From The Blog: Corona Roadmap 2017

One of our most frequently asked questions is about our feature roadmap. Where is Corona headed? What’s next on the horizon? While product roadmaps can be unpredictable, and items may be added/removed/postponed, the following roadmap should give you a general sense of what our plans are, with the understanding that they are subject to change without notice.

This roadmap covers the remainder of 2017 and early 2018 and includes the features we are currently planning. These are estimated start dates. In most cases, we hope to start and complete the items during their listed quarter, but some items are large projects and will span multiple quarters. Also there is no implied order for each quarter — some items toward the end of each quarter list may be finished before items near the beginning are even started.

Q2 2017

  • Revenue-share based AdMob plugin, to complement the paid AdMob plugin.
  • Paid Facebook Audience Network (FAN) plugin without revenue share, to complement the free FAN plugin.
  • Paid AppLovin plugin without revenue share, to complement the free AppLovin plugin.
  • Make Corona Enterprise free by merging it with Corona SDK into one product (Corona).
  • Make the Welcome Window more useful with better access to the Marketplace, documentation, and more.
  • Update our websites.
  • New animation plugin for more customizable and controllable tween/timeline animations.
  • Modernize Corona Simulator for Windows. This may include:
    • Build progress bar.
    • Cancel a build in progress.
    • Add post-build options (copy to device, show folder, etc.).
    • Capture adb logcat information to console log.
    • Simplified keystore creation.

Q3 2017

  • Add support for CoronaBuilder to download plugins.
  • Maps plugin.
  • Calendar plugin.
  • Contacts plugin.
  • Begin working on Marketplace 2.0.
  • Simplify (one-click) integration of Appodeal (maybe other ad networks too).
  • Cache plugins for Simulator builds.
  • Improve system events such as adding a low battery warning.
  • Plugin GUI in the Simulator.
  • Trial use of plugins.
  • Open access to CoronaBuilder for all users.
  • Start making more Simulator functionality “skin dependent” so that different code paths for different platforms can be tested more easily.
  • Resume HTML5 development.
  • Tile engine.

Q4 2017

  • Native ads for AdMob.
  • Research backgrounding of music.
  • Revisit web views.
  • Android TV 4K support.
  • Make translation (internationalization/i18n) library.
  • Enhance expansion file support.
  • Migrate internal Android build scripts to use Gradle/Android Studio.
  • Add AAR support to plugins.
  • Graphics improvements such as addressing seams between tiled objects, vertex coloring in meshes, etc.
  • Better integration of Corona and Android Studio.
  • Individual Firebase components as plugins.
  • Text rendering plugin.

Q1 2018

  • Complete support of builds for HTML5.
  • Fix hybrid draw issue with physics.
  • Begin open-sourcing parts of Corona.
  • Improve tvOS support (add missing features like IAP and Game Center support).
  • Support media.playVideo() with RemoteSource on tvOS.
  • Improve audio features.
  • Restructure Corona on iOS to be a dynamically-linked framework.
  • Optimize touch events.
  • Improve support for utility apps (video, widgets, text support, etc.).
  • Research Torch plugin.
  • Add ability to customize autocomplete on native keyboards.
  • Amazon IAP improvements.

Please reach out to us with any questions or comments on this list. Once again, this is a projected roadmap and it’s subject to change.

If one of your most desired features is not on the list, don’t panic — please continue to submit or gather votes at our feature request site. We will continue to evaluate features requested by Corona developers and we may alter the roadmap as we get more feedback.

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Thanks for sharing the roadmap. I am looking forward to the free version of Corona enterprise. With that, I suppose everyone can now submit plugins to the marketplace?

On the other hand, I am very disappointed to see that native ads for Admob will only come in Q4 this year. I thought we are very near to the release of this feature as mentioned by someone in the management team previously? 

“Revenue-share based AdMob plugin” -> Wow, sounds great!

“Tile engine” -> Wow wow wow

Thank you for sharing the roadmap and keep up the good work.

Btw

https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/69076-roadmap-june-1st-scott-harrison-edition/#entry358738

Wow… really exited to see these bullets. 

  • Make Corona Enterprise free by merging it with Corona SDK into one product (Corona).

  • Open access to CoronaBuilder for all users.

  • Begin open-sourcing parts of Corona.

I hope this move will attract a lot of new pro users!

Wow, it is really nice to see such list, and to know what we can expect for the whole year! Here’s some feedback / questions from my side.

 

"Make Corona Enterprise free by merging it with Corona SDK into one product (Corona)."

