Corona SDK Pricing

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

I can definitely NOT afford to renew my Pro subscription (which expires in October), so I looked on the “Pricing FAQs” page. Here’s what I saw:

Features available to ALL Corona users (Starter, Basic, Pro, Enterprise) are:

  • Basic shapes, lines, text
  • Basic fill and strokes
  • Anchor points
  • Custom polygons
  • Groups and containers

Features available ONLY to Pro and Enterprise subscribers are:

  • Texture mapping in all shapes
  • Texture-mapped strokes and lines
  • Texture transform properties (position, rotation, scale)
  • Multitexturing with composite paints
  • Snapshots (Render to texture)
  • Shader effects (filters, generators, and composites)
  • Multi-pass shaders graphs
  • Normal mapping
  • Quadrilateral perspective distortion for 2.5D/3D effects
  • Canvas-style painting
  • Porter-Duff blending
  • Custom blend modes
  • Blend equation control: add, substract, and reverseSubtract

The only display objects mentioned are shapes, lines, and text. What about images? Are they included? If they are, do you also get movement/rotation/scale of images? (bullet #3 of Pro/Enterprise). Are you referring to textures as different from images?

I guess I just need some extra clarification on the differences.

  • Caleb
#2

Yes … you can draw images :slight_smile: I think the real difference between Basic and Pro is that Pro includes all the “Graphics 2.0” stuff, which includes all the texture mapping and blending and all that sort of thing.

#3

yes, images (flat-textured quads) are the core of what Corona is - a GL “billboard” sprite engine.  works at all license levels.

fwiw, my $0.02 (which will probably get me in trouble :D)…

Corona’s price structure has the feeling of being established by engineers rather than marketers.  that is, most features occur in tiers that seem based on how “glamour-y” they are to engineering, rather than where they fall in usability and to establish some strong reason to upgrade.

fe:  ooh, ahh, wow, textured triangles, big whoop-de-doo, never seen OpenGL do that before, right? – so that’s a “pro” feature?  the only reason textured triangles are so “novel” in Corona is because the core is SO invested in the billboard metaphor to simplify the API that it’s now (as of Graphics 2.0) a bit of a “stretch” to shoehorn in a texture onto a polygon.  (since we don’t otherwise have “raw” access to vertices and uv coords, or we’d be doing textured polys ourselves)  therefore it deserves pro pricing, right?  makes no sense.

the result is there is very little in the pricing structure to “entice” upgrades - you either NEED pro+ features (like, if doing a photo-manip app, then filters and such) or you don’t.  (or you DO need them, but think the pricing is out of line, so do without)

i have a basic sub, and i don’t even need that  - my own apps do better with the lite/full version model (which you can do free with starter) rather than iap’s with basic, ymmv of course!

#4

Graphics 2.0 lets you do 2.5D transforms where you can take your rectangle and distort it to look 3Dish.  That is a Pro only feature.  Basic images, scaling them, rotating them, moving them around with Physics and transitions and touch are all included in Starter.

#5

Yes … you can draw images :slight_smile: I think the real difference between Basic and Pro is that Pro includes all the “Graphics 2.0” stuff, which includes all the texture mapping and blending and all that sort of thing.

#6

yes, images (flat-textured quads) are the core of what Corona is - a GL “billboard” sprite engine.  works at all license levels.

fwiw, my $0.02 (which will probably get me in trouble :D)…

Corona’s price structure has the feeling of being established by engineers rather than marketers.  that is, most features occur in tiers that seem based on how “glamour-y” they are to engineering, rather than where they fall in usability and to establish some strong reason to upgrade.

fe:  ooh, ahh, wow, textured triangles, big whoop-de-doo, never seen OpenGL do that before, right? – so that’s a “pro” feature?  the only reason textured triangles are so “novel” in Corona is because the core is SO invested in the billboard metaphor to simplify the API that it’s now (as of Graphics 2.0) a bit of a “stretch” to shoehorn in a texture onto a polygon.  (since we don’t otherwise have “raw” access to vertices and uv coords, or we’d be doing textured polys ourselves)  therefore it deserves pro pricing, right?  makes no sense.

the result is there is very little in the pricing structure to “entice” upgrades - you either NEED pro+ features (like, if doing a photo-manip app, then filters and such) or you don’t.  (or you DO need them, but think the pricing is out of line, so do without)

i have a basic sub, and i don’t even need that  - my own apps do better with the lite/full version model (which you can do free with starter) rather than iap’s with basic, ymmv of course!

#7

Graphics 2.0 lets you do 2.5D transforms where you can take your rectangle and distort it to look 3Dish.  That is a Pro only feature.  Basic images, scaling them, rotating them, moving them around with Physics and transitions and touch are all included in Starter.