Assets¶

The Assets tab is a core Feather feature for inspecting images, fonts, and audio sources loaded by your LÖVE game at runtime. It is not a plugin and does not require any plugin registration.

Feather tracks calls to:

love.graphics.newImage
love.graphics.newFont
love.audio.newSource

Assets appear in the desktop app after they are loaded by the game.

Setup¶

No extra setup is required beyond running Feather in debug mode:

require("feather.auto")

function love.update(dt)
  DEBUGGER:update(dt)
end

Or with manual setup:

local FeatherDebugger = require("feather")

local debugger = FeatherDebugger({
  debug = true,
})

function love.update(dt)
  debugger:update(dt)
end

Open the Assets tab in the desktop app to view the tracked catalog.

Disabling asset previews¶

Asset tracking is enabled by default. To disable it for a session:

require("feather.auto").setup({
  assetPreview = false,
})

Or with manual setup:

local debugger = FeatherDebugger({
  debug = true,
  assetPreview = false,
})

When disabled, Feather does not hook love.graphics.newImage, love.graphics.newFont, love.audio.newSource, or love.draw for asset previews.

You can also toggle asset previews for the active session from the Assets tab. Turning it off clears the current asset catalog in the desktop app. Turning it back on starts tracking assets loaded after the toggle; assets loaded while previewing was disabled are not backfilled.

Asset Lists¶

The Assets tab has three views:

View	Tracks	Details shown
Textures	`love.graphics.newImage`	dimensions, format, mipmaps, source path
Fonts	`love.graphics.newFont`	font height, ascent, descent, source path when available
Audio	`love.audio.newSource`	source type, channel count, duration, source path

Use the filter input to search by filename or source path.

Note

Feather only sees assets loaded after Feather has initialized. If an asset is loaded before Feather starts, reload the game with Feather enabled earlier in startup.

Previewing Textures And Fonts¶

Click View on a texture or font row to load a preview.

File-backed textures¶

When an image was loaded from a file path:

local player = love.graphics.newImage("assets/player.png")

Feather sends the original Lua path to the desktop. The desktop resolves that path against the session's Game Root folder and reads the image directly from disk.

This avoids sending large image data over the WebSocket and keeps previews fast for normal project assets.

Procedural textures¶

When an image was created from runtime data:

local imageData = love.image.newImageData(16, 16)
local texture = love.graphics.newImage(imageData)

There is no file path to read from disk. Feather renders the texture to a canvas in the game and sends a base64 PNG preview to the desktop.

Fonts¶

Fonts are previewed by rendering sample text in the game and sending a PNG preview to the desktop.

Game Root¶

The Game Root folder is the desktop-side root directory used to resolve asset paths and debugger source files.

Important

If the game runs somewhere the desktop cannot read directly, such as a mobile device, remote machine, or bundled runtime, click Select Folder and choose the local copy of the game's root folder.

Feather automatically reports the source directory when the LÖVE version supports it.

The selected folder is stored per session and is shared by:

Assets — resolves image paths for file-backed previews
Debugger — reads .lua source files for the file tree and source view

Click Auto to remove the manual folder and return to Feather's detected root.

Path resolution¶

If Lua reports:

assets/player.png

and the selected Game Root is:

/Users/me/projects/my-game

the desktop reads:

/Users/me/projects/my-game/assets/player.png

Tip

For absolute paths reported by the game, a manually selected Game Root still wins. Feather strips the absolute prefix and resolves the path inside the selected folder so remote/mobile paths can map to a local project copy.

Preview Controls¶

The preview panel supports:

Control	Description
Zoom in	Increase zoom by 1.5x
Zoom out	Decrease zoom by 1.5x
Fit	Reset zoom to 100% and clear pan
Drag	Pan the canvas when zoomed above 100%

When zoom is above 100%, Feather draws a pixel grid over the preview. This is useful for inspecting sprites, tiles, and procedural images at the pixel level.

Troubleshooting¶

The texture list is empty¶

Important

Make sure the game loads images after Feather starts. If assets are loaded before require("feather.auto") or before creating FeatherDebugger, Feather cannot track those calls.

Preview says the file is not available¶

The desktop could not read the image from the resolved path. Select the correct Game Root folder in the Assets tab.

This often happens when:

the game is running on another machine
the game is running on mobile
the LÖVE source directory cannot be detected
the game reports a path from a bundled/runtime environment

Procedural previews do not update immediately¶

Procedural texture and font previews are rendered during love.draw. Make sure your game continues drawing while connected to Feather.