Few Basic Questions, please including one tech question?

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1
  1. Under pricing you have revenue limits like $100K/$500K, etc. 

How do you know how much we make?  Are you talking about inapp purchases?  So, if we call that function you can see how much we are charging and getting?

  1. I know I can ask my graphic artist to make me a 100 circles with the numbers written inside them and then each of them saved as png files like 1.png, … 100.png.  Then I would know if someone clicked the circle with 55 in it by the name 55.png.  but, is there a way to “draw a circle of certain radius and put a number in it and be able to remember which number it is when they select that circle.”  Example: I have the circles 1-100 on the screen and then I ask them to click the balls that have a 7 in them (like 37, 77, 7, etc).  Can that be done programmatically?  Or do I have to have graphic artist draw the balls and write the numbers in them and then save them with the proper name?

  2. I am about to order a USED Macbook Pro (I was told that is cheapest laptop that fits the requirements for making iOS apps that is a laptop).  I know it must have Mac OS X Snow Leopard.  Is there anything else I need to know?  For example is 250GB hard drive and 2GB memory ok (what is the minimum memory, is it 2)?  The ONLY use for it is for making the apps.

Also, since it is used, any techs out there that can warn me about what to look for to make sure it is real?  I have seen MANY fake Microsoft laptops (where they put their own screen up showing 500GB hard drive and lots of memory but in reality only has 10GB and 256 meg) but I don’t know how to check Macs, or do I need to worry about that? 

  1. I teach Scratch 2.0 to a bunch of 7-9 year old kids and they love it.  How old do you think someone should be before they try learning Corona?  It appears to be much more difficult than Scratch.  I am thinking 12-13 years old at least and with a high EQ (emotional IQ) otherwise at least 15.  What do you all think?

  2. If I read right, Composer will take the place of Storyboard, is that right?  Are there any new books that use composer instead of storyboard?

  3. I hear that Corona is the best for multiple system builds, but how come Universities are not picking it up?  Are you all trying to advertise to them to get them to create a major or at a least a minor in Computer Science that deals with mobile development and use Corona?  I was a College instructor for MANY years and if there is enough interest I know many Universities will create NEW minors/majors.  So, just wondering if you all have anyone on your team that tries to work with Universities to get them to create the major/minor and use your course ware?

Thanks for any help you can provide me,

Markis

#2

I’ll answer a couple of these.

#1 Corona Labs has no idea how much you’re earning; software licensing is, as always, a matter of honesty.

#2 Yes, that can be done. You would only need one png. The rest would be done programatically.

#4 Corona SDK is an ordinary software toolkit and not oriented towards easy learning for kids like Scratch. So I wouldn’t attempt it with 7-9 year olds, but 12+ could work.

#3

#5 Yes, it will. What do you mean by books? Books which teach composer or Corona apps on the store using Composer?

#6 Not sure, but I would assume that most programming courses teach long-held industry languages like C/C++, Java and C#. Just IMO.

#4

1.  If you make $100K a year, I think you can help us out by licensing our product.

2.  When you create a display object, you can assign your own properties to it:

local N55 = display.newImageRect(“55.png”, 100, 100)

N55.id = 55

Though realistically you would use an array and just use the index of the array to be the ID number.

3.  Actually MacMini’s are generally considered the cheaper option to get into.  As a rule, we support the current version of OS-X and one version back, so that would be OS-X 10.10 Yosemite and 10.9 Mavericks.   You need a graphics card that fully supports OpenGL 2.1.  More memory, more hard drive, faster processors is always a good thing.  I’m not sure I would buy a Mac that didn’t have at least 4GB of memory. 8GB will handle the OS better.  16GB Rocks!  As far as disc goes, you can always use an external drive or cloud storage.  250GB would be more than plenty.  On OS-X, there is an Apple logo in the Top left corner.  Click it, and choose “About this Mac”.  This will provide you an overview of the specs and tabs that you can drill into for more info.   Corona SDK itself doesn’t put a heavy drain on the computer’s resources other than the OpenGL needs.

