My name is Steffen Itterheim, you may know me from my sister website Learn & Master Cocos2D. The goal of this website is to help new Corona users get up to speed with Corona. Fortunately, Ansca Mobile is doing such a great job documenting and helping their users, so that I can lean back and concentrate my attention on providing help and tips about what I know best: the Lua programming language. To be honest, I haven’t even used Corona yet, but when it comes to Lua, I can provide help just from the top of my head.
I used Lua extensively for 7 years during my career at Electronic Arts Phenomic. I’ve created a mission scripting system for the mission designers. It was simply called GDS (for: GameData Scripting) which is basically an even higher-level language on top of Lua, built with Lua. I also implemented a text-based dialogue system that interfaced with the mission scripting system for Quest flow and our internal database for maintaining all the localizable strings. Not to mention a variety of specialized Lua tools, including a wiki-esque Help system implemented in wxLua, and the game engine’s C++ interface to Lua.
Here’s a Battleforge user video showing how the Battleforge Lua mission scripting works:
Lua is what I lived and breathed. That’s where part of my excitement for Corona Game Edition stems from. Besides that they’re doing a lot of things the right way, but you already know that.
Wow! You are really quick. Clever move
I’m sure Corona will have a future.
Looking forward already to your tips & tricks. Haven’t done any LUA stuff so far but I’m gonna have a closer look on it in the coming weeks and months.
Marco
Thanks! Corona is definitely here to stay, more than that, it’s going to get more important and has a good potential to become a de-facto standard for mobile development across all platforms. Especially when I read the excitement the new Windows phone has created, and they are actually considering to support that as well. Now one could use Unity for that too, but I think their engine and toolset is overpowered for many mobile developers, and the cost of learning Unity and its asset pipeline should not be underestimated.
Definitely! Unity is especially overpowered for 2d stuff…
Marco
I’m hoping that I can get on the band wagon here and get some help with Lua and MVC for my game that I’m writing as I’m getting there but a little confused in some areas.
Cheers
Alcamie
Sure!
I found this Corona exporter for Adobe Fireworks.
Add this link to the post, I forgot to add it.
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/index.cfm?searchfield=lua&search_exchange=6&search_category=-1&search_license=&search_rating=&search_platform=0&search_pubdate=&num=25&startnum=1&event=search&sticky=true&sort=0&rnav_dummy_tmpfield=&Submit=
Could you please make a tutorial or a blogpost how to set up corona to work with xcode and how to get templates just like in cocos2d. Also, what tools you recommend (Gumbo, Spritedeck, Projectmanager……etc). I’m new to Corona so some guidance from a pro who been around the lua language and corona would be nice.
I’ve used Cocos2d for a little while but I find the Corona SDK to be easier with better and clearer documentation and tutorials. The lua language seems easoer that obj-c too.
Beginner game dev.
David
I don’t think you can use Xcode with Corona, it’s Lua only and at best you can use Xcode as code (text) editor but nothing more.
If I would be working with Corona on a professional basis, I’d probably own all of them. I think together they’re still less than $200 so really cheap considering the convenience they provide and time saved.
There’s also a commercial Tilemap (Tiled) loader but I can’t recall what it’s called. I tweeted it recently … Lime, I think.
I found another tool called Gumbo, similar to Spritedeck but its free.
I’ve been trying Corona for about 3-4days now and I have learned more that I’ve done the past 6 months with Obj-C and Cocos2d. I like Cocos2d though because it’s structured in a good way but learning the physics is really hard. I think I’ll continue with Corona and learn Lua instead. A few things I miss in Corona is a bitmapfont tool such as Glyphdesigner, Cocos2d ways of implementing menus and z-order.
Also the Corona forum is better.
Do you have any advice on how to structure a game with Corona in terms of files and z-order of sprites etc?
Dear Steffen,
I would be glad to buy your book abount corona sdk as I already have done with cocos2d. The corona web site has good specification but they don’t have any concept of game writing. You did the great work when wrote your cocos2d book and I think you should continue it writing book about corona. Do not waste your time writing about lua language. I am sure you will do it very well, but I think your strong point is to explain concepts of game creating. So do not hesitate about your corona skill. I know nobody with so clear writing style like you.
Choose right way.
Thank you.
Sorry for my english I know it should be better.
Regards,
Oleg
Thanks. Supporting Corona is high up on my list, even though I’m currently 100% on Cocos2D I always keep Corona in mind.
Steffen, since you are knowledgeable in both cocos2D and corona, have you written any article that compares both of them? I would very much like to read it!
Hi!
I heard that Corona is a great tool to create APPs for Iphone. I want to learn to use it to make my own ideas come true but I did not have any technical skills. I never learn C++ or Java so on…
Without such knowledge can a person learn Corona. How long it can take and where to find the learning materials?
Thanks
From all the engines Corona will be the easiest to learn. The Corona forum community is very helpful and you’ll find many tutorials on the http://www.anscamobile.com website
Hi Steffen,
I don’t have much knowledge of Corona but whatever little I have seen of it, it seems to be simple. Hence I thought of using it for making my game, which infact is my degree project.
I am a design student so that game design, UI, graphics, sound all are equally important in my project. Also this is an individual project.
I need to finish my game in less than 2 weeks and am lost what to do. I am vey new to corona and facing a lot of problems and its very time consuming. I tried getting help from te corona forum but you don’t always get a reply.
Please do let me know what I could do.
It’s always difficult to try and finish something within a short time by using something you’ve had no prior experience with. For something like Corona it may take a week alone to get up to speed with it and understand how it all works together, depending of course on prior programming experience, among other things.
My recommendation is to keep it simple. If your game needs to be complex, try to change the complexity so that it works together with what you know. For example if you want to make the game multiplayer but you don’t know anything about networking or game center, it’s probably better to change the design to a single player game, or maybe a turn-based (hotseat) multiplayer mode (like in Worms).
Also if you ask the right questions and stick to one question at a time and make it easy for others to answer the question by providing enough detail you can increase your chances to get a good answer quickly. In addition there’s stackoverflow.com where super-helpful programmers around the world help each other out.
Thanks steffen I appreciate your advice
. By way if I want to test my game before I finish coding it fully is it possible. Are there any sites where you can post your ideas and hope to get feedback about your game ideas.