Hi r/lua!

I've been building Limer, a desktop development environment for creating GUI applications in Lua, and version 2.0 is out! It's available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

The idea is simple: write your application once and use the same codebase across all three operating systems. No separate implementations for each platform.

What makes Limer interesting?

• Visual designer: Drag real widgets onto a canvas, configure properties, arrange layouts, and generate readable Lua code that you can own and modify.
• Live inspector: Inspect running applications, change widget properties, and execute Lua code.
• 60+ widgets and components: Including layouts, charts, and SQLite support.
• Standalone distribution: Limer comes with its required dependencies, so you don't need to install Lua separately or manually configure its runtime.
• Application building: Package your projects for distribution across supported desktop platforms.
• API search and error reporting: Find API functionality quickly and track down errors in your code.

Limer is built on Limekit, my GUI framework for Lua. Interestingly, Limer's development tools—including its project manager, code runner, visual designer, and live inspector—are themselves built in Lua using Limekit.

It's a Lua desktop app for building Lua desktop apps.

Prefer VS Code?

There's also a Limekit VS Code extension for developers who prefer their existing editor.

It includes code completion, API documentation, diagnostics, Lua error reporting, code snippets, and a Run button.

Download Limer 2.0

GitHub repository and downloads:
https://github.com/mitosisX/Limer-Limekit

The engine running all of the magic behind the scenes
https://github.com/mitosisX/Limekit

Limer and Limekit are free and open source under GPL-3.0.

If you find the project interesting, please consider giving the repository a ⭐ on GitHub! It helps more developers discover the project and motivates me to keep improving it.

A quick note: the macOS builds still need more testing on real Macs, and the applications aren't code-signed yet. Feedback and bug reports are very welcome.

I'd love to hear what you think. What would you build with Lua on the desktop?

Thanks for checking it out!

I recently created my own framework named "Dua". Honestly, I'm too lazy to add LuaRocks, but only if I don't get feedback. You can learn more either in the repository or in my previous post. If I get feedback, I'll try to integrate LuaRocks.

Repo: Dua

DatumHue is now free to use and comes with a playground app

https://datumhue.app/?arg=playground&arg=pixels

Hey everyone,

I recently released Dua, a lightweight engine for building typed DSLs and sandboxed execution environments in Lua.

The goal was to create a zero-dependency library that runs anywhere Lua 5.1+, LuaJIT.

What it offers

Pure Lua implementation (no C modules or external dependencies)

Built-in sandboxing with configurable allow/deny rules and limits

Flexible type system (primitives, shapes, enums, maps, oneof)

AST node handling and code serialization

Repo: Dua

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4185770/cenkers_mod/

cenker's mod is a multiplayer physics sandbox with many mods. Every mod has a different experience. Play included, community-made, and your own mods together with friends.

I've always loved the idea of JIT-compiled UIs. TempleOS is a fascinating example, using JIT-compiled C to build its UI.

Recently, I've been working on a TUI project where almost everything is customizable at runtime, from the UI itself to the core functionality. I wanted a way to build terminal UIs declaratively, similar to SwiftUI, while keeping the flexibility of runtime customization.

So I built Ito a Lua library for writing JIT-compiled TUIs.

To make it easy to experiment with, we also built a fake TUI canvas in the browser where you can try out Ito live. Give it a try!

Hey im new to coding and wanted to learn lua ive got a few things down know and wanted to just write a little countdown nothing complicated just a first test but ran into the problem that i cant get a code delay to work

Help

This will probably sound like the dumbest thing ya'll ever heard altough im rather new to lua, altough not programming..

I've been using lua with the minecraft mod figura to add animations to things with a script and such. quite nice, Untill i tried using the "trailing tails lua library", when saving the script it would keep getting stuck at the same error. i wondered why and noticed that the game was loading a old version of my script the one from the first save after using Trailing tails? i backedup the original script and deleted the one in the Figura avatar folder, and the game was still loading it.

a few unfortunate things happened the backup got removed(0 clue how the folder is just... new folder now?) but here's the thing, whilst i did try to recover it through the hard drive with little to no success, The game is still producing the same error, And loading the ingame avatar. this means its getting the data from somewhere no?

The very error that caused it may save the project that i spend... 20 hours on at this point. Is there anyway to figure out where the game gets this data from? maybe i can actually save it?

DatumHue is a creative workstation where you build your own experience by combining Lua apps. It runs natively and in the browser.

You can try a live instance in your browser at https://datumhue.app

The live instance has a desktop-like shell and a Steam-like store where users can publish free or paid creations, so far it contains the horror game Vigil.

A while ago I came across Lexaloffle's Picotron fantasy workstation and loved the concept of a hackable workstation composed of small script apps.

