I recently bought a bunch of C++ books to start learning and contributing to Corona now that it is open source and I honestly don’t have a sense of how much work, time or expense would be required to have Corona build to Ninetendo Switch (or PS4 or Xbox for that matter). I also don’t know how you would manage a project like that but maybe some of you do?
Is this a project that some of us would want to start on the side and maybe even contribute financially. Since I don’t really have the skill set to do this I would be more interested in contributing financially, but who would we pay to do this, how much would it cost and how long would it take - any guesses?
I used to subcontract to a programmer in India who did great work and charged a very low fee. I also used to hire high-quality, low-fee, grad students to work on my industrial design projects which make me think there could be a team (or grad student) somewhere in the world who would want to take this on at a price we could afford.
I’m really just starting the conversation. I know many of us are already crowdsourcing Corona 2.0 and finances might be tight but, looking forward, Switch support would make Corona even more attractive and help build the community in the long run and, therefore, is a good challenge to consider.
Everyone working on it would have to be approved by Nintendo and under a very strict NDA and the work couldn’t be open source.
The eventual work would then only be accessible by developers that are themselves approved by Nintendo.
I don’t want to discourage Switch support as we’d be the first in line to buy a plugin ( and are approved ) but for the vast majority of devs, not just using Corona but any engines in general, console Dev would be out of the question.
The extra money and time involved, not even thinking about the stringent lot check requirements, are a huge barrier.
@GrahamRanson is right. There is a strict NDA (one reason we have been very hush-hush about it) and you have to purchase a development kit. And then you have to get approved to be a middleware developer which is harder than just getting your game approved. And it’s only available for Windows.
As for progress… we made some progress. But I can’t say much because of the NDA.
I’m not sure how an open source effort will work given the NDA. Very few open source engines have this support.
I’ve heard a lot of horror stories about developers trying to get a game published for Nintendo consoles. They’re historically awful to work with, which is a massive shame as their consoles and own-brand games are generally brilliant.
I’ve no experience of this myself, but you only have to look at how few games any Nintendo console ever ends up with to realise there must be some truth to the claims.
It’s actually quite different this time around with Switch, and that can indeed be seen from the number of games on the eShop (including some absolutely awful games getting through). You’re right about anything pre-Switch though.
Getting approved is also not that hard. It truly is difficult if you’re a newbie with no reputation, but even that can be circumvented as long as you’re fine with a publisher taking a significant cut. Doesn’t have to be a big publisher either — I personally know of some mediocre games getting approved through publishers I’ve never heard of before… and ever since. But that’s the thing here, getting a deal like that is a lot harder for devs using an engine that doesn’t support Switch out of the box, since obviously doing a Unity/GMS2 port with an unknown dev is a lot less risky than funding the whole engine’s port/porting the game to a different engine.
Imo, the most viable approach would be for some group of devs already interested in Switch ports to jointly fund the port and then make that money back by selling the plugin to others. And despite relatively low interest here and now, those others will definitely appear once they hear an announcement along the lines of “Switch port is done!”, since it’s really different from hearing the occasional talk of a potential port requiring crowdfunding. Not saying the number of people will be overwhelming, but it should cover the expenses of porting over time at the very least. Making the price lower than GMS2’s yearly $800 would also help to attract new users.
Another approach as mentioned by @GrahamRanson on Slack would be allowing those who port Corona to sell the plugin themselves, lowering the initial price of porting, but for that to happen and make sense the devs funding it have to be really certain of their games’ potential success on Switch. With probably more than just one or two games to port and desktop as the original target platform instead of mobile. That shrinks the group of potential investors quite a bit, so I wouldn’t bet on this and consider the former option more realistic.
Thankfully, Switch still remains a really lucrative platform, so I believe this port can and will happen.
That’s interesting. The only console we own now is the Wii and it rarely gets used, so I’m pretty behind the times and have to confess I’ve not even entered a game store since long before the Switch release, but the developer in me is still excited to hear they’re doing away with their old ways. It’s about time a Nintendo console had the chance to stand up and compete for a reasonable length of time!
Yeah, for sure. From what I hear, Switch is the most indie-friendly console at the moment. There were even Nintendo representatives at a local gamedev conference recently for the first time. Gave a talk, had a booth where they accepted pitches etc.
Also, never thought I’d see the day when a Nintendo console would be less strict in terms of censorship than a Sony console.
Not at all, unfortunately. Didn’t want to bother with anything Switch-related before the port was ready. I’m sure that random freelancers won’t work though, sadly, since getting approved as a middleware dev is indeed difficult. Guess I’ll ask around a bit, even if it doesn’t get anywhere it’d at least demonstrate some additional interest in a Corona port for external companies.
We are approved as a Middleware developer and I believe once you get approved as a Switch Developer you can register to use Corona, but since we had to backburner the project we can’t do anything with any registrations. I don’t know if Nintendo will change our status since our engine is going open source. Clearly we would have to keep any Switch features closed and restricted to approved developers. And I have no idea how that’s going to work.
“Indie Friendly” is a pretty interesting concept and very relative. Yes, they are more indie friendly than some but they still have strict quality controls and restrictions on the kinds of games they accept. It’s no where near as indie friendly as Apple and Google Play. Sony even claims to be Indie friendly.
I know Vlad wants to work on Switch support (before we learned about our upcoming changes), but given that all the things we need to do to get Corona available for offline builds, plugin support with no official marketplace, Apple’s OpenGL deprecation and Android X have to come first and that’s going to take months to complete.
My guess is that the current number of approved devs is quite low, but the percentage of interested devs is higher.
Without support on the way I doubt many went through the process of getting approved, however if support was there a lot more would ( and might even move over from other 2D engines just for it ).
Yeah, at least that’s the way it is for me. We have a lot of concepts and games we want to make, some don’t fit Switch at all, no real reason to prioritize projects requiring a port that hasn’t been completed yet. The moment it was ready though (or the moment I was certain it’s on the way and going to be completed within… a year, let’s say) it’d become my number one target.