Corona on Windows Phone

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#41

Okay. 

I’ve written emulators for all sorts of machines over the years from very old to recent. It’s difficult. There are so many ‘odd cases’ - where developers have done things that works and are legal, but are just plain strange. Some things, you look at the code someone’s written and you think they are on drugs or something when they wrote it. The WP8 code is a bit like this.

Writing a WP8 (or HTML5) driver for Corona is non-trivial. It was originally, I suspect, designed purely around Android/iOS and those two implementations have grown up together. Writing an output driver for WP8 involves writing, from scratch, something that has to behave as the Android/iOS implementations do, with all the wierd little use cases, fix things that don’t quite work (e.g. Sound in HTML5 is a complete unprintable). I suspect (don’t know) that Corona was not originally designed to have lots of drivers for other systems.

And unlike most apps, it has to be very well debugged. Suppose it was released too early, with too many bugs in - Corona developers will think, right, I can now put my apps on the WPS, but what could easily happen if Corona are not careful is that there are a whole pile of buggy apps in Corona on WP8 which damages Corona, Microsoft and the authors. 

I’m sure Corona would love to release a working HTML5 / WP8 or indeed anything else as soon as possible, but it has to 99.9% work before they do.

Now , as for ‘broken’.

Apple, and to a far lesser extent Google, are complete barstewards to their developers. They rewrite the rules pointlessly on a regular basis (a cynic would wonder if they are trying to reduce the manpower involved in checking !). They also introduce subtle and sometimes unsubtle bugs or requirements (e.g. the ShortVersionNumber thing !). There are also problems with things like Adverts which are prone to somewhat arbitrary changes as well.

The Corona staff are not psychic. About all they can do is try and anticipate what something like iOS will bring in new fun things to fix - if they are lucky they may get to play with prereleases. Corona’s build system is just an online compilation (actually it probably compiles the lua and puts it together with a precompiled runtime ?) and as such it is as vulnerable to Apple’s latest and greatest smart new ideas as anyone.

IME the SDK isn’t very buggy in the bits Corona definitely control. I remember working with a Dutch product once where the language was being developed alongside the product that we were developing in it, so you’d write something like GOSUB 12000 (this was years ago) … and it didn’t. That’s something to complain about.

Most of the things that are claimed to be ‘broken’ actually aren’t being used properly, AFAICS.

#42

I’m with paulscottrobson on the ‘broken’ part. Most of the issues in the forum are programmer related or something that we have to find a workaround. As long as those problems are “solved” or it gets the work done, everything is fine with me.

As for the Windows Phone support part, the problem is with their announcement, at least it’s for me. Not all of us are hobbyists or our own boss. We work under someone and we’re responsible for what we say to them. I’m still having a hard time explaining why we can’t support Windows Phone still. It seems unprofessional to me that a product you offer is delayed for at least 6 months and you don’t even have an announcement that explains the situation for your subscribers.

#43

That is the key point - customers have made business decisions that cost money off the back of the announcement last October. Perhaps we should have known better given Corona’s history with delayed or abandoned features.

How many people were on the fence as to whether to renew or move to a different platform, and were convinced to stay or even switch to Corona by the availability of Windows builds in Q1 2014?

For me it was a nice-to-have, but it still potentially cost me a lot of money. This time last year I had an agreement with an old school-friend who was going to port all my apps to native Windows, and he had started work on the basic engine. When the announcement from Corona was released, he decided quite rightly it would be a waste of his time to continue with the ports.

I fully appreciate it’s a very difficult thing to do - so either hire plenty of resource to get the job done on time with a built-in contingency for unforeseen problems, or if you haven’t got the resource required / can’t afford it, don’t bother. 6 months is a very long time in mobile development.

I should say that Corona is an excellent product that has literally changed my life, but some of the decisions or premature announcements made can be baffling.

#44

I agree announcing Q1/2014 was a mistake , though it was probably a mistake rather than a con - the WP8 market is not so enormous that it is going to lure in people who were considering Corona generally, it’s more like ‘added value’.

Sales often do tend to pre-announce things. I remember years ago being asked if our product could run on a PDP/11,my answer was, well, probably, only to be told it had already been sold to run on one … we didn’t have a PDP/11 and no-one had ever used one in the office. 

It’s probably better to sort of provide a ‘running commentary’ on what’s going on (I think Walter does in a podcast recently ?).

As a general rule it’s always better to plan around what is there rather than what is “coming soon” as “coming soon” often never arrives, or is seriously delayed and limited. 

#45

Well, I haven’t seen the podcast. Can you post the link? I would be glad to know what’s going on with the WP8 support.

We’re not trying to imply that was a con but it was a mistake that cost us and still, there is no official statement about that. That’s pretty annoying, isn’t it?

#46

http://coronalabs.com/blog/coronageek/corona-geek-102/

That’s the podcast where Walter discussed a variety of topics.

I did watch the podcast, and I still have no clue on the timeline for WP8 support.

#47

Hi everyone - the WP8 support is in closed beta and a handful of people have now published with it. We are waiting for a few small things to open it up more broadly.

If you really need access ASAP, email me (david AT coronalabs) and I’ll give you access in the next day.

David

#48

Hi David,

I’ve just sent you an e-mail. I’ve made a mistake when writing our e-mail address. Hope you take my follow-up mail into consideration :slight_smile:

We’re very excited about this :slight_smile:

#49

It’s been 5 days and I haven’t heard from David yet. Anyone tried sending e-mail and got access?

