Trying to Reset Game in Lua

Question

Very new to game development and Lua in general here. I'm making a platformer, and I want to be able to restart the game once a character collides with a certain object, and show a title before that. I also want to reset the character's position back to 0,0 once that happens, but I don't know how.

I made a global variable called WIN that's set to true if the character collides with the object, which works, but then going into my love.draw() function, I have this:

function love.draw()

-- begin virtual resolution drawing
push:apply('start')

-- clear screen using Mario background blue
love.graphics.clear(108/255, 140/255, 255/255, 255/255)

-- renders our map object onto the screen
love.graphics.translate(math.floor(-map.camX + 0.5), math.floor(-map.camY + 0.5))
map:render()

if WIN == true then
    love.graphics.printf('NEXT LEVEL', 0, 30, VIRTUAL_WIDTH, 'center')
    love.graphics.printf('Continue to Next Level', 0, 45, VIRTUAL_WIDTH, 'center')
    love.load()
end
-- end virtual resolution
push:apply('end')

end When I actually collide with the object, I get the following error:

Error
push.lua:48: love.window.setMode cannot be called while a Canvas is active in love.graphics.
Traceback
[C]: in function 'windowUpdateMode'
push.lua:48: in function 'setupScreen'
main.lua:43: in function 'load'
main.lua:116: in function 'draw'
[C]: in function 'xpcall'

The error lines are in my love.load() function, which is as follows:

function love.load()
    -- sets up a different, better-looking retro font as our default
    love.graphics.setFont(love.graphics.newFont('fonts/font.ttf', 8))

-- sets up virtual screen resolution for an authentic retro feel
push:setupScreen(VIRTUAL_WIDTH, VIRTUAL_HEIGHT, WINDOW_WIDTH, WINDOW_HEIGHT, {
    fullscreen = false,
    resizable = true
})

love.window.setTitle('Super Mario 50')

love.keyboard.keysPressed = {}
love.keyboard.keysReleased = {}
end

I'm guessing the issue is that I can't set up screen again after already doing that once, but I don't know how to fix this and create a fresh start. Any help is appreciated!

Answer 1

love.load() runs once. That one time is when your game starts up. Don't call love.load() (or love.update() ) within love.draw() or vice versa. The Love2D game engine calls these functions, so you don't call them.

Update the start position within love.update() not love.draw() . love.draw() is only for drawing stuff. I believe it would be the View in a model-view-controller architecture.

To restart the position of your object, you would have to do something like

if WIN == true then
    push.x = push.start.x
    push.y = push.start.y
    map.camX = map.start.camX
    map.camY = map.start.camY
end

Or something along those lines, it's hard to know without seeing your variables. Your love.draw() will then draw the things at the coordinates that they are at.

Answer 2

To reset/restart the Game without reloading the executable use:

love.event.quit('restart')

But before doing this make a dark screen before with red dropping letters: GAME OVER