I wanted the same for non-fantasy work, which for me meant:

- No artificial limitations

- The shell is an ordinary app you create

- Your own preferred editor

- Charts and SQL over data files

- The same apps run in the browser and on the desktop

It's built on Bevy (game engine), Piccolo (Lua VM), Apache DataFusion (queries) and Iroh (connectivity).

DatumHue is closed source, the browser version is free and the desktop version has a free trial at https://datumhue.com

The Lua API is documented at https://datumhue.dev

Feedback is appreciated and I'd especially like to know what you would build with it :-)

This is my first coding language I'm trying to learn, It's gonna be pretty difficult for me since I have amnesia and I know coding has a lot of things you need to remember. Currently I only know REALLY basic code like

"else, elseif, if, while, for.. e.g" I wanna learn Lua for game development, I don't really have any ideas for a game as of now but I do wanna learn Lua since I've heard it's one of the easiest coding languages, any help is greatly appreciated!

I recently started a project to meet a need at my church—software for projecting lyrics and Bible verses using 100% Lua—and I wanted to get your opinion on whether Lua is a good language for this type of project.

repo: https://codeberg.org/GSCF/gloria_projecao.git

Hey, so, while I was learning Lua, I knew already that theoretically at least, Lua was written to be compilable in pure C, and specifically C89/C90 , supposedly any system that has an ANSI C compiler can compile and install Lua...

So I decided to actually test out just how true that is, when I remembered that I have an ancient laptop from 1999, running Windows 98SE, which has Borland 5.02 installed... [Just to understand how ancient it is, it only has 32 mb of RAM and it's hard drive is 5gb... that is literally smaller than the usb stick that i used to transfer the Lua source files from my modern PC into that ancient laptop (yes, that ancient laptop has a working USB 1.0 port and it is somehow able to read my 8gb USB 2.0 usb stick, which I did not expect to work, but it did !!!)

And to my surprise... it actually worked !

Here I am inside a full-screen MS-DOS prompt of W98 (In W32 mode, it is not booted into MS-DOS mode / real mode) Alongside the project of compiling the most recent version of Lua and getting it to work, I also installed an actual working version of vim and after tinkering with the vimrc file, I even managed to get full syntax highlighting working , and it actually works for Lua !!!

Anyhow, I just wanted to share this because I thought it was really cool and fun!

local gyumi = {"🤑", "😔", "😛", "😔", "😛", "😔"}

local win = {}

local n = 0

local money = 100

local smallw = 0

local bigw = 0

local a = 0

math.randomseed(os.time())

function bett()

print("money:"..money.."\nhow much do you want to bet? (min 10$)")

bet = io.read("*n")

end

while money > 9 do

win = {}

::betting::

bett()

if bet < 10 then

print("the minimum amount is 10$! \n \n")

goto betting

elseif bet > money then

print("not enough money! \n \n")

goto betting

else

money = money - bet

end

for i=1,3,1

do

n = math.random(1,6)

table.insert(win, gyumi[n])

end

for _, value in pairs(win) do

if value == "🤑" then

bigw = bigw + 1

elseif value == "😛" then

smallw = smallw + 1

end

end

if bigw == 3 then

print("jackpot!")

print(bigw)

a = bigw * 100

else

a = (bigw * 10) + smallw

end

money = money + a

print(table.concat(win))

print("won:"..a )

bigw = 0

smallw = 0

end

print("\n\n\ninsufficent funds!")

I’ve been on Roblox for about 11 years but I’ve just now started getting into development on Roblox and I’m really enjoying it!!!!

I've been working on a project called LuauWorld (https://luau.world/) , basically a place where you can write and run Luau and see your creations come to life with other people.

You can build things, mess around with characters, make interactive stuff, experiment with physics, create UI, play sounds, and pretty much just see what you can come up with.

There’s also multiplayer, private servers, a server browser, a script library, and an AI feature that can turn an idea into a script.

The whole point is really just to experiment and have fun making things without needing to set up a whole game first.

It's still a work in progress, so I'd love to hear what you guys think and what you'd like to be able to make with it.

Also a youtube video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-W1fd0HMH5c
Discord: https://discord.gg/bzz9vzAgZY

Hi all,

I'm trying to simulate a PtP relay network for my game. My functional description is as follows:

Iterate over all systems and create a temporary table to send to their neighbours. Once all systems have a temporary table, reconcile tables adding only unique entries, and entries with a different age or ID. Discard duplicates. At next call, include all known data added at this call.

My problem is I'm having data not updated because it's as if it's being "reflected" out by the original broadcast wave. Has anyone dealt with this before? This isn't based on the internet, it's just updating table values based on distance & relationships.