From The Blog: Corona Labs annual update

Getting Started Announcements
#321

So many good and interesting points - it’s only a matter of time before people start calling Corona the killer game engine. Sorry for the point, but we’re stuck with the association to the virus no matter what. Therefore, I would recommend changing it from “Corona” to “Corona Game Engine” or “Corona 2D Game Engine” or “Corona Open Source 2D Game Engine”. If you do this, the search engines will learn the difference between the game engine and virus over time. The sooner you make sure the word “Game” follows every instance where we use it, the sooner the search engines will learn the difference.

As for being a money thing - I wouldn’t spend a dime on it. Just clarify the rebranding with Game when referring to it in the future, as its not realistic it will ever become a favorite biz app engine.

So for clarification, don’t change the name other than adding an adjective to describe it as a 2D game engine. And certainly, keep any money you have for those of you working to kee it relevant.

May I suggest an email marketing campaign to college professors and students? I have some expertise in that area and would be happy to lend and spend to promote this new direction once you guys have it ready for launch. Of course, we’ll help any other way we can!

#322

One more thing - I’ve made over 50 video games and a few AAA. Nothing has been as easy as Corona to develop games that require dynamic placement and control of objects via code. Nothing comes close, actually.

I don’t know why the Composer UI was dropped by CoronaLabs, but I believe the smartest thing for someone to do would be to create a compiler for Adobe XD, since Adobe seems dead set on keeping it as a prototyping vehicle. There is already huge pent-up demand and frustration from Adobe XD users that it lacks a publishing element. Some others have tried but they stink. I suggest this because Adobe XD has been built with a great UI. Maybe not so much for games, but it’s an idea worth kicking around - it would undoubtably extend the life of Corona Game engine. Or then again, maybe just Corona 2.5D Engine.

#323

If Corona was as popular as Unity, re-branding would not only be unnecessary (regardless of the COVID-19 hysteria) but would also be a bad idea. For anyone who is against re-branding, let me ask this: If Corona SDK is still well known and relevant out in the world, why is Corona Labs shutting down? The simple answer is most people using Corona don’t have serious enough businesses that would compel them to pay $99 a year (let alone a month) to not have the splash screen in their apps. Vlad, Rob and all the people who were actively involved in Corona’s development in the past have done a stellar job so far forging Corona into a formidable product, but that message has obviously not been effectively relayed to the world over time. If marketing was aggressive and efficient (which would need a serious budget), we would have a bigger community that would translate to more paying developers which would further development and marketing efforts and so on (like the chicken-egg problem). It’s the same challenge we game developers face (user acquisition and retention). The reality of the situation is that our community dwindled to a size that could no longer sustain Corona Labs as a whole. Why are we still clinging on to the name Corona, especially when that branding is not being beneficial to us today? If the effort required to re-brand (especially in the documentation area) is daunting, that’s something we as a community can get together and work on.

A minor change like ‘Corona Game Engine’ can still be ambiguous to the uninitiated (is it a pandemic simulator?). If re-branding is given the green signal, I firmly believe we need to pick a unique name like Defold or Godot that cannot be confused with any other product or brand out there. The likes of @SGS can then use their experience to tweak the SEO. We could also reach out to channels like Ask Gamedev, Gamefromscratch etc. to give the SDK a fair evaluation and present it to their viewers. We don’t really have much to lose other than that it will take a bit of effort to get there.

#324

Really well said Murthy.

#325

We’ve followed this thread all the way through and it’s made for very interesting reading.

We’ve worked with several different platforms / languages over the last 10 years, but without a shadow of a doubt, for simple 2d multi-platform game development, Corona SDK is the best we’ve found (in our opinion). By a mile.

We don’t use it for everything we do, but we’ve used it a fair amount and quite simply, for certain projects, it’s absolutely perfect.

I struggle to understand why it isn’t used by more people. What’s not to like - seriously? It ticks every box for us. What is “better” for straightforward 2d multi-platform game development? If you asked me what I wanted from the product we use to create our apps, the features I gave you would be pretty much bang on what Corona offers, with a few tweaks.

As an aside - if you search for “multi platform 2d game engine” or “cross platform 2d game engine” then Corona comes up second. Remove the “2d” and it still hits the first page. Those are exactly the sorts of phrases we would use to search for what we use Corona for - multi platform 2d game development…

A massive thank you from all of us here to Rob and Vlad (and any others involved behind the scenes) for all your hard work over the years. Whatever happens with Corona (and I really hope you are able to make it successful and continue to stay involved), you created something that has enabled a lot of people to make their living from the games and apps they created in Corona and you developed a product that, in our eyes anyway, is the absolute best we’ve worked with. Well done and thank you.

#326

SAME HERE!!! Exactly what I wanted to write! :slight_smile:

And we are still believing and betting on Corona in the future! And of course will support it!

Dani (and Chris)

#327

I started using Corona in late 2010, and for at least the next couple years this place was booming and Corona was being promoted at conferences, etc. I don’t have inside information on what the numbers look like at that point, but it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that after Carlos died the numbers started trending down. If not before that.

Corona has been promoted and it didn’t go anywhere – – I have no clue why because it is so awesome. But anyone who thinks a name change will turn that around now, it’s probably very wrong.

The big difference between then and now is that that Corona is open source, but that’s a two-edged sword.

Why aren’t we the Godot of 2D game development? I have no clue. But it’s not like effort wasn’t put into it.

#328

I have worked with numerous people/companies across various industries and most clients rely on us developers/consultants to suggest the SDK or technology to build the product with the hope they would be given a suggestion based on low cost, quick time to market plus ease of maintenance. Corona is ideal for MVPs due to its quick turnaround times

Not all companies have a technical founder or tech person, just delivery folks and idea guys. Corona ticks all the key boxes and has always proven its worth. Everyone who I have introduced it to are very happy with the results and were amazed at cost savings compared to getting the same thing done on cocos2dx or unity2d (they saved enough and made enough that they can easily remake in a new sdk if the time comes). Main focus being 2D games and apps, including business ones. It is definitely used by alot of people and also educational institution as its fairly easy to pick up. It just needs support from the community esp those studios which are doing well using it. Most of my clients are/were on self hosted / priority support as I asked them to

Developers tend to jump to the most popular SDK in hopes of finding work which is perfectly fine but what Corona offers for 2d game dev, I have not seen in any other SDK and I tried a fair few, including unity2d over the past 2 years, once rumours started flying. 

We just need to continue supporting it as a community, promote it as best as can, and as someone suggested bounties, paid support plus revenue share based plugins all will help out in addition to core projects people do as freelancers or as studios. It offers everything you can possibly need for 2d games and the extensibility is super easy to 3rd party libs, a fairly complete package.

#329

@J. A. Whye

Neither am I saying that re-branding will suddenly change Corona’s fortunes, nor that effort wasn’t put into promotion in the past.

Take a look at this intro page for Unity 2D. First, they sprinkle the whole ‘50% of all mobile games are made with it’ dust on you. Then they give you a ready-made 2D platformer kit to tinker with. Followed by the claim that you can create a 2D RPG in less than an hour! Then they introduce you to 2D gameplay mechanics and tools. And finally, they hook you up with streamlined tutorials from developer channels like Thomas Brush and Brackeys (just in case you’re feeling overwhelmed). At this point, you (a person considering 2D game development) will at least be willing to give Unity 2D a try. THAT is the tipping point; Just like we game developers jump through hoops to get that dreaded install. The Unity 2D page never talks about features or performance, just the ease of creating 2D games (and even splashes some eye-catching artwork in there). It doesn’t just try to target serious game developers, but also everyone even remotely considering learning 2D game development. Now compare that to the Corona Labs landing page. Like Megamind says, it’s about presentation. :slight_smile:

My viewpoint is that since Corona is getting a second wind, the opportunity is there for re-branding and we must grab it. After that, since we don’t have a marketing budget like the Unity team does, we must at least try to get some Youtube influencers to promote our SDK since it’s not only great but also completely free now. Of course, none of this will matter if we as a community cannot come up with a decent crowdfund every month to keep the SDK development ongoing.

#330

Since years ago, when I google cocona with some error text, some other things come up, because corona is such a common word. Now with the virus-name… Better rebrand to a new name not associated with common items.

For promotion, I would suggest those with websites, put up some sort of tutorial or guide about Corona (after renaming?). This will rank Corona higher in searches.

#331

You can do your search like this:   site:coronalabs.com your search terms.

