I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, but...

General (non-technical) Off-Topic
#21

The bottom line is that Corona will drop your coding costs and code production time dramatically, but art is still art, so if you decide to make an asset-intensive game, then that part will still cost money or time (unless you have art talent yourself – I personally don’t!)

Like many here have said, popular iPhone games have a wide range of polish, with Doodle Jump being an example of a million-seller with an “unpolished” style. At the other end is something like Plants vs. Zombies, which reportedly had a $1 million budget, much of which was used in creating art assets.

Since we’re still a new product to most of our users, I think it’s natural that everyone’s first app is done in a “testing the waters” mode, to get a feel for Corona before committing substantial art budgets to it.

But what’s happening now, and I mean JUST NOW, like over the past month or so, is that we’re starting to see the “next wave” of Corona projects, where people are doing increasing amounts of graphics work. Matthew’s “Alien Horde” is a good example: in one sense it’s a simple game, but it has a very high level of graphical polish and detail, including in normally mundane things like the UI and animated menus.

Another great-looking Corona game – I think this looks as good as the Carcassone example that started this thread, and it’s a similar visual style – is Warlords Armageddon for iPad:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/warlords-armageddon/id379772665?mt=8

Seriously, check that one out; I’ve been sticking it on demo slides and showing it in Corona presentations constantly since it came out a couple of weeks ago!

(It’s also part of why we’re rushing out Game Edition updates as fast as possible – we honestly didn’t think people would ship titles under “Alpha”, but they are shipping them now, so we need to fix bugs and catch up to that reality.) [import]uid: 3007 topic_id: 1617 reply_id: 4751[/import]

#22

TokyoDan

I upgraded my analogue joystick code with better graphics to show what a couple of hours work can produce. Its not polished but if the render was at a better resolution ( I rendered out at the size of the sprite rather than going large and downsampling) the spite would look a lot smoother round the edges.

http://www.alienhorde.com/files/joystick_1_0.zip

Given the time to create the assets I could make a really good looking game by going down this route. The sprite even retains the transparency of the cockpit glass so given an idea you could render pretty much any object or effect and composite directly within Corona. [import]uid: 5354 topic_id: 1617 reply_id: 4753[/import]

#23

Matthew,

Thanks for the joystick sample. I’ll take a look at it later.

But most of all… thank you for making me eat my words.

I just bought Alien Horde for my iPhone and I’m impressed. It’s beautiful! It’s a game that stands with the best of what I’ve seen, no matter who developed it or what was used to develop it. It proves that Corona is a world class tool for development. It also shows that world class developers such as you are using Corona. Alien Horde is indeed an app that will make any top developer say “Wow! That was developed with Corona?!”.

Thing is. I knew it could be done all along. I was just waiting for someone to show me.

Now I got to take a look at Warlords Armageddon for the iPad. It looks like another world class app by a world class developer using a world class development tool.

I’m very happy!
[import]uid: 295 topic_id: 1617 reply_id: 4756[/import]

#24

And your website for Alien Horde matches your game is presentation and professionalism. [import]uid: 295 topic_id: 1617 reply_id: 4757[/import]

#25

Oh My God!

Now I really have to work my butt off to try and make my game the same caliber as Alien Horde and Warlords Armageddon.
Hmmm. I wonder if I can do it.
Those two games sure give me something to shoot for. [import]uid: 295 topic_id: 1617 reply_id: 4760[/import]

#26

Hi Tokyodan

Ive updated the demo now with some really nice graphics, check it out. Didnt take long at all.

http://www.alienhorde.com/files/joystick_1_0.zip [import]uid: 5354 topic_id: 1617 reply_id: 4799[/import]

#27

@tokyodan, you’re also going to have to check out Doodle Dash. See thread:
http://developer.anscamobile.com/forum/2010/08/12/doodle-dash-iphoneitouch-promo-codes-available
It’s pretty and awesome too. [import]uid: 54 topic_id: 1617 reply_id: 4864[/import]

#28

@Eric: I was just going to post a link to my game, but you beat me to it! Thanks…

I wasn’t posting it to boast, but based solely on what others have told me I can only conclude that it is not only fun but has very high quality graphics in most people’s eyes. And these are people who I don’t know, who are online, who have no reason to just be “nice”. Trust me, when my GameSalad version came out, people were brutally honest with the final outcome of my product… and that brutal honesty lead me to Corona, so I’m very thankful for that.