#50

bgmadclown - I’ve responded to all the requests I received. I must not have gotten your email. Can you re-send? david AT coronalabs.com

#51

Hi David,

I sent the e-mail from our gmail account which is different from the one that we’re using on Corona subscription. I’m now sending one copy from both. Please let me know if you receive any of those.

#52

Good points.  That last update here was July.  Any news?

#53

I could just copy/paste that last update.  It hasn’t change.  We keep improving it daily, adding in more and more API calls.  There have been a few apps released to the Windows store already with it.  Its currently implemented as CoronaCards and you have to have Visual Studio installed to build.  I don’t know when we will get it into open beta, it’s still closed beta. 

Rob

#54

Good enough, thanks for the update.

I don’t envy you guys the task of making it happen.  It sounds like a lot of work!

Jason

#55

I fear the Windows Phone platform will be obsolete by the time we get our hands on it…it’ll be like adding the ability to build for the Amiga. 

#56

Amiga! Are you serious?

I would have thought the Difference Engine more apt!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Difference_engine

The ending of this video reminds me of Corona, or at least the ending of Corona!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG9eI2scSuc

#57

Interesting point about that is, Corona announced a Q1 - 2014 release for the Windows Phone support but now, we’re a week away from Q4 - 2014 and still no support or even an open beta announcement. It’s very disappointing for us, who want to keep on working with Corona SDK.

#58

Add in to the mix the fact that many of us are struggling to monetize on Android (not a Corona issue of course), the introduction of Swift and the lack of Nook opportunities for those without a US bank account (again not a Corona issue) and I’ll don’t expect to be coding with Corona in the long-term. The cross-platform aspect just isn’t appealing.

Another point, for what it’s worth (and I might get burned for this - and fair enough). Often times I come to the Corona forums and I see posts saying this is broke and that is broke. Now some of these posts are Apple related and some of these posts are developer related. Of course, some of the posts are genuine bugs in Corona. And I get it, all SDKs have bugs. But to my point. If I was a developer contemplating adopting Corona, the sight of some of the post titles would make me think twice.

I get it, that’s part of what forums are for - posting questions about the SDK that’s broke (or appears to be broke and is in fact programmer error - hence Rob understandably asking for a reproducible minimal project of said bug).

To a potential developer considering adopting Corona, it may appear broke!

Just a bit of healthy debate I hope… :slight_smile:

#59

Okay. 

I’ve written emulators for all sorts of machines over the years from very old to recent. It’s difficult. There are so many ‘odd cases’ - where developers have done things that works and are legal, but are just plain strange. Some things, you look at the code someone’s written and you think they are on drugs or something when they wrote it. The WP8 code is a bit like this.

Writing a WP8 (or HTML5) driver for Corona is non-trivial. It was originally, I suspect, designed purely around Android/iOS and those two implementations have grown up together. Writing an output driver for WP8 involves writing, from scratch, something that has to behave as the Android/iOS implementations do, with all the wierd little use cases, fix things that don’t quite work (e.g. Sound in HTML5 is a complete unprintable). I suspect (don’t know) that Corona was not originally designed to have lots of drivers for other systems.

And unlike most apps, it has to be very well debugged. Suppose it was released too early, with too many bugs in - Corona developers will think, right, I can now put my apps on the WPS, but what could easily happen if Corona are not careful is that there are a whole pile of buggy apps in Corona on WP8 which damages Corona, Microsoft and the authors. 

I’m sure Corona would love to release a working HTML5 / WP8 or indeed anything else as soon as possible, but it has to 99.9% work before they do.

Now , as for ‘broken’.

Apple, and to a far lesser extent Google, are complete barstewards to their developers. They rewrite the rules pointlessly on a regular basis (a cynic would wonder if they are trying to reduce the manpower involved in checking !). They also introduce subtle and sometimes unsubtle bugs or requirements (e.g. the ShortVersionNumber thing !). There are also problems with things like Adverts which are prone to somewhat arbitrary changes as well.

The Corona staff are not psychic. About all they can do is try and anticipate what something like iOS will bring in new fun things to fix - if they are lucky they may get to play with prereleases. Corona’s build system is just an online compilation (actually it probably compiles the lua and puts it together with a precompiled runtime ?) and as such it is as vulnerable to Apple’s latest and greatest smart new ideas as anyone.

IME the SDK isn’t very buggy in the bits Corona definitely control. I remember working with a Dutch product once where the language was being developed alongside the product that we were developing in it, so you’d write something like GOSUB 12000 (this was years ago) … and it didn’t. That’s something to complain about.

Most of the things that are claimed to be ‘broken’ actually aren’t being used properly, AFAICS.

#60

I’m with paulscottrobson on the ‘broken’ part. Most of the issues in the forum are programmer related or something that we have to find a workaround. As long as those problems are “solved” or it gets the work done, everything is fine with me.

As for the Windows Phone support part, the problem is with their announcement, at least it’s for me. Not all of us are hobbyists or our own boss. We work under someone and we’re responsible for what we say to them. I’m still having a hard time explaining why we can’t support Windows Phone still. It seems unprofessional to me that a product you offer is delayed for at least 6 months and you don’t even have an announcement that explains the situation for your subscribers.