A Few Questions About Limits/capabilities Of The Corona Sdk

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

Hi all,

Don’t get mad at me because of me posting a topic without doing proper research, I just like to get people’s opinions.

My question is, what you can NOT do with Corona SDK?

I’ve used GameSalad about 2 years ago and it was a very limited tool. Than I’ve been studying Computer Engineering and I want to change the way I make the game/app. I want to go a little more “pro” :stuck_out_tongue:

But what are the limits of this tool? Not that I’ll probably push the boundaries but I just wonder. I saw a tool written by the SDK for iPad, where you can make an app from your iPad and it will export the proper project for you. That tells me the SDK is pretty capable. 

Here it goes;

1-) Could you make this game in Corona for example? --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w7uOhFTrrq0 (Terraria)

2-) If you can’t, why not? Is it the performance issues? If the performance would let us, is it doable?

3-) Can you get online/multiplayer game capabilities?

4-) Can you edit/manipulate photos/videos?

5-) Can you list a few of the downsides of the SDK? What gives you the most headache?

6-) Can you list a few big/important features that you think it is missing?

7-) Could you make this game in Corona? --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shhmFJJ6-Bg (Under The Ocean)

:sunglasses: Could you make this game in Corona? --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txc0leJrcEw (Gnomoria)

I have some C/C++ (2 years of Computer Engineering Universty) experience. Would it help a lot in my learning curve?

#2

cbt - take a look at Major Magnet, a recent #2 paid app in the App Store. It’s made in Corona and is a great example of the things you can do in Corona. 

#3

1 & 8) I cant see any reason why these games couldn’t be remade in corona. 

  1. This game also could be remade in Corona from a gameplay point of view. Corona does not handle 3d graphics / lighting however, I feel Unity3d would be a better tool for this graphical style.

  2. You cannot get realtime multiplayer at the moment, but that is in the pipeline with Corona Cloud. You can however utilize turn based multiplayer. 

  3. I don’t think so

  4. Honestly, not much gives me headaches, but there are a few minor bugbears. For example 3rd party integration is quite limited and sometimes there is a specificity iOS API call I want to make that is not accessible through Corona. There is an option to upgrade to an enterprise licence and that would fix those issues (subject to learning more objective-c), but for me it’s not that much of an issue to warrant the extra time & cost. Perhaps the biggest downside is sometime’s slow to incorporate features from new OS updates. eg native twitter support on iOS has been around since iOS 5 (july 2011?) and it was only added to corona in December 2012. With project gluon plugins though, this should fix a lot of the slow adoption to new features. 

  5. I can’t think of anything big/important that isn’t already in the pipeline (Project Gluon plugins, real time multiplayer…) To get an idea of what other members think Corona is missing, have a look at the corona request website: 

http://feedback.coronalabs.com/forums/188732-corona-sdk-feature-requests-feedback/filters/top

  1. I started to learn programming last May with Corona SDK with no prior experience, you’re prior experience should be much more beneficial. The language that is used within Corona (Lua) 

Hope that helps :slight_smile:

#4

That helped a lot. Thanks a bunch for the answers. I think I’ll go with Corona for at least a year or so, and when I understand the concept of coding games, I might move onto Unity, but actually I see no reason for that as of now :slight_smile:

#5

Just to clarify, you can do real time multiplayer in Corona, but it involves a lot more coding and you would need some php/server experience to get it all working nicely. Corona cloud will most likely make this a lot easier when they release they’re own system though. 

As Deano said the games you listed are all possible. Some would require some pretty nifty coding skills, but definitely possible! :)

#6

Thank you! I now have my new *tool* I think! Time to dig in to tutorials!

*flies away*

#7
  1. I can say from personal experience that yes, you can recreate a game like Terraria using Corona SDK:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNMxUarjTGk[/media]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJsHMH2eJyE[/media]

That said, it took me more than a year to reach this point! You have to take care of a lot of things you might not think of at first, like managing he number of onscreen blocks or ground tiles. Past about a 1000 display objects, Corona slows down. Generating the world is tricky as well, because you cannot just load a single frame full of computations; iOS force quits apps if they appear to hang for more than a few moments. 

It’s important to keep in mind that the Corona Simulator is not an emulator. The simulator has all the horsepower of your PC available to it; it will run apps which would crush actual device performance. Remember to test on real hardware from time to time to get a handle on just what the devices can do.

#8

WOW THIS IS AMAZING!

And you have only 65 post, so there is no chance you asked 1000s of questions on forums to achieve this :smiley:

This is by far the most imperessive thing I’ve seen made with Corona. (Please point me if any of you know any better)

Since it is clear you are really good with the SDK and programming, do you think this would be easier in Unity or not? And how is the performance on devices like iPad - iPhone?

And most importantly do you have a Dev Blog or something like that for us to check your progress or notes or something like that?

