Corona Simulator Vs Real Device

Games
#1

Hello all,

Just a quick question - in your opinion and experience how close is the Corona Simulator to rendering/emulating games and apps compared with a real device? Have you found any big differences between the two? I know at the end of the day, testing on real devices is a must and should have the final say, but how much can i rely on the Corona (or XCode) Simulator alone?

For example, I don’t think i can test on the iPhone 3GS or iPad 1 & 3, can i rely on the Corona Simulator only - and if it works ok in the simulator, assume it will be fine on a real device?!

Ideally i would like to test (in person) on all supported devices, but this may not be possible. This will especially be the case if i also decide to go down the Android route as well.

Thanks,

#2

I have tested on a number of devices of varying screen size (though all being Android based) and they have all functioned in the same way as the simulator. I see no reason why the layout would be any different on to what you see in the sim.

One thing I have found is to make sure your colour settings are correct on your own monitor!

Just my 2 cents! I can’t offer any further advice re iPhone.

#3

There are a couple of gotchas  to be aware of and they mostly are font based issues.

  1. Different devices render fonts differently.  Windows, Mac OSX, iOS and Android could all draw “MyWayCoolFont.ttf” differently which usually results in the text being slightly positioned incorrectly.
  2. Since you are a trial user on 971, there is a bug that if you draw a display.newText("") with an empty string and later update it using its .text property, there are significant (10+pixels) vertical positioning issues between the simulator and the device.  This was improved in a daily build to a point that it’s a negligible issue.
  3. Using objects like native.newTextField() do not use Corona SDK’s scaling on font sizes.  What you see in the simulator and what you see on device will very likely be different and what you see on an 3Gs and what you see on a Retina iPad will be different.  You have to do your own scaling for fonts in that case.

Of course there are some things that cannot be run in the simulator like Ad networks, Facebook, GameCenter and those have to be tested on device and won’t show up in the simulator. 

If you can test on an iPad 2 then that covers the iPad Mini and iPad 1.  If you can test on an iPad 4, then that takes care of the iPad 3.   The 3Gs is getting so old, I’m not sure I’d worry about it too much.  The simulator should help you there and since the shape is basically the same as the 4 and 4s you’re positioning should be the same as long as your config.lua isn’t treating them differently.

#4

Thank you both for the reply back, appreciate it! With regards to the colour settings, i don’t know why but i have a sneaky feeling this might be a possible issue because during development on my macbook, when i tried to grab the RGB values (from a graphics editor app) to insert into the code, the resulting colour looked different when subsequently viewing it in the Corona Simulator.

I’ll also bear in mind the font and spacing stuff - spacing and positioning was one of my main possible concerns between the simulator and device.

Anyway, i’ve now purchased for both Apple Developer and Corona Pro licenses now, so going to go ahead and build (and test) for the device!

Cheers,

#5

So… both of you were on the money! I made a build for device testing and there are quite a lot of bugs/discrepancies compared with the simulator including colour issues and spacing issues (which i think are related to the font i’m using). Also think my spritesheets aren’t working, i suspect they’re too large!

Well, onto bug fixing it is!..

#6

I have tested on a number of devices of varying screen size (though all being Android based) and they have all functioned in the same way as the simulator. I see no reason why the layout would be any different on to what you see in the sim.

One thing I have found is to make sure your colour settings are correct on your own monitor!

Just my 2 cents! I can’t offer any further advice re iPhone.

#7

There are a couple of gotchas  to be aware of and they mostly are font based issues.

  1. Different devices render fonts differently.  Windows, Mac OSX, iOS and Android could all draw “MyWayCoolFont.ttf” differently which usually results in the text being slightly positioned incorrectly.
  2. Since you are a trial user on 971, there is a bug that if you draw a display.newText("") with an empty string and later update it using its .text property, there are significant (10+pixels) vertical positioning issues between the simulator and the device.  This was improved in a daily build to a point that it’s a negligible issue.
  3. Using objects like native.newTextField() do not use Corona SDK’s scaling on font sizes.  What you see in the simulator and what you see on device will very likely be different and what you see on an 3Gs and what you see on a Retina iPad will be different.  You have to do your own scaling for fonts in that case.

Of course there are some things that cannot be run in the simulator like Ad networks, Facebook, GameCenter and those have to be tested on device and won’t show up in the simulator. 

If you can test on an iPad 2 then that covers the iPad Mini and iPad 1.  If you can test on an iPad 4, then that takes care of the iPad 3.   The 3Gs is getting so old, I’m not sure I’d worry about it too much.  The simulator should help you there and since the shape is basically the same as the 4 and 4s you’re positioning should be the same as long as your config.lua isn’t treating them differently.

#8

Thank you both for the reply back, appreciate it! With regards to the colour settings, i don’t know why but i have a sneaky feeling this might be a possible issue because during development on my macbook, when i tried to grab the RGB values (from a graphics editor app) to insert into the code, the resulting colour looked different when subsequently viewing it in the Corona Simulator.

I’ll also bear in mind the font and spacing stuff - spacing and positioning was one of my main possible concerns between the simulator and device.

Anyway, i’ve now purchased for both Apple Developer and Corona Pro licenses now, so going to go ahead and build (and test) for the device!

Cheers,

#9

So… both of you were on the money! I made a build for device testing and there are quite a lot of bugs/discrepancies compared with the simulator including colour issues and spacing issues (which i think are related to the font i’m using). Also think my spritesheets aren’t working, i suspect they’re too large!

Well, onto bug fixing it is!..