  1. This is out of my area of expertise.  I can say we’ve had forum posters as young as 9 or 10 trying.  We’ve had a 5 year old design and do the art for a game that turned out pretty cool.  Dad programmed it.  We have had a few very successful 13-14 year olds use Corona to great success.  And we’ve had some programmers pick this up in their 60’s and 70’s who  have never programmed a computer in their life take off and run with it.

  2. Composer is “Storyboard 2.0” for all practical purposes.  While Storyboard is still in the code base, at some point we will sunset it and let it live on as an Open Source drop in module (i.e. download storyboard.lua from our github repository and put in the folder with your main.lua) and use it for as long as we don’t break any underlying technology.  Composer is our forward looking scene manager.   Books and other learning resources take time to catch up to changing technology.  But anything published in the last 6 months or so should be Composer focused.

6.  It takes a lot of manpower to reach out to Colleges, Universities, Community Colleges and prep schools.  Some do.  We have educational discounts available and with the Starter tier being free, there really is no cost for Universities.  Its really more a matter of the faculty learning about us and what we can do.

Hope this answers your questions.

Rob

#5

I’ll answer a couple of these.

#1 Corona Labs has no idea how much you’re earning; software licensing is, as always, a matter of honesty.

#2 Yes, that can be done. You would only need one png. The rest would be done programatically.

#4 Corona SDK is an ordinary software toolkit and not oriented towards easy learning for kids like Scratch. So I wouldn’t attempt it with 7-9 year olds, but 12+ could work.

#6

#5 Yes, it will. What do you mean by books? Books which teach composer or Corona apps on the store using Composer?

#6 Not sure, but I would assume that most programming courses teach long-held industry languages like C/C++, Java and C#. Just IMO.

#7

1.  If you make $100K a year, I think you can help us out by licensing our product.

2.  When you create a display object, you can assign your own properties to it:

local N55 = display.newImageRect(“55.png”, 100, 100)

N55.id = 55

Though realistically you would use an array and just use the index of the array to be the ID number.

3.  Actually MacMini’s are generally considered the cheaper option to get into.  As a rule, we support the current version of OS-X and one version back, so that would be OS-X 10.10 Yosemite and 10.9 Mavericks.   You need a graphics card that fully supports OpenGL 2.1.  More memory, more hard drive, faster processors is always a good thing.  I’m not sure I would buy a Mac that didn’t have at least 4GB of memory. 8GB will handle the OS better.  16GB Rocks!  As far as disc goes, you can always use an external drive or cloud storage.  250GB would be more than plenty.  On OS-X, there is an Apple logo in the Top left corner.  Click it, and choose “About this Mac”.  This will provide you an overview of the specs and tabs that you can drill into for more info.   Corona SDK itself doesn’t put a heavy drain on the computer’s resources other than the OpenGL needs.

  1. This is out of my area of expertise.  I can say we’ve had forum posters as young as 9 or 10 trying.  We’ve had a 5 year old design and do the art for a game that turned out pretty cool.  Dad programmed it.  We have had a few very successful 13-14 year olds use Corona to great success.  And we’ve had some programmers pick this up in their 60’s and 70’s who  have never programmed a computer in their life take off and run with it.

  2. Composer is “Storyboard 2.0” for all practical purposes.  While Storyboard is still in the code base, at some point we will sunset it and let it live on as an Open Source drop in module (i.e. download storyboard.lua from our github repository and put in the folder with your main.lua) and use it for as long as we don’t break any underlying technology.  Composer is our forward looking scene manager.   Books and other learning resources take time to catch up to changing technology.  But anything published in the last 6 months or so should be Composer focused.

6.  It takes a lot of manpower to reach out to Colleges, Universities, Community Colleges and prep schools.  Some do.  We have educational discounts available and with the Starter tier being free, there really is no cost for Universities.  Its really more a matter of the faculty learning about us and what we can do.

Hope this answers your questions.

Rob