it makes us wise!
Ohh… I used to program zx spectrum when I was a kid, too!
Great to read that. We’re not alone in this world, hehe
Actually, the 48k Spectrum had 64k memory, 16k of that was taken with the OS which left 48k usable, while the "budget’ 16k model had 32k of which 16k was available. I remember loads of my mates bought 16k versions and then upgraded to 48k with a RAM pack. Of course you had to be really careful with them as they were susceptible to the famous “RAM pack wobble” which could kill your machine.
*sighs*
Ahh those were the days :)
I think anyone who uses Corona for any length of time realises how powerful it is for hassle free cross-platform development. The problem is, that’s a pretty small club and if it doesn’t get larger fairly soon, I fear for the future.
I listen to every developer podcast I can lay my hands on, with episodes going back as far as 2012. I’ve heard Corona mentioned maybe 3-4 times, and always as an afterthought. I personally think they need a re-branding, not only is Corona really the name of a beer, it doesn’t seem to be viewed as a serious development platform. And a lot of people I meet at conferences haven’t even heard of it in the first place…
@nick_sherman, definitely. Whenever I mention Corona to some people in game dev community they are all like “what is that? that must be new” but most of them know Defold already. I know the popularity comes with King at this point but Corona had a head start of years and it’s sad to say, they failed at marketing the product. Hope Appodeal has better plans to grow user base.
I’m speaking from the position of someone who is looking at the current offerings on the market. If I hadn’t already spent some time with Corona, it would be somewhere at the bottom of my list. For obvious reasons:
- the least number of supported platforms
- no visual editor
- apparent focus on “mobile”, which is kind of a dirty word for quite a bunch of people having a general interest in (making or playing) games
- relatively unimpressive showcase gallery
- the business model is based on creating a platform for advertisement, and not premium games.
This said, I’ve actually tried it and at least for now I just love the workflow, the API, and the awesome documentation.
Still unsure if Corona is an optimal choice for creating desktop games - mainly because those don’t seem to fit into the business model of the company.
Agree with most of that. The ‘hall of fame’ page doesn’t even feature ‘Designer City’, when its developer is one of the main contributors to this excellent forum. The 6-7 years of accumulated community contributions and knowledge on here is probably Corona’s biggest asset.
However, pro developers are likely to be quite happy to figure out something like Defold on their own, with the additional bonus of a Unity-style visual editor and prefabs, and Linux/HTML 5 builds.
Corona can create desktop games, apart from my own game there’s many others on Steam, but all the games being pushed are small mobile games.
Thanks @nick… It will do but I’ve been too busy to fill out the info they require.
It would seem Corona (or at least this thread) is full of old school devs!
Fair enough, but I think they need your game on that page more than you do, so they should make it happen. Most of the games only have the icon and link to App Store anyway.
The mis-spelling of ‘Hall of Fame Apps build with Corona’ doesn’t help either!
I don’t know about the latest changes, if any were made, but the problem with showcase is that the entry barrier seems to be based on wrong metrics. Rather than only going after famous / featured / most downloaded games, Corona should start adding games that look good and show engine capabilities even if they are not known much.
Also, I’m pretty sure most Corona devs are not even aware of the showcase.
I know a lot of work is being done to push things forward - a lot is yet to be realised. But you guys are right, the perception of Corona needs to change to make it succeed. It so badly needs positive PR.
So I wrote this big long response to this post and somehow managed to swipe back a page and lost everything I wrote *sigh*
Now for take two.
Before I get started, all of the comments here are great and keep them coming. I wish we were discussing this on the thread we created to discuss the changes, but alas we are here…
Age: So I’m not the old guy here… I started programming on a TRS-80 in 1979 and a DEC-10 mainframe. My first PC was an Atari 800 with a whopping 16k of RAM but I added a memory card to get to 32K. That didn’t last long before I got an Apple IIe with floppy drives and a CPM card (didn’t like Apple’s OS)
Mobile is a dirty word: Unless your pushing DVD’s through Walