As we move forward, we want to do a better job of listening and understanding how you use our tools and what’s important to you. So let’s start with a basic question:
How do you use Corona Enterprise?
For instance, why are you using Enterprise instead of Corona SDK? Are you using Small Business or Unlimited? What features caused you to select the level you chose?
Specific use cases would be wonderful. Help us make our product the best that it can be!
Thanks,
Rob (on behalf of all of us!)
The fact that enterprise only works on Mac (which is a fraction of installed OSes) is a real limitation Rob.
This is a great opportunity for you to help us model Enterprise’s future direction. We know you want more input to how we plan our products. Here’s a good chance to let us know that you need XXXX ad vendor or you need this feature.
Let’s hear from you!
Rob
If engineering is interested in adding Windows support, some of the things available in the most recent Visual Studios might be worth a look, e.g. see here and here.
I’m not using Enterprise at the moment but if I had the opportunity to harness the power of native code for every platform (iOS, Android is already available but Windows and macOS is what I’m after), I’d really like to use it.
Also, it would be helpful to complete this short survey as well.
https://goo.gl/forms/Ls1UblioYrOmLQss1
This is your chance to chime in on what you like and don’t like about Enterprise…
Rob
I would say that there are 2 key reasons we need Enterprise over SDK:
We also occasionally quickly try out a library and then decide we don’t want to use it - being able to quickly integrate and test the library in our project natively is a huge advantage. Using the SDK doesn’t have quite the same flexibility here.
With Enterprise we have been able to set up a build script which compiles the 27 app project folders, and builds them one after the other. It also allows us to set the version number/provisioning profile/keystore/etc for all 27 projects from a script file, so we don’t have to manually enter them in each time (which would allow human error to enter the mix).
The SDK is great, but I think that as a project grows the ability to be that little bit more flexible is crucial, which is where Enterprise takes over.
At this point in Corona’s development it would be a good time to take stock of the competition, including 2D Lua engines that are or went open source like Gideros and LÖVE - I am sure there are some learnings there. Plus new engines like King’s Defold engine as it seems to be getting some good traction.
Hello, everyone!
My name is Stepan, and I’m the new CEO of Corona Labs. I am engaged in mobile applications business since 2011, first as an independent developer, then like a part of the global publishing company. I was one of the guys who started Appodeal with Pavel at 2014. Last two years I was responsible for business development and developer relations at Appodeal on Russian and CIS markets. And I think that we have achieved impressing results there, we manage more than $40M publishers revenue annually, and the company is profitable. But I wouldn’t like to talk only about the money, the main thing we achieved is an excellent community reputation. I don’t know another ad company which is more client-oriented as Appodeal. I hope this experience will help me to build strong relationships with you.
First of all, I would like to thank you guys for sharing your feedback in this thread. Some of you already sent me some emails with questions about our plans, people who read our press release on TechCrunch mistakenly thought that we don’t want to monetize Corona at all. But you need to understand neither Corona Labs nor Appodeal are charitable organizations. We just want to make the current business model more transparent and less cheapskate for the community. At the same time, we plan to continue developing the product, primarily regarding technology. And our first step will be to make most of Enterprise functionality free.
That’s why we need your “Enterprise” use cases here. Please help us to make our favorite framework better and fill this form.
Hang tight. I will keep you updated!
P.S. Rob, thank you for launching this thread.
Hi Steven, just wanted to request better desktop intergration with enterprise. There is no official documentation for desktop enterprise support. Before someone says just use lua libraries, shared libraries, or use our open source shared library bitmap map plugin, this is not native. I don’t hate shared libraries or lua libraries, but they don’t allow access to the computers native features, like camera, volume controls, and brightness of computer. I have had luck with Mac support but I have not seen a single sample project for windows. I mean if you look at the marketplace right now there are no native windows plugins except the steam plugin which is made by corona sdk. Also why cannot I not build Mac apps though Xcode.
Scott, this is a great feature request. You’re right we need to document it better and have more examples, but we are working on it. The latest “App” template has projects for Win32, macOS and plugins for them. Also we are working on more examples, though the memoryBitmap plugin should also help you understand how things are structured.
In addition to features, we are trying to learn more about why you use Enterprise. For example in your case, you’re a plugin developer and you need self-hosted plugins but you may not need scripted builds. That’s important information for us.
Rob
That’s not the “how” part but I didn’t know Enterprise had support for Win32 and macOS builds before Scott said it. I guess that’s what you should be adding more support and promotion.