So what more can you ask for in a game than for it to be fun, competitive, and has decent graphics? Since Corona is sufficient for creating a game like that and has the performance to back it up (unlike software such as GameSalad IMHO), then it’s not Corona that’s the problem (if there even is a problem)… It’s the creativity within those who are currently USING Corona.

And from what I’ve gathered in my short time in this community, there’s not THAT many people using Corona yet (comparatively), but I know it’s growing as we speak… and for good reason too.

Tokyodan: You CAN make great games with Corona, and others have posted great examples as well… Corona hasn’t had time to age, and hasn’t been around quite as long as other frameworks (like Cocos2d and such)… just wait. Corona, and Game Edition which you seem to be talking more about is still in Beta and Alpha.

And I’m not stopping at Doodle Dash! … my wife and I (who make up Beebe Games) have a lot of titles in the works. And for the record, Doodle Dash! only took us 2 weeks to create… so Corona definitely allows for rapid developement.

Thanks again Eric for the nice plug :slight_smile: [import]uid: 7849 topic_id: 1617 reply_id: 4886[/import]

#29

Hello jonbeebe. I’m going to buy your game to try it out. Thanks.

“Version 1.1 moved from using GameSalad to the Corona SDK, which is IMHO 100x better.”

Also I’d like to hear more details about your above statement in this thread:(It’d make a great blog post.)

http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?p=1247313 [import]uid: 295 topic_id: 1617 reply_id: 4894[/import]

#30

Hi tokyodan,

I’d be happy to elaborate on that statement.

Before I get started though, I’ll note that GameSalad is great for it’s audience. It’s geared towards people who don’t want to touch a line of code and still be able to produce a game–albeit a simple one. It has allowed many people to get an app into the appstore, who might’ve not been able to do so.

On the other hand, if you’re serious about developing apps and games but don’t want to get into Objective-C/Xcode, I don’t think GameSalad is the right choice. I produced two games with GameSalad before discovering Corona (one being Doodle Dash! 1.0, which received many complaints vs. Doodle Dash! 1.1 which was just released, built with Corona that hasn’t had a single complaint yet).

Here are problems present in GameSalad that are NOT present in Corona:

  • The “no code whatsoever” issue. While you might think this would make things easier, in many cases it made things harder. Sometimes you want to just copy/paste a block of text, or use a function you created… that kind of flexibility is not available with GameSalad and a lot of it is the way it works (just dragging behaviors and things around).

  • Development performance. During the course of developing a game, you’ll have to shut down the GS program and re-open it every 10 minutes or so due to memory leak problems in the software. It is still in beta so I can’t really complain, but it does slow down development. With Corona, I use Xcode with Lua syntax highlighting so my development environment is VERY stable.

  • Game performance. Games made with GameSalad are slow. Even die-hard GS fans know that’s the price for having such an easy-to-use development tool. That was one of two complaints I was having with Doodle Dash! 1.0… The first is performance, it would get choppy a lot of the time, and the accelerometer tilt controls were suffering as a result (plus not enough flexibility over accelerometer in GameSalad cause Doodle Dash 1.0 to suffer as well).

  • “Made with GameSalad” splash screen. Sure, you can have it removed for $2000 (per year!!!), but why when you can get Corona, have your OWN splash screen (or no splash screen), have amazing featurues (such as facebook/twitter/openfeint) and pay just a fraction of that price.

  • No social features or OpenFeint in GameSalad. Maybe when it goes final it will feature this, but I heard talk when I was still using GS that they might run their own high score server. I personally don’t PLAY games where I can’t compete with my friends and at bare minimum post my score to FaceBook… so it really got on my nerves that the game I made couldn’t do that either… It REALLY got on my nerves because it made Doodle Dash almost not “replayable” at all… Casual games are a social thing nowadays, for the most part anyway. I don’t think Doodle Jump would have made it anywhere if you couldn’t submit your scores to facebook and see where you rank among your friends (or the world).

  • Pay $2000 to get a simple http web link. In Doodle Dash! 1.1 released with Corona, I was able to make a non-http link that takes players directly to the AppStore ‘Write a Review’ page for my app–again, not possible with GS, yet you have to pay $2000 just to take your players to a static webpage.

