I have an existing game created with CoronaSDK for Andoid and IOS. DIdn’t find any instructions how to port it to CoronaCards… Is there any guide for this or should I figure it out myself how to do it?
The blog page listed below has the info you are looking for:
http://coronalabs.com/blog/2014/10/21/introducing-corona-support-for-windows-phone-8/
Here is the page specifically about porting existing apps:
http://docs.coronalabs.com/daily/coronacards/wp8/portapp.html
Followed the instructions and deployed the app to the device. All I get is a dark screen with a watermark stating Corona … TRIAL…
The app is published in both Play store and AppMarket so the scripts should be fully functional.
Any ideas where should I dig to get this app working in windows phone too and get it published fast?
You download your WP8 Corona Cards license from your Corona account page (it will be listed on the right side). Here is a link on how to use it: http://docs.coronalabs.com/daily/coronacards/wp8/license.html
The dark screen is probably an error of some kind. Make sure you did not copy over the “build.settings” and if you did I would suggest creating a new project. Also if it is an error you should see it once you click the stop debug button at the top. The error should show up in the bottom window of Visual Studio.
I hope this helps.
Man, there are some serious issues with this extension.
After installing this CoronaCards Extension my menus didn’t work anymore, run button was all greyd and the CPU was running hot all the time even if I didn’t do anything, allmost 60 per cent. What the heck was my machine doing???
All my other native projects didnt work either, whole VS was completely useless.
Fortunately removing Corona extension helped and I can use my VS again.
You guys really need to work with this a lot.
That’s a bug in Visual Studio. I’ve seen it happen in other non-Corona Visual Studio projects I’ve worked on.
I think Microsoft fixed it in “Update 3” of Visual Studio 2013, because I haven’t seen this freezing issue in that version or newer versions. I don’t think Microsoft ever fixed it in “Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone” though and I recommend that you use the 2013 Express version with the newest updates if you can.
Thanks Joshua,
installed CoronaCards to my VS 2013 Professional and it works ok. Fortunately I have a MSDN Professional subscription, didn’t try it in 2013 Express, probably works fine in it too.
Deployed my game to my Lumia 625 which I’m using as my development phone in WP and the performance is poor. My game won’t run decently, it just lags and lags, its unplayable. The same game is running fine in iPhone and android devices, so must be WP issue.
Any fixes fot this available?
I use Visual Studio Professional 2013 as well. That freezing problem went away when I updated to “Update 3” in that product version as well.
Regarding performance, the biggest performance killer is display.newText() and other text-like updates. We warn about this in our porting guide (link below). The performance issue actually comes from the WP8 operating system’s end. Generating text bitmaps/textures is an extremely expensive operation on this platform. If you have frequent text updates, then the solution is to switch to bitmap fonts as recommended by our guide.
http://docs.coronalabs.com/daily/coronacards/wp8/portapp.html#optimizing-text-performance
Also note that display.newText() involves generating a new bitmap, having the operating system draw text to it, and then pushing that bitmap as a texture to OpenGL/Direct3D. This is how it works on all platforms. This is a very expensive operation on all platforms. It just so happens to be the slowest on WP8. If you have text that you frequently update, such as during game play or nearly every frame, that this type of text generation is not advised on any platform. It is better to use bitmap font instead because it involves pre-loading all characters needed via an ImageSheet/SpriteSheet and then forming the text later via display objects. This is how AAA game studio do it too. So, by switching to bitmap fonts, you’ll be improving the performance of your Android and iOS apps too. The display.newText() function is best used for text that doesn’t change or frequently update… or for text that is out of your control such as from Facebook/Twitter because it might contain characters that are not in your bitmap font’s ImageSheet/SpriteSheet.
Oh and I highly highly recommend that you go over every section of that porting guide mentioned above. It’ll have other useful information that I’m sure you’ll need as well.
I hope this helps!
ISO Some things arent supported, some things dont work as well as they should and some things need modifying to work. I would recommend stripping away any fancy extras, effects, plugins like ads, SSL, etc and what Josh said temporarily disable any dynamic/runtime text updates. Its not quite as simple process as it has been. Some things depending on how complicated and plugin heavy it is may need to change. Then slowly re enable bits to see what is the issue.
The blog page listed below has the info you are looking for:
http://coronalabs.com/blog/2014/10/21/introducing-corona-support-for-windows-phone-8/
Here is the page specifically about porting existing apps:
http://docs.coronalabs.com/daily/coronacards/wp8/portapp.html
Followed the instructions and deployed the app to the device. All I get is a dark screen with a watermark stating Corona … TRIAL…
The app is published in both Play store and AppMarket so the scripts should be fully functional.
Any ideas where should I dig to get this app working in windows phone too and get it published fast?
You download your WP8 Corona Cards license from your Corona account page (it will be listed on the right side). Here is a link on how to use it: http://docs.coronalabs.com/daily/coronacards/wp8/license.html
The dark screen is probably an error of some kind. Make sure you did not copy over the “build.settings” and if you did I would suggest creating a new project. Also if it is an error you should see it once you click the stop debug button at the top. The error should show up in the bottom window of Visual Studio.
I hope this helps.
Man, there are some serious issues with this extension.
After installing this CoronaCards Extension my menus didn’t work anymore, run button was all greyd and the CPU was running hot all the time even if I didn’t do anything, allmost 60 per cent. What the heck was my machine doing???
All my other native projects didnt work either, whole VS was completely useless.
Fortunately removing Corona extension helped and I can use my VS again.
You guys really need to work with this a lot.
That’s a bug in Visual Studio. I’ve seen it happen in other non-Corona Visual Studio projects I’ve worked on.
I think Microsoft fixed it in “Update 3” of Visual Studio 2013, because I haven’t seen this freezing issue in that version or newer versions. I don’t think Microsoft ever fixed it in “Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Phone” though and I recommend that you use the 2013 Express version with the newest updates if you can.
Thanks Joshua,
installed CoronaCards to my VS 2013 Professional and it works ok. Fortunately I have a MSDN Professional subscription, didn’t try it in 2013 Express, probably works fine in it too.
Deployed my game to my Lumia 625 which I’m using as my development phone in WP and the performance is poor. My game won’t run decently, it just lags and lags, its unplayable. The same game is running fine in iPhone and android devices, so must be WP issue.
Any fixes fot this available?
I use Visual Studio Professional 2013 as well. That freezing problem went away when I updated to “Update 3” in that product version as well.
Regarding performance, the biggest performance killer is display.newText() and other text-like updates. We warn about this in our porting guide (link below). The performance issue actually comes from the WP8 operating system’s end. Generating text bitmaps/textures is an extremely expensive operation on this platform. If you have frequent text updates, then the solution is to switch to bitmap fonts as recommended by our guide.
http://docs.coronalabs.com/daily/coronacards/wp8/portapp.html#optimizing-text-performance
Also note that display.newText() involves generating a new bitmap, having the operating system draw text to it, and then pushing that bitmap as a texture to OpenGL/Direct3D. This is how it works on all platforms. This is a very expensive operation on all platforms. It just so happens to be the slowest on WP8. If you have text that you frequently update, such as during game play or nearly every frame, that this type of text generation is not advised on any platform. It is better to use bitmap font instead because it involves pre-loading all characters needed via an ImageSheet/SpriteSheet and then forming the text later via display objects. This is how AAA game studio do it too. So, by switching to bitmap fonts, you’ll be improving the performance of your Android and iOS apps too. The display.newText() function is best used for text that doesn’t change or frequently update… or for text that is out of your control such as from Facebook/Twitter because it might contain characters that are not in your bitmap font’s ImageSheet/SpriteSheet.
Oh and I highly highly recommend that you go over every section of that porting guide mentioned above. It’ll have other useful information that I’m sure you’ll need as well.
I hope this helps!
ISO Some things arent supported, some things dont work as well as they should and some things need modifying to work. I would recommend stripping away any fancy extras, effects, plugins like ads, SSL, etc and what Josh said temporarily disable any dynamic/runtime text updates. Its not quite as simple process as it has been. Some things depending on how complicated and plugin heavy it is may need to change. Then slowly re enable bits to see what is the issue.