Small example "freewheeling" app that can be modified without restarting
# Toy night sky written in the "freewheeling" style that can be modified without being restarted

This app shows a very simple animation of a rotating night sky containing some
twinkling stars with a subtle oscillation between day and night. It's intended
as an example app for playing with the [the driver app]https://codeberg.org/akkartik/driver.love.

[What is a Freewheeling App?]http://akkartik.name/freewheeling

[There's some reference documentation if you're inspired to create your own apps.]reference.md

## Invocation

Run this app from the terminal, [passing its directory to LÖVE]https://love2d.org/wiki/Getting_Started#Running_Games

## Hacking

To modify it live without restarting the app each time, download [the driver
app](https://codeberg.org/akkartik/driver.love). An example session might look
like this (though the UI of the driver app on the left is improving over
time):

![making changes without restarting the app]assets/20221228-luaML-driver.gif

To publish your changes:
  * delete all files with a numeric prefix from the repo, and then
  * move all files with a numeric prefix from the [save directory]https://love2d.org/wiki/love.filesystem.getSaveDirectory
    to the repo.

## Known issues

* Don't start the driver app while multiple freewheeling apps are running. If
  you have a driver app running with one app, shut it down before you switch
  apps. Just always open the app and then the driver. If you close the app,
  close the driver.

* Don't give up your other tools just yet. It's easy to make a mistake that
  the app doesn't recover from when you fix it. Try restarting the app, and if
  it still doesn't work, perhaps you need to fix the initial load. This isn't
  yet a tool you can keep open for months on end. (And I'm ambivalent about
  making it such a tool since your programs might stop working for others.)

* I still see driver and the app being driven occasionally crash. When I do I
  try to make things more robust. If you do you'll quite possibly crash again
  if you try to restart. In such a situation you'll have to bump down to
  editing the underlying version files by other means. See [representation.md]representation.md
  for details of the underlying representation on disk.

* Given the above issues, both this driver and its client freewheeling app
  benefit from being launched in terminal windows rather than by being clicked
  on in a desktop OS.

## Mirrors and Forks

Updates to this repo can be downloaded from:

* https://git.sr.ht/~akkartik/night.love

Further forks are encouraged. If you show me your fork, I'll link to it here.

## Feedback

[Most appreciated.]http://akkartik.name/contact