Corona blog links

mmihajlovic · June 10, 2018, 10:55am

Brought over from https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/72860-buildabox-unity-3d-marketplace-templates/

It would be more useful if there were comparable templates in lua/corona as well then you could use the templates to “compare” or learn how to “move” to corona from the other framework/library/game engine. Basically have the template with a corona and a unity\buildbox\etc… project in one that uses the same assets.

As is it just seems strange to me.

Being quite new to corona I can tell you the marketing need to improve, so if this is what they are trying to do I understand, but they should be promoting their own product over others, not the other way around. As it is searching around it seems corona was popular in 2011 and 2014 and everything in between kinda seems like a black hole of nothingness.

If marketing is the problem there are other things that need to be improved: Corona university/geek needs to be re-instated - I learned a lot from those videos but seeing that everything is old (pre 2018) kinda put’s me off and also they made a huge mistake if you ask me deleting a bunch of old blog posts and examples - since searching on google for things very often leads to broken links or irritatingly so-close-but-yet-so-far searches (I see in google results there is an exact response to something I search but I go to the link and it’s been removed - and this from corona official blog/tutorial links)

I also don’t see the value in this for Corona. I understand the sound / graphic assets but I don’t get why anyone can select the platform as any of the competitors. Like @schizoid2k said above, if anyone wants to have templates for those specific engines / frameworks, they won’t come looking for that in the Corona Marketplace. Every single one of them have their own communities and asset stores. Just like we don’t go searching for Corona templates in Unity’s own store, they won’t come looking for one in the Corona Marketplace. Again, I don’t see the PR value in this for Corona but I hope that the team is following the traffic closely to see if it works like the way they intended.

I need to back @mmihajlovic up about the broken links subject. That’s pretty annoying even for seasoned Corona developers like myself. Corona should at least direct those requests to a more recent page when the “broken link” is outdated or something else. Noone should face a 404 page when they thought they found the solution to a problem. That’s just bad practice.

What URL is 404’ing?

Thanks

Rob

mmihajlovic · June 10, 2018, 10:56am

Brought over from https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/72860-buildabox-unity-3d-marketplace-templates/

BuildABox? Unity 3D? Marketplace Templates.

Some links I found from my browser history:

https://coronalabs.com/blog/2013/06/18/guest-tutorial-delta-time-in-corona/

This was being shown by Google as one of the top results for delta time in Corona but it doesn’t show up for me right now. You can still see many forum posts referencing the tutorial like these:

https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/56542-why-enterframe-delta-time-so-difference/

https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/60486-applying-deltatime-to-platformer/

Another dead link is titled “Tutorial Treasury: Input Devices”: https://coronalabs.com/blog/2015/08/04/tutorial-treasury-input-devices/

I don’t remember how I found it but I have no idea what’s in it at the moment. It also seems to be referenced in a forum post: https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/63608-connect-with-midi-keyboard-to-device-please-help-me/

I was searching for the demos for the first Graphics 2.0 contest as was looking for a way to look into the fake 3D stuff. I found the video on the Corona Labs YouTube channel but the link in the description was going for a 404.

Link: https://coronalabs.com/blog/2013/12/10/graphics-2-0-demo-contest-winners

Video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhX-NO0qHP0

(I’m still curious on how to achieve some of those effects by the way.)

…and the last one I found was a link from 2011. I know it’s pretty old but it’s referenced from many forum posts it seems. It would be better if it redirects to a more recent post where it shows the latest approach to replace this.

https://coronalabs.com/blog/2011/09/05/a-better-approach-to-external-modules/

mmihajlovic · June 10, 2018, 10:56am

Brought over from https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/72860-buildabox-unity-3d-marketplace-templates/

BuildABox? Unity 3D? Marketplace Templates.

@bgmadclown, thanks for pointing these out.

We sometimes remove content and we don’t always have a place to redirect to. If you are using bookmarks or if your looking at an old page thats linking to removed content, a 404 error is appropriate. 404 doesn’t always mean “broken link”, it can also mean that content is no longer available. In many of these blog posts, that’s the case.

All of the links you’ve shared end up going to blog posts that were removed. They may have been removed for various reasons. Some tutorials moved to the Docs site, but hopefully we did setup redirects for those. I’ll have to go through each of the URLs and see if there is a new tutorial on the docs site and get a redirect created.

Now if there is an active page on our site that isn’t going to a valid place (i.e. click here to see submission guidelines) we should either update the page to not go there, or make sure there is a place to go to and fix it if we can. There isn’t much that can be done for archived forum posts, links on 3rd party sites, or bookmarks.

