Is Solar 2D still Alive ?

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

I am new to game dev. Chose Lua for base. Researched extensively.

Got to know about Love 2d, Solar 2d and Defold.

Liked Defold and Solar 2d,

Want to try Solar 2d first for a small html project.

My first question is Solar 2d alive ?

Does it now support offline build ? Or I would have to be online in order to export the file ?

Does it support for Poki ? I want to publish my game on POKI-[dot]-COM.

How does Plugin system work ? I mean when i click on any one i just get some code to paste. Does it mean corona simulator has all the plugins installed in it already or plugins are installed on remote server ?

#2

Yes.

If you’re using plugins, then fetching new versions of them would require an online connection. Similarly building for Android uses Gradle, which requires Internet connection. Otherwise the builds are done offline.

As far as I know, Poki runs HTML5 games, so they should work just fine. You need to implement these features though: HTML5 - Poki Developer Guide

The simulator fetches them from GitHub or other sources, depending on the plugin. As it fetches them, it will cache them on your device as well so that it doesn’t constantly fetch them.

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#3

Yes, but I don’t use the html builds, so I don’t know the current state of them.

Yeah… you may need a connection for the first build to pull in the plugins.

It will download the plugins… note: the some/most of the plugins don’t work in the simulator and will have to be tested on a device.

#4

Yes, of course.

#5

Just join our Discord Community, there are many active developers: Solar2D Developer Network

Try both engines for your first project. Only you can decide which engine to use. If i tell you that i liked Solar2D much better than Defold, you still wouldn’t understand why. That’s why you need to play with it. I’m pretty sure you will like Solar2D. Try to play with these demo projects: Solar2D Documentation — Developer Guides | Getting Started

Also try these step for step easy tutorials" Solar2D Documentation — Developer Guides | Getting Started

And ofcourse try this playground: https://playground.solar2d.com/

Here you can see games created with Solar2D: https://madewithsolar2d.com/

#6

I checked them, but could you tell me how easy it is work with Solar 2d ? I know that Coromon is made on Solar 2d.

It does not have an UI and It is my first time I am working with a framework.
I have many questions like

  1. How I would apply collision layer to my assets ?
  2. Does solar 2d support for Tiled Editor ? (lua files) ?
    thank you
  3. Are SDKs still updated ?
  4. Aren’t you guys on Reddit ? Like I searched for Solar 2d reddit but did not find anything.
#7

I am also inclined toward Solar 2D for workflow. But Defold has support for Nitendo Switch and Play Station 4 and 5 (soon) and a GUI.

Which I think many prefer.

But Engine itself runs on Java Simulator Something so heaviness and slowness can be feeled if you are on a semi-Medium machine.

#8

  1. You can define the physics shapes yourself, use outline (see docs) or tools like PhysicsEditor.

  2. Yes.

  3. Yes.

  4. Not that many active redditors in here. The community is mostly active in these forums and the previously linked Solar2D Discord server.

Solar2D does support Switch as well these days, but you need to be an approved Nintendo Switch developer to gain access to building for Switch.

#9

How much is fees for Nitendo Switch SDK ? :thinking::

#10

hey tried playground for Solar 2d and I just loved it. Coding for Solar 2d is very easy and exciting. Its structure somewhat like Java Script and it makes more sense while coding games.

Now will go through Documentation. Thanks :+1:

#11

Hey @XeduR where is the documentation about Nintendo Switch? … I’ve never read nothing about it.

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#12

This is hijacking the thread a bit.

I think all information related to building for Switch is currently in private repos and the Nintendo Switch NDA channel on Discord. From what I’ve been able to follow, it’s in late stage beta with a few kinks to be sorted out regarding makes builds under the new systems (after a recent update), but feature-wise it seems to be working well.

Information about the Switch builds should definitely be added in the official documentation, just to let people know it’s available and how to access it.

Here’s a few Solar2D devs and their games on Switch:

Coromon:

Glitch Games (bunch of games):

winterworks (I think most or all of these are Solar2D):

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#13

Thank you @XeduR