“this a great feature request” I tried to feature request this but apparently it has already been “completed”
I did do the survey btw. As for use cases, yes I do use hosted plugins for testing plugins. I love the offline builds. I can whip out a couple while in class because the wifi is firewall to only allow access to certain sites and only thought a web browser. I am very happy with the current Xcode and Android Studio setup as a plugin developer just one more thing to throw out there. You guys need to update this blog post https://coronalabs.com/blog/2014/04/01/tutorial-corona-enterprise-quickstart-android/ or make a new one. I also use the Corona plugins download file to check for conflicts on android and to check project setup when sending plugin to marketplace
I used to be an enterprise user for a year during I used Corona to build prototypes that leverage on third party plugins which I believe will never be made available in the core SDK as it has very limited use. For now, I believe Enterprise can encourage more developers to write more plugins and sell at the marketplace which in a way can be a source of revenue for indie developers.
Hey,
our usage of Enterprise is mainly focused on limitations of Corona SDK:
we have custom IAP handling because CoronaSDK’s iap handling is too limited around restorations, and when working with subscriptions this has to work properly
custom network handling - because we required a very stable and working everywhere internet connection detection
advertisements - heyzap - it’s just too good not to use
communication with native interfaces - in some of our apps we use corona as a GUI, but Corona Cards is too limited for such usage
media handling - media handling in CoronaSDK is limited for some uses, for example, it’s not possible to record audio to mp3
working around lua limitations - lua is sometimes just slow, and it’s faster to perform some calculations natively
packing/unpacking - it’s kind of funny, that after so many years you still unpack zip files to the root documents directory…
we also call some Corona apis directly from native, because often it’s just easier to use lua then native. Especially around JSON. Lua and json is awesome!
Hi @stepan, that’s great news indeed! Could you share with us when do you plan to release Enterprise version free? A month/quarter/ year since now?
Cheers,
Olaf
We used to be on Enterprise for 2 years, but the fact that it was only working on Mac and has limited documentations, no examples made us rethink some of our development strategy.
If you can come up with a Windows version, better documentation, solid plugin example, then for us it would be a no brainer.
Nick
Can I ask a (silly) question? Does Enterprise need constant upgrading? For example, with AWS builds you guys can obviously change and fix on the fly, update plugins, dependencies, etc and all SDK users get that by default next time they build.
This is a two sided question.
Corona SDK has an installer that installs it for you. On macOS, daily builds are put in to /Applications/CoronaSDK-nnnn for you or for public builds in /Applications/CoronaSDK. Windows can have one version of Corona SDK installed at a time.
Corona Enterprise, since it’s only on Macs at the moment comes in a compressed .tar (tarball) file (.tgz) and you uncompress it with Finder and then copy CoronaEnterprise to /Applications. This part if you want to use a new daily build, you would have to download the latest tarbal, unzip it and copy that folder over the existing one in /Applications. The point is if you want today’s daily build you have to download it and install it.
Now using Corona Enterprise is a different question. You have a project folder that contains your Lua code and it’s part of an Xcode or Android Studio project. When you build, you build offline. Our build servers are not contacted beyond authorization needs. Plugins get copied to your project. We have a separate tarball for plugins. You have to download them and copy the ones you need to your project, so there is a level of work there to keep plugins up to date. For Marketplace plugins, if it’s one we create, they should be in the plugin tarball and updated with each daily build. Paid plugins like AdMob are not included in the tarball and you have to email support and ask them to send you a .zip file with the files you need in it. Any third-party plugin would need to be gotten from the third-party to be installed in your project.
Rob
So any idea when the Enterprise version will be freely available?
The main draw of Corona for me is I can just concentrate on coding and you guys handle the compiling. Enterprise doesn’t seem to fit that paradigm so I will be sticking to AWS builds as this is Corona’s core strength.
The big draw for me was the simplicity and the “write once and distribute to multiple platforms” and that is something you need to keep to continue bringing in new devs to the platform. The minute I need to worry about “Xcode or Android Studio” then the complexity ramps up and I get bogged down in the implementation and my focus is taken away from “code, compile and play”.
Corona will fall short of Unity, Game maker and other platforms as it is not an fully fledged IDE - yes features like edit and continue would be awesome! Where it majors is in not having the bloat that comes with those and most importantly a vibrant community and decent documentation.