Debugging and Error messages

[jeremy75]

Hi,

I am pretty new to Corona, I have worked with other game engines in the past and i have been developing for over 12 years.

One thing that appears to be lacking in Corona is error messages and reasonable debugging.

What i have managed to find out from the little documentation there is on this subject and through experimenting, is that you have to fire up the debug console before running your app, then the debug console session ends and you have to do it again next time you run the app.

This is simply crazy and very un-friendly to developers.
If you are making an app with Corona and you make a change you are prompted to re-launch the simulator, but if you use the debugger you have to go to that start screen asking if you want simulator or some other options, none of which are debugging.

Seriously, when is corona simply going to get an error log as it slows down development immensely having to debug like it was 1978 and we are all using VMS mainframes.

As someone coming from other cross platform game engines, there is just no justification for poor error tracking in a developer tool and also when deciding if this is the right tool, whether the rest of Corona is fantastic or not, this is a deal breaker when we’re looking at 100s of USD per year.
If anyone can point me to a good tutorial on debugging on corona, i would appreciate it, but so far there I have found almost nothing on the subject. Do all current corona devs write 100% code first time?

Thanks,

Jeremy [import]uid: 194492 topic_id: 33132 reply_id: 333132[/import]

[ingemar]

I’ve been a developer for over 20 years, and I agree that an IDE is lacking, and the command line debugger is…well… yeah, you know.
However, Corona is still the fastest way to get an app ready from thought to final product, and there are 3rd party apps that fill in the gaps depending on what you’re looking for. Have a look at these:

Lua Glider IDE
http://www.mydevelopersgames.com/CIDER/index.html

Corona Project Manager
http://coronaprojectmanager.com

[import]uid: 70847 topic_id: 33132 reply_id: 131544[/import]

[jeremy75]

Hi,

I disagree, it is not an IDE that is lacking, but basic error handling for development.
We already use Eclispe and Titanium Studio and Visual Studio and Aptana and various other IDEs.
The last thing we need is yet another IDE just to give us basic errors from the simulator.

I downloaded both the apps you mention and Corona Project Manager is pretty poor - it cannot handle existing projects very well and looks very basic.
It does offer error messages though, which is a start.

The second is like a real IDE and the debugging it much better, but again why is it a separate product and additionally it seems to ignore build.settings in terms of orientation when you do a build.

I think that although in some ways you may be right that Corona is fastest from idea to app, this isn’t so straight forward a statement.

My situation is that we have all the usual things (concept, programming logic knowledge etc), we are now transferring to a new language / engine and a new compiler.
Perhaps fastest for developing a game when you are familiar with it, but a slower learning curve as its hard to see errors.

Overall Corona seems a nice tool, but why i am going to pay $349 / yr if i have to pay other companies to fill in the gaps.
In the next 5 years we will pay nearly $2000 for a tool that misses a huge part of the development process and we must fix this by paying another company to use their IDE.

Overall, this is a big tick in the “Not ready for commercial use” box.

I would have liked to expected some kind of tutorial on this from the makers of Corona, as it must have come up elsewhere.
Thanks for the suggestions, but as soon as you start asking people to pay for software then you have to provide complete solutions in my view.
Jez
[import]uid: 194492 topic_id: 33132 reply_id: 131551[/import]

[ingemar]

You say you use Titanium Studio.
(I will probably get bashed for mentioning this on this forum) …but have you looked at Platino?(http://lanica.co) [import]uid: 70847 topic_id: 33132 reply_id: 131556[/import]

[jeremy75]

Hi,

Yes i have heard about it, but it is still a very early beta so we will try it when we can.

Overall, i think the place the Titanium project is going wrong is with things like Platino and adding Titanium Studio as there is still so many areas of cross platform compatibility Titanium needs to deal with.
It (like many other cross platform tools) will end up having lots of things that *almost work well.