Love it! It would give me the freedom of experimenting with it, which could result in sharing plugins whenever I make one for myself.
 

"New animation plugin for more customizable and controllable tween/timeline animations."

Very curious about this one! 

"P** lugin GUI in the Simulator."**
It’s not very clear to me what this is exactly, what will it do? and what will it offer to developers?

"Tile engine."

Also not very clear yet, will it be like a core engine that can be used by existing plugins (like Dusk/MTE)? Or a replacement for those plugins? 

"Graphics improvements such as addressing seams between tiled objects, vertex coloring in meshes, etc"

Seams between tiled objects like the ones which can occur when using any non extruded imageSheet?

"Text rendering plugin"

What would this do exactly? Improve the current rendering of display.newText? or will it offer a new solution of handling text?

"Make Corona Enterprise free by merging it with Corona SDK into one product (Corona)."

This is gigantic for me. It means a few things. 

  1. I can stop looking at other options for my map app. As soon it is available, I will start working on creating a map API. 

  2. I can bring Apptentive back to my apps (by creating a plugin).

  3. And it probably means that I will pay for the Applovin plugin instead of getting Enterpise or pay for the V-play engine.

Let me try and answer some of these:

"New animation plugin for more customizable and controllable tween/timeline animations."

This was originally going to be Transitions 3.0. but we decided to pull this into it’s own library.  Its like transitions with timelines. 

 

"P** lugin GUI in the Simulator."**
I believe the goal here is a way to simplify how much work you have to do in build.settings when adding plugins. You would bring up a screen and check the plugins you want and it would write that section of build.settings for you.

 

"Tile engine."

It will do a lot of what MTE and Dusk does, just officially supported. There are multiple ways to load in Tiled files and process them. So this isn’t meant to be a replacement for MTE or Dusk, but an alternative. 

 

"Graphics improvements such as addressing seams between tiled objects, vertex coloring in meshes, etc"

Seams between tiled objects like the ones which can occur when using any non extruded imageSheet?

 

I’m not 100% sure on this one, but that sounds right. This could also be to address a known issue when using TexturePacker to pack tiles with transparency that creates some size issues.

 

"Text rendering plugin"

There are multiple feature requests to improve text rendering which includes HTML like inline bolding/italics/color changes to allowing stroking of glyphs. There are a lot of possibilities for this one.

 

Rob

I have to say that I am pretty pleased with this road map!!!

I plan, after release, to try to deploy to Google TV, AndroidTV, and TVos.  Is that really all pushed back until Q42017-Q12018? Or can I deploy and sell now on those platforms?

  • Android TV 4K support.

Does this one mean that is completely off the table until that is done? Or is there a lesser route?

I noticed tvOS doesn’t support GameCenter and IAP (Which is fine for me, I am not IAP related atm) So I am just wondering how I should plan the rest of my year.

Thanks! 

Its great to see a roadmap at last and I love the sound of some of the features you plan to add.  I was really worried about the future of Corona after the last buyout and the long radio silence but this looks positive and hopefully you can rescue the product :slight_smile:

You can deploy to Android TV and tvOS today in 1080p. I believe there are community plugins that help with GameCenter on tvOS.

I could be wrong but most Corona developers are probably still targeting mobile devices where 1080p (1920x1080) is the high end of their graphics support. Getting to 3840 × 2160 will take time.

Rob

I made a plugin for gamecenter and iap for tvOS, iOS, and macOS. Both are now free. Please see update for more details

https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/69076-roadmap-june-1st-scott-harrison-edition/#entry358771

Hi, any news about “Revenue-share based AdMob plugin”???

Thank you in advance.

Best regards,

Erich Grüttner D.

Our engineers are still working on it.

Rob

Thank you Rob!

I’ll keep waiting, no problem…  :wink:

Best regards,

Erich Grüttner D.

  • Complete support of builds for HTML5.

Will we be able to make facebook games with html5 support?

It’s too early to answer that question, but Facebook is a large audience and it makes sense to build games there and HTML5 is the technology. I just don’t know what work is needed to bridge Facebook to HTML5. We will learn more as we resume work on it.

Rob

The capability to build to HTML 5 is VERY VERY EXCITING. Just wanted to say thanks for re-starting work on this!

Thanks Corona Team!

Steve

Hi. Looking to update an app built with the previously free admob plugin. I believe the revenue sharing model (scheduled for Q2) would be the best option for me by far but it seems to be delayed. Could you offer any hints as to when it may be released? It would help me make a decision about wether I should wait or pay for the existing plugin.

Thanks, Carl

Let me see what I can find out.

Rob