#9

Having never used Unity I can’t say whether this would be easier with Unity or not, however I always got the impression that Unity was geared more towards 3D games than 2D ones. Performance on the iPad 2 was excellent, but getting there was difficult. Tablets were my target, so I never got around to testing on the iPhone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-oEPuqDZWWE#t=232s

I never created a Dev Blog. I wasn’t particularly keen on advertising what I was doing. :stuck_out_tongue: I had grand visions of being the first Terraria-clone on the App Store! But that stopped being possible a long time ago.

This game is on hold. At the moment I’m working on the Million Tile Engine: http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/33119-million-tile-engine-beta-release/ Eventually MTE will include the procedural world generation code from my Terraria-clone, but for now it is aimed more at traditional RPG’s and platformers, albeit with enormous maps/levels.

#10

cbt - take a look at Major Magnet, a recent #2 paid app in the App Store. It’s made in Corona and is a great example of the things you can do in Corona. 

#11

1 & 8) I cant see any reason why these games couldn’t be remade in corona. 

  1. This game also could be remade in Corona from a gameplay point of view. Corona does not handle 3d graphics / lighting however, I feel Unity3d would be a better tool for this graphical style.

  2. You cannot get realtime multiplayer at the moment, but that is in the pipeline with Corona Cloud. You can however utilize turn based multiplayer. 

  3. I don’t think so

  4. Honestly, not much gives me headaches, but there are a few minor bugbears. For example 3rd party integration is quite limited and sometimes there is a specificity iOS API call I want to make that is not accessible through Corona. There is an option to upgrade to an enterprise licence and that would fix those issues (subject to learning more objective-c), but for me it’s not that much of an issue to warrant the extra time & cost. Perhaps the biggest downside is sometime’s slow to incorporate features from new OS updates. eg native twitter support on iOS has been around since iOS 5 (july 2011?) and it was only added to corona in December 2012. With project gluon plugins though, this should fix a lot of the slow adoption to new features. 

  5. I can’t think of anything big/important that isn’t already in the pipeline (Project Gluon plugins, real time multiplayer…) To get an idea of what other members think Corona is missing, have a look at the corona request website: 

http://feedback.coronalabs.com/forums/188732-corona-sdk-feature-requests-feedback/filters/top

  1. I started to learn programming last May with Corona SDK with no prior experience, you’re prior experience should be much more beneficial. The language that is used within Corona (Lua) 

Hope that helps :slight_smile:

#12

That helped a lot. Thanks a bunch for the answers. I think I’ll go with Corona for at least a year or so, and when I understand the concept of coding games, I might move onto Unity, but actually I see no reason for that as of now :slight_smile:

#13

Just to clarify, you can do real time multiplayer in Corona, but it involves a lot more coding and you would need some php/server experience to get it all working nicely. Corona cloud will most likely make this a lot easier when they release they’re own system though. 

As Deano said the games you listed are all possible. Some would require some pretty nifty coding skills, but definitely possible! :)

#14

Thank you! I now have my new *tool* I think! Time to dig in to tutorials!

*flies away*

#15
  1. I can say from personal experience that yes, you can recreate a game like Terraria using Corona SDK:

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNMxUarjTGk[/media]

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJsHMH2eJyE[/media]

That said, it took me more than a year to reach this point! You have to take care of a lot of things you might not think of at first, like managing he number of onscreen blocks or ground tiles. Past about a 1000 display objects, Corona slows down. Generating the world is tricky as well, because you cannot just load a single frame full of computations; iOS force quits apps if they appear to hang for more than a few moments. 

It’s important to keep in mind that the Corona Simulator is not an emulator. The simulator has all the horsepower of your PC available to it; it will run apps which would crush actual device performance. Remember to test on real hardware from time to time to get a handle on just what the devices can do.

#16

WOW THIS IS AMAZING!

And you have only 65 post, so there is no chance you asked 1000s of questions on forums to achieve this :smiley:

This is by far the most imperessive thing I’ve seen made with Corona. (Please point me if any of you know any better)

Since it is clear you are really good with the SDK and programming, do you think this would be easier in Unity or not? And how is the performance on devices like iPad - iPhone?

And most importantly do you have a Dev Blog or something like that for us to check your progress or notes or something like that?

#17

Having never used Unity I can’t say whether this would be easier with Unity or not, however I always got the impression that Unity was geared more towards 3D games than 2D ones. Performance on the iPad 2 was excellent, but getting there was difficult. Tablets were my target, so I never got around to testing on the iPhone.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=-oEPuqDZWWE#t=232s

I never created a Dev Blog. I wasn’t particularly keen on advertising what I was doing. :stuck_out_tongue: I had grand visions of being the first Terraria-clone on the App Store! But that stopped being possible a long time ago.

This game is on hold. At the moment I’m working on the Million Tile Engine: http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/33119-million-tile-engine-beta-release/ Eventually MTE will include the procedural world generation code from my Terraria-clone, but for now it is aimed more at traditional RPG’s and platformers, albeit with enormous maps/levels.