  • Probably plenty of other things I can’t think of right off the top of my head right now that Corona completely blows GS out of the water with.

With all that being said, there have been some promising title’s released with GameSalad, and they are in beta (as is Corona) but they are plagued by all of the above things I mentioned.

For example, there is a very nice looking game made with GameSalad pro (cost the person $2000) called Max Vector… It’s an 8-bit style arcade game. I read in the forum thread that announced it that a player couldn’t download it because they had an iPod Touch 2nd generation and it requires something better.

My wife has an iPod Touch 2nd generation and it plays my Corona-made Doodle Dash! 1.1 VERY smoothly despite it’s high speed, music, lots of graphics being loaded and moving, etc. My question is, why should an 8-bit style game require top-notch hardware to play? That goes along with the GameSalad performance issues I was describing.

Also, arcade games are social in nature because of their high score tables… GameSalad’s not going to allow MaxVector creator to have that even after he paid $2000… at least not yet, but once again, Corona gives you Facebook/Twitter/OpenFeint for just a fraction of that price, and I’m sure STILL a fraction even when Game Edition goes final.

Once again, I’m not “putting down” GameSalad because like I said, for those who will never learn programming or want to, it’s a great little tool (even though ironically those who produce a decent title with GameSalad DO have programming experience). However, you asked why I thought Corona is 100x bettter (maybe more?) so there you have it! lol
Thanks for your interest Tokyodan and for deciding to buy my game, please take a moment to leave a rating/review if you have time.

I hope I answered your questions! Take care [import]uid: 7849 topic_id: 1617 reply_id: 4895[/import]

#31

Thanks for the great reply. [import]uid: 295 topic_id: 1617 reply_id: 4899[/import]

#32

jonbeebe,

how long did it take you to convert Doodle Dash from GS to Corona? I’ve got a few GS apps out in the App Store that have done pretty well, but the biggest complaint is there is no Leaderboard support. I’m dying to get OpenFeint or at least a twitter post ability so people can share their scores. I think it will really improve the games.

I’ve been working with GS for awhile now, and for rapid game development, it is very very easy, but over the past few weeks I’ve discovered I’ve started to outgrow their features. [import]uid: 8300 topic_id: 1617 reply_id: 5061[/import]

#33

@jonmulcahy: I had no knowledge in Lua at the time, so I decided to “convert” Doodle Dash! as a test run (while still in the Corona trial period) to see how well everything worked out and it only took me about 8 days to get Doodle Dash! fully programmed with Corona while learning/getting used to Lua at the same time. Granted, I worked very long hours but 8 days was the actual timeframe.

**Ansca Mobile interviewed me and in the interview, I go into great detail about my experiences with GS, why their software didn’t add up for me, and how the transition to Corona went. The interview is scheduled to go live on their blog next tuesday around 10am PST.

I too longed for social features and leaderboards which is one of the many reasons that caused me to search for GS alternatives in the first place. I added OpenFeint and Facebook posting to Doodle Dash! and I have to say, it was extremely simple (especially OpenFeint), Facebook took a little looking into their API’s to get the status messages looking exactly the way I wanted them to, but overall it was a lot simpler than I thought it would be!

Hope that helps, feel free to ask anymore questions…

Jonathan Beebe [import]uid: 7849 topic_id: 1617 reply_id: 5063[/import]

#34

that’s awesome, I’m looking at converting one of my older games to Corona so I can use OpenFeint. That has been the biggest request in all my games. [import]uid: 8300 topic_id: 1617 reply_id: 5120[/import]

#35

@jonmulcahy: That’s actually exactly what got me ‘searching’ for more options. I had finally decided I was going to go the Xcode/Objective-C route because of a lack of other options (I wasn’t going to pay the amount it cost for other engines such as Torque 2d for iPhone, and I’m not interested in 3D apps so Unity was out of the picture). But then, in one of my last days over at the GameSalad forums, I read a post made by someone who was fed up with the performance issues/memory leaks in GameSalad and they said they were looking at ‘Corona SDK’…

Long story short:

…now I’m a Corona “convert” lol [import]uid: 7849 topic_id: 1617 reply_id: 5143[/import]