For the 2.5D effects, see: http://docs.coronalabs.com/guide/graphics/3D.html

Again thanks for pointing these out.

Rob

BuildABox? Unity 3D? Marketplace Templates.

This is exactly what I was talking about. As a beginner how am I supposed to know that the link has moved to somewhere else? And to where? Why not just update those pages - most of them are your old blog posts, so you must have access. If you ask me this is the worst option that you guys have chosen.

And I can tell you I hit A LOT of them. My first week in corona I spent more time on web.archive.com (looking at the exact pages you seem to be trying to remove - and learning from them) then on your own site. I just don’t see the point. Update the pages - put a notice on the top that this is for an older version or a link to the actual new page. At least it gives people a way forward.

Another bad one is: https://coronalabs.com/blog/2014/09/09/tutorial-working-with-curved-paths/ - this teases me with some explanation and an example program, but the example program links are not valid any more…

mmihajlovic · June 10, 2018, 10:56am

Brought over from https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/72860-buildabox-unity-3d-marketplace-templates/

BuildABox? Unity 3D? Marketplace Templates.

Some links I found from my browser history:

https://coronalabs.com/blog/2013/06/18/guest-tutorial-delta-time-in-corona/

This was being shown by Google as one of the top results for delta time in Corona but it doesn’t show up for me right now. You can still see many forum posts referencing the tutorial like these:

https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/56542-why-enterframe-delta-time-so-difference/

https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/60486-applying-deltatime-to-platformer/

Another dead link is titled “Tutorial Treasury: Input Devices”: https://coronalabs.com/blog/2015/08/04/tutorial-treasury-input-devices/

I don’t remember how I found it but I have no idea what’s in it at the moment. It also seems to be referenced in a forum post: https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/63608-connect-with-midi-keyboard-to-device-please-help-me/

I was searching for the demos for the first Graphics 2.0 contest as was looking for a way to look into the fake 3D stuff. I found the video on the Corona Labs YouTube channel but the link in the description was going for a 404.

Link: https://coronalabs.com/blog/2013/12/10/graphics-2-0-demo-contest-winners

Video on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhX-NO0qHP0

(I’m still curious on how to achieve some of those effects by the way.)

…and the last one I found was a link from 2011. I know it’s pretty old but it’s referenced from many forum posts it seems. It would be better if it redirects to a more recent post where it shows the latest approach to replace this.

https://coronalabs.com/blog/2011/09/05/a-better-approach-to-external-modules/

mmihajlovic · June 10, 2018, 10:56am

Brought over from https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/72860-buildabox-unity-3d-marketplace-templates/

BuildABox? Unity 3D? Marketplace Templates.

@bgmadclown, thanks for pointing these out.

We sometimes remove content and we don’t always have a place to redirect to. If you are using bookmarks or if your looking at an old page thats linking to removed content, a 404 error is appropriate. 404 doesn’t always mean “broken link”, it can also mean that content is no longer available. In many of these blog posts, that’s the case.

All of the links you’ve shared end up going to blog posts that were removed. They may have been removed for various reasons. Some tutorials moved to the Docs site, but hopefully we did setup redirects for those. I’ll have to go through each of the URLs and see if there is a new tutorial on the docs site and get a redirect created.

Now if there is an active page on our site that isn’t going to a valid place (i.e. click here to see submission guidelines) we should either update the page to not go there, or make sure there is a place to go to and fix it if we can. There isn’t much that can be done for archived forum posts, links on 3rd party sites, or bookmarks.

For the 2.5D effects, see: http://docs.coronalabs.com/guide/graphics/3D.html

Again thanks for pointing these out.

Rob

BuildABox? Unity 3D? Marketplace Templates.

This is exactly what I was talking about. As a beginner how am I supposed to know that the link has moved to somewhere else? And to where? Why not just update those pages - most of them are your old blog posts, so you must have access. If you ask me this is the worst option that you guys have chosen.

And I can tell you I hit A LOT of them. My first week in corona I spent more time on web.archive.com (looking at the exact pages you seem to be trying to remove - and learning from them) then on your own site. I just don’t see the point. Update the pages - put a notice on the top that this is for an older version or a link to the actual new page. At least it gives people a way forward.

Another bad one is: https://coronalabs.com/blog/2014/09/09/tutorial-working-with-curved-paths/ - this teases me with some explanation and an example program, but the example program links are not valid any more…