I think the only platform that i have found so far that is totally cross platform is Flash Builder with mobile support. But it is based on Air and it shows that in apps on Android.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Jez [import]uid: 194492 topic_id: 33132 reply_id: 131561[/import]

[Omnigeek_Media]

Corona SDK’s debugger is pretty lacking. But there are a couple of 3rd party solutions including Glider and CoronaComplete that attempt to give you the IDE type debugging environment with break points, variable watching, etc.

As for error messages, between native.showAlert(), print() and assert() and watching your console log (start Corona Terminal instead of CoronaSDK), while not “IDE” is quite effective.

[import]uid: 19626 topic_id: 33132 reply_id: 131584[/import]

[ingemar]

I’ve been a developer for over 20 years, and I agree that an IDE is lacking, and the command line debugger is…well… yeah, you know.
However, Corona is still the fastest way to get an app ready from thought to final product, and there are 3rd party apps that fill in the gaps depending on what you’re looking for. Have a look at these:

Lua Glider IDE
http://www.mydevelopersgames.com/CIDER/index.html

Corona Project Manager
http://coronaprojectmanager.com

[import]uid: 70847 topic_id: 33132 reply_id: 131544[/import]

[jeremy75]

Hi,

I disagree, it is not an IDE that is lacking, but basic error handling for development.
We already use Eclispe and Titanium Studio and Visual Studio and Aptana and various other IDEs.
The last thing we need is yet another IDE just to give us basic errors from the simulator.

I downloaded both the apps you mention and Corona Project Manager is pretty poor - it cannot handle existing projects very well and looks very basic.
It does offer error messages though, which is a start.

The second is like a real IDE and the debugging it much better, but again why is it a separate product and additionally it seems to ignore build.settings in terms of orientation when you do a build.

I think that although in some ways you may be right that Corona is fastest from idea to app, this isn’t so straight forward a statement.

My situation is that we have all the usual things (concept, programming logic knowledge etc), we are now transferring to a new language / engine and a new compiler.
Perhaps fastest for developing a game when you are familiar with it, but a slower learning curve as its hard to see errors.

Overall Corona seems a nice tool, but why i am going to pay $349 / yr if i have to pay other companies to fill in the gaps.
In the next 5 years we will pay nearly $2000 for a tool that misses a huge part of the development process and we must fix this by paying another company to use their IDE.

Overall, this is a big tick in the “Not ready for commercial use” box.

I would have liked to expected some kind of tutorial on this from the makers of Corona, as it must have come up elsewhere.
Thanks for the suggestions, but as soon as you start asking people to pay for software then you have to provide complete solutions in my view.
Jez
[import]uid: 194492 topic_id: 33132 reply_id: 131551[/import]

[ingemar]

You say you use Titanium Studio.
(I will probably get bashed for mentioning this on this forum) …but have you looked at Platino?(http://lanica.co) [import]uid: 70847 topic_id: 33132 reply_id: 131556[/import]

[jeremy75]

Hi,

Yes i have heard about it, but it is still a very early beta so we will try it when we can.

Overall, i think the place the Titanium project is going wrong is with things like Platino and adding Titanium Studio as there is still so many areas of cross platform compatibility Titanium needs to deal with.
It (like many other cross platform tools) will end up having lots of things that *almost work well.

I think the only platform that i have found so far that is totally cross platform is Flash Builder with mobile support. But it is based on Air and it shows that in apps on Android.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Jez [import]uid: 194492 topic_id: 33132 reply_id: 131561[/import]

[Omnigeek_Media]

Corona SDK’s debugger is pretty lacking. But there are a couple of 3rd party solutions including Glider and CoronaComplete that attempt to give you the IDE type debugging environment with break points, variable watching, etc.

As for error messages, between native.showAlert(), print() and assert() and watching your console log (start Corona Terminal instead of CoronaSDK), while not “IDE” is quite effective.

[import]uid: 19626 topic_id: 33132 reply_id: 131584[/import]