+1 Game Circle
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Best,
Andreas
Hi,
I just talked to Amazon, and they were asking if I could use Developer Select. The only thing missing is GameCircle :(
Brian
PS, interesting! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carthago_delenda_est
Thanks! I just looked for a nice way to say “Yes, I know I’m nagging”, because I already posted about the need for Game Circle a few times. 
Sweet - Cant wait…
Has this feature been cancelled? Would appreciate an update even if it’s “we’re still moving, just slowly”. We’ve waited a while for anything resembling an estimated date and it’s frustrating since this is required for Amazon’s developer select program.
I think maybe I can shed some light on this subject as I spent the weekend working with Corona Enterprise creating my own GameCircle plugin. The problem is that Amazon’s GameCircle SDK is neither RESTful nor a self-contained JAR file. It requires including resource files at compile time.
This really is not a big deal using the Enterprise version of Corona, or the Android native development kit in general. But it causes a problem for Pro subscribers because as best I can tell the current plugin infrastructure as it exists today won’t let Third party developers include external resources like the .zip file that is part of the Amazon SDK.
If the guys at Corona were willing to modify the build scripts on their end to copy over the resources at compile time as I am doing locally when someone includes the GameCircle plugin, then I’d be more than happy to hand over the source code as I’m not super keen on the cost of upgrading my Pro version of Corona to Enterprise. But unless I am missing something the way the Amazon SDK exists now, it is not really compatible with the way Corona is doing 3rd party Android plugins.
I know Corona has a lot on its plate, as does Amazon. I also spoke with Amazon about how much easier all this would be if they exposed their RESTful end points and it sounded like maybe this is also on their radar but again no time line or official word was given. Unfortunately, as others have mentioned, this has become a big sticking point for those of us hoping to feature our Corona Apps on the Kindle Fire, the most popular Android tablet in the world.
As the price of Unity and Corona get closer, little things like this start to weigh into my decision to continue with Corona. I ran into very similar issues trying to support PARSE notifications last year. Both PARSE and Amazon prominently display Unity plugins for their SDKs. I’m a big fan of the things Corona Labs has done, but at times like this when Corona apps get second class treatment in a highly visible market because they lack a feature it causes one to step back and take note.
Thanks WJ for the technical perspective! Makes sense as to why maybe it’s taking the 3rd party/Amazon a long time. And yeah - I think we all appreciate the amount Corona has on their plate but without receiving much in the way of details about the holdup it’s easy to assume it’s not really being given any level of priority.
FWIW, I recommend not stressing too much about qualifying for Amazon’s Developer Select. Our experience has been that it’ll bring you under 500 extra downloads. You may be better off spending the effort polishing your game or releasing it sooner.
Now getting featured by Amazon would be a far better goal if you think you can pull it off.
Hi everyone - I appreciate everyone’s concern with this and I agree that this has taken far too long.
I’ve been in a couple of email exchanges in the last couple of days that has me hopeful about the plugin being ready in the near future. But since we are not developing, I really can’t be sure. But we are trying to help the developer of the plugin as much as possible. If I know more, I’ll post it and let you know.
w.j.francis - I realize you may have bought (or are thinkng of buying) Enterprise primarily for GameCenter. Don’t worry, if we do have a plugin in place soon I will make sure that you are taken care of for the unnecessary expense.
Good news, thanks!
@w.j.francis: I work with Corona and Unity, and I’m much faster using Corona. And now with graphics 2.0, snapshots and LiquidFun I’m just happy. Of course there are things that can only be realized in Unity, but whenever I have the opportunity to choose I use Corona - it’s much more integrated, I don’t have to buy lots of assets from the asset store just to implement IAP & IAB or Game Center / Google Play Games, with Corona it’s all in the box.
The only thing I hate about Corona is that Lua tables start with “1” instead of “0”, but nothing is perfect. 
Best, Andreas
@avlepel Thanks for the insight on Corona vs. Unity. Initially Unity appealed to me because I have a lot of C/C++/C# experience, but over time I am starting to appreciate some things about LUA. I know you are probably busy but I bet others like myself would love a guest post by you concerning the differences between the two based on your experience.
@davidrangel I appreciate you letting me know that should the plugin come out in the near future I will be taken care of. I plan to continue working with my Enterprise demo for the next couple weeks and at that time will decide if I want to go ahead and purchase it or stick with the Pro subscription. Doing mostly native apps outside of gaming I definitely see the advantages the Enterprise version offers. But one of the things I most like about the Pro version of Corona SDK is that it really accelerates my development and I lose a lot of that velocity when I have to start messing with ANT scripts and Eclipse.
A few days ago I attended a presentation by Amazon at Casual Connect conference. They actually seemed supportive of indy game developers and helping get their apps promoted (unlike the Google Play store treatment favoring big devs spending lots of money on ads). Not only are there the Amazon Kindle Fire and Fire TV platforms, but now also the Fire Phone with some pretty cool exclusive features, so it seems like a great time to get apps up on their store.
They are currently running a promotion where, if your app qualifies for Developer Select, you will get 500,000 Amazon coins to distribute from up to three of your apps. So you could give each paying user of your app a bunch of coins which they can then use to purchase other apps or IAP.
500,000 Amazon coins is worth $5000, so not only are you getting the added boost of being promoted but you are basically getting $5K to gift to your users. Not bad. But currently this is out of reach if we can’t integrate GameCircle and become part of the Developer Select program.
If any of you have the Enterprise edition of Corona SDK you are welcome to the source for my GameCirlcle pulgin. So far it seems to work okay. Though I haven’t found time to do a whole lot of testing yet. www.thingerjiggy.com/downloads/AGC.zip
That’s a very generous offer, wj.francis. I wish I could use Enterprise, but I’m not going down the native development path for various reasons.
Your technical explanation above for why it might not be possible to create such a plugin for Pro users sounds plausible. If it’s true then I don’t understand all the smoke and mirrors coming from Corona Labs about it “coming soon”, going on nine months. If it’s not possible then they should just say so. If it is, then it’s long past time to find another developer who can actually do it. Sounds like you’ve already done most of the work and made it freely available!
Hey guys - a quick update. There is no smoke and mirrors - Amazon has had a 3rd party developer working on this for a while, and for a number of reasons it has taken them a long time to get there. The latest setback was the realization that the GC plugin worked in a way that was going to require some changes to the actual native SDK (by Amazon). This was an issue that no other SDK has had when building a plugin and so everyone was unfamiliar with it. Right now, Amazon is considering adding some code we suggested to their actual SDK, which will then enable the developer to finish the plugin.
The Amazon change itself will probably take a few weeks, and then the developer will probably need another week or two to finalize.
Bottom line is that it will unfortunately take several weeks still. I wish we could do something about it, but it is out of our hands - especially because of the way the GC SDK works, which required these unusual changes.
Well, it’s at least good to hear an update on the plugin’s progress. It’s not exactly clear to me why wj.francis was able to write his own functioning Enterprise plugin without rewriting the native Amazon SDK, but I defer to the tech titans at Amazon and CL. I’m sure they know what they’re doing.
Stephen - I should have been a little clearer. The problem is not making a plugin that will work when building locally (with Corona Enterprise). The problem comes when you have to turn that into a plugin that sits on our server so that any Corona SDK developer can include it at build time.
Let’s hope that Game Circle with Corona SDK is not too far away in time! :o
Hey David, are you guys in touch with the 3rd party? Would love to know if this is like weeks or months away… thanks.
Same. Any idea if were close to seeing anything yet?