This will filter out all of the other Corona non-sense, but you will also loose Stack Overflow posts, but you will get all of our forums and blog posts.

Rob

#332

I just wanted to provide a quick update on rebranding. While our focus right now is making sure that on May 1, 2020, you can build your apps. We have a lot of work left to do. But a rebrand is important and we are going to go ahead with one.

This thread is not appropriate for continuing this discussion. 

Please see: https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/77419-rebranding-corona/

to continue discussion.

Rob

#333

Writes anything then corona sdk
 

#334

@vlads, please accept my apology for causing any offense. I really, very much, appreciate you, Rob and the entire Corona SDK community.

  1. I didn’t understand your comment about Apple’s Metal. Can you clarify?
  2. Your response indicated that I should be able to continue using Corona without having to go Native. And this will be made possible because you are creating an offline version of the simulator?

I know you are extra busy, so please take your time in responding.

#335

Hi Troy,

This really is all explained very clearly on the blog and in this thread, but…

  1. Porting to Metal is not necessarily a big hurdle - and not the dead end people make it out to be

  2. Corona will change into a program that run locally to build as well as simulate. At the moment simulate is local, but build is on the Corona servers. Since these servers will stop you will be able to build on your own computer. This is not ‘native’, it’s just building local instead of building in the cloud.

#336

@troylondon

you should take some time and read all the posts of this thread and the truth will reveal itself :P.

  1. Depending on Apple’s decisions Corona should go Metal sooner or later. Vlad can and probably will do it in time.

  2. Offline builds are coming soon.

Long story short:

There are many people with business depending on Corona, many hobbyists who like Corona and many people who make their apps with Corona and don’t want to change platform. All of them will support financially Vlad and Rob to keep working.

It will be like Phase 1 of MCU. In Phase 2 more developers will come, new users and Switch support :P.

This scenario sounds too good to be true but who knows?? :slight_smile:

Edit:

thomas6 beat me to it. What he says too :).

#337

@StarCrunch

Glad to see you back on the topic.

Sadly I’m very short on time atm - but I still like to offer some infos/ideas/urls just in case it helps in any way.

You very probably know about https://github.com/bkaradzic/bgfx

But have you evaluated it as a basis instead of Vulkan/Molten? Advantage would be that someone else already did all the painful thinking about unifying lowlevel rendering frameworks.

What about simple SDL? It’s used as core platform and rendering abstraction, including consoles (hint Switch etc.).

Next one would be Sokol https://floooh.github.io/archive/ which may not be stable enough as a basis but given Andre seems to be a very pragmatic dev there’s a decent chance to get some valuable info from his last few blog postings.

And in case it’s still going to be Vulkan in the end, here’s a posting that might be of some value too https://zeux.io/2020/02/27/writing-an-efficient-vulkan-renderer/

#338

Currently everything is on OpenGL ES. Switch seems to be fine with it. It just Apple throwing feats.

#339

On a side note Micheal mentioned something a few weeks ago (3 weeks) that I didn’t know existed but reminded me of something that I did know (and very similar to what Micheal mentioned). Google Angle. I am familiar with Angle and I spent a few hours over that weekend seeing if I can make it work with Corona for iOS Metal specifically. I got very close to having it working (most of the time was spent compiling the beast). I had some reference errors that I ended up fixing with a terrible hack that would need to be cleaned up. I would still prefer a native implementation of Metal or Vulcan, but Angle is possible. 

https://github.com/google/angle

#340

@Rob, count me in for a monthly Patreon pledge. And I’m so glad to hear Vlad is still moving forward. Will you be continuing on with Vlad as well?

Might I recommend you change the message at the top of this thread? Perhaps start it with…

“The future of Corona SDK is changing. CoronaLabs is going away as a company, but not until we finish the open-source tools. Further, the developer and I will be supported by developers like you through a subscription service (i.e. Patreon) - details we are still working out. We have big plans for the future of Corona SDK, but now the burden for our support will make us dependants upon those who rely upon Corona SDK and seek to have it continually grow. For information about supporting us, email me at ____”.

This, IMHO, would be received better than the current post and reduce the potential damage caused to the community by developers seeking to migrate away from Corona SDK.

Also, I’d recommend sending out an email in this more positive light to all your Corona SDK developers. You may be surprised by the financial support offers you receive.

Just my two cents.