lua website, tutorial and community
  • PSP-Programming.com — PSP programming tutorial website & community