One app universal across all platforms/stores..

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

Hi all!

I am researching programming languages for mobile game development. Corona is the one that stands out because I am somewhat familiar with Lua.

I want to develop apps for Android, iOS, Amazon, and Nook… however, I’m curious if its possible in Corona to make a single game and it be universal to all 4 stores and all devices from iphone to ipad to the various android phones and tablets? Or will I have to remake the game 4 times to be compatible with the 4 different stores?

Any insight would be great!

#2

Hi @crumble619,

Welcome to the Corona community. The “short answer” to your question is “yes”, you can build one code base in Lua/Corona and deploy it to the markets you mention.

The “long answer”, however, is slightly more complex. When going cross-platform with Corona or any other framework, you will still need to handle certain special cases for each platform. For example, iOS may support different audio file formats versus Android. Or, certain system-specific features will be available on one platform but not necessarily another (i.e. most/all Android devices have a physical “back” button, but iOS does not).

So basically, as a developer, you’ll need to account for and handle these special cases in your code, sometimes detecting which platform the app is running on and using conditional logic to alter the task.

Throughout the documentation and guides, we’ve done our best to note when something pertains to a specific platform, but when in doubt, you can always ask the community developers and staff here in the forums and we’ll help you out.

Take care and happy development,

Brent

#3

Thanks for the info! Good to hear that it is possible. As long as there is a workflow that I can memorize for making apps completely universal, that works for me.

#4

Some other areas you have to watch out for is when working with 3rd party things.  For instance, Apple’s GameCenter and Google Play Game Services are different and we’ve tried to get them close, but when you want to use Amazon’s GameCircle, you get into unique code.  In-App-Purchases will also have platform specific behavior that you have to program for.  Cross-platform will never be 100%, but you can expect 90-95% code sharing among the different platforms.

Rob

#5

Hi @crumble619,

Welcome to the Corona community. The “short answer” to your question is “yes”, you can build one code base in Lua/Corona and deploy it to the markets you mention.

The “long answer”, however, is slightly more complex. When going cross-platform with Corona or any other framework, you will still need to handle certain special cases for each platform. For example, iOS may support different audio file formats versus Android. Or, certain system-specific features will be available on one platform but not necessarily another (i.e. most/all Android devices have a physical “back” button, but iOS does not).

So basically, as a developer, you’ll need to account for and handle these special cases in your code, sometimes detecting which platform the app is running on and using conditional logic to alter the task.

Throughout the documentation and guides, we’ve done our best to note when something pertains to a specific platform, but when in doubt, you can always ask the community developers and staff here in the forums and we’ll help you out.

Take care and happy development,

Brent

#6

Thanks for the info! Good to hear that it is possible. As long as there is a workflow that I can memorize for making apps completely universal, that works for me.

#7

Some other areas you have to watch out for is when working with 3rd party things.  For instance, Apple’s GameCenter and Google Play Game Services are different and we’ve tried to get them close, but when you want to use Amazon’s GameCircle, you get into unique code.  In-App-Purchases will also have platform specific behavior that you have to program for.  Cross-platform will never be 100%, but you can expect 90-95% code sharing among the different platforms.

Rob