Rebranding Corona

Getting Started Announcements
#21

To anyone who is worried about 3D support being added to Corona/Solar2D at some stage and how that would mess up the name, don’t worry. There are many reasons why it will never happen, for instance:

  1. A 3D game engine is an entirely different beast from a 2D game engine. Changing the rendering pipeline from 2D to 3D would require a staggering amount of work and it’d probably be less work to just create an entirely new 3D game engine from scratch.

  2. Corona/Solar2D is one of the best, if not the best 2D game engines out there, but by becoming a 3D game engine as well, it’d start at the very bottom. It’s not a great look if you have the best 2D and the worst 3D.

  3. Working in 3D also requires a GUI and creating a GUI requires a lot of work. With pure 2D applications, a GUI would be nice and beginner friendly, but not necessary. However, with 3D applications it would be hell trying to position objects in a 3D scene with just code.

  4. It’s all about splitting resources. There is more than enough work that needs doing with everything being 2D. Adding 3D would just drain resources from everything else. 

  5. Finally, why would anyone who needs to develop a 3D game now fund the development of a 2D engine being turned 3D over the course of several years when they could just download Unreal, Unity or Godot and start developing on a reliable 3D engine today?

#22

Analyzing your questions now, you are absolutely right.  :wink:

#23

Hi,

A rebrand is a great idea, current circumstances or not. I personally like the idea of SolarSDK over Solar2D, as it allows for future growth.

I think the key is a clean site with a very prominent call out to the documentation, which has always been excellent.

@richard11 I do agree with you about past resources, but at the time I started using Corona there wasn’t much around. I relied purely on the docs and this forum. Making sure there is a good social channel (apparently Slack) can be helpful as well. One could point out to newbies about searching for “Corona” resources.

And let’s be honest, Corona is not a super well known engine at this time. A rebrand probably affects us developers more than new users. Having something fresh (or the appearance of fresh) helps breath new life into it.

I guess I’ll need to rebrand Coronium Core to Solarium. :slight_smile:

-dev

#24

SDK will likely be a non-starter. We are not an SDK. This is why we moved away from CoronaSDK in the first place. An SDK is just a library and this product is more than just a library.

I also mentioned on Slack earlier (and I’ve not spoken to Vlad about it either), but the 2D doesn’t have to be part of the branding. It’s in the domain name, so it’s a bonus if 2D is in the brand, but perhaps not a hard requirement.

And then as far as Slack goes, we have what we have. It’s organized in to channels to have focused conversations, which are like having different sub-forums here. Anyway, this isn’t the place to discuss the pros and cons of Slack. If you want to discuss that open a new thread. Let’s keep this on re-branding.

Rob

#25

This isn’t the place so I’ll keep it short, but for the record 3D scene positioning already works in my engine, without the need for a GUI :smirk:. I learned from Blitz3D, back when that was a thing, that command line 3D doesn’t have the be complex. A lot of how my engine works is inspired by Blitz3D.

I’ll agree with your general point though. What we have is a 2D platform and that’s what it’ll likely always be.

#26

@Richard, I agree that this isn’t the place so I’ll reply briefly. :stuck_out_tongue:

The issue with creating 3D scenes without a GUI is that you can’t see or even effectively estimate where display objects belong on an xyz-grid and how rotations across the different planes affect them. With a good GUI, you can drag and drop objects where you want, but without one all we can do is guesstimate.

With one or two objects, sure, you can guesstimate, but up that to tens, hundreds or thousands of objects per scene and now something that takes seconds to do with a GUI suddenly takes several replicate via by code, multiply that by each display object and you have your summer planned out creating a single scene.

#27

Ok, more than a dozen objects and admittedly trying to visualise individual locations becomes a problem, but that’s just where loops or import functions come into play. It’s no different really to working with a tilemap. It wouldn’t be realistic to manually place every tile in a 2D platformer, but write a quick map loading routine and level editor and you’re away.

#28

Guys, this is a thread about rebranding, not about the merits or the needs of a 3D Engine in Corona/Solar. Please open a new thread if you wish to continue that discussion.

Rob 

#29

Damn :smiley: I was hopin to be rid of the orange but I guess solar still sticks to it cuz yellow is hard to see and red too tough. At least go for bronze/gold instead of current red :stuck_out_tongue:

#30

At first I didn’t like the new name but a few hours later Solar2d sounds cool.

Seeing Rob so active in forum, the community eager to offer and Vlad helping with posts and personal messages make me feel really optimistic.

#31

I agree. The moment I saw it, I thought that “Solar/Solar2D doesn’t sound that good, but at least we are getting a re-branding.”

A few minutes later, I admit I like it even more than the other suggestions. It’s great. I’m between Solar and Solar2D though. I feel like just “Solar” would be more impactful, but googling for “Solar engine” makes me think of solar energy or solar powered engines, whereas “Solar2D” wouldn’t have those issues and the 2D might help with SEO and clarity in general.

#32

I think Love2D is just “Love” but the domain name has the 2D suffix presumably for clarity and SEO.

#33

Hi,

I asked my brother if he had any logo ideas. He does product branding (worked on PS4, as well as others). I told him I have a $0 budget. He’s pretty busy, but said he would try to get something together on his down time, so a 50/50 chance. :wink:

-dev

#34

Is the name Solar absolutely fixed? Perhaps you could do a vote?

Obviously keeping with the theme. Sol or Solaris, Sun even. But perhaps a more unique sun orientated name like a God - Aton, Helios or Apollo. I mean Helios. Im not sure about “2D” but perhaps something like Studio, Kit, Builder etc.

I don’t dislike the name but just thinking of possible other names while you are discussing it and that something slightly more unique might stand out.

#35

There has been a discussion on the #rebrand Slack channel about this for a while.  A lot of names were batted around and the "2D’ which I also disliked at first makes sense with regard to uniqueness.  I did a trademark search on Solar 2D and there were zero matches.  However, there are over 2,000 matches to Solar (6,000 if you include businesses that are no longer operational ).

There is also the matter of the url.  The other names you mentioned are probably not available urls unless we add something to the end, like “2D”.  :wink:

I’m not sure who had the final say (probably Vlad) but we’ve moved on to the logo/identity package part and I can tell you that the process looks promising - even with the “2D” which, as a designer, I dislike graphically.  You should head over to the Corona Developer #rebrand slack channel to take a look and add ideas.

I’m confident that we will have a great open source platform and a good identity package to match.

#36

At this point, we are going with Solar2D.com and it appears that we really need the 2D in the name due to “Solar” being a pretty popular name.  

While we don’t have hard dates, I’m guessing we really should choose a logo/icon/color palette/tag line by 15-Apr-2020. It’s not important we have all of this live on 1-May, so this is kind of a soft date. Our focus is making sure you can build on 1-May and going forward, but the sooner we can decide, on the collateral, the sooner we can start working on all the sample apps, website, social media branding or even changing my avatar!

Rob

#37

Something about energizing ideas or birth of fantasies/ ideas might work well as a slogan for Solar 2D

Our small team at famousdogg has been with Corona since some years and we wish all you guys working behind the scenes the very best! Going forward, we will support the development and maintenance the best we can :slight_smile:

Cheers!

#38

Hi all! I love Corona SDK and the Corona community, and I just wanted to do my bit. What do you think as a starting point?

Corona-Solar-Prototype-1.jpg

#39

Icon looks fantastic. Color and font of Solar look great too.

the ‘2D’ needs to be a bit bigger. same hight as the "S. 

#40

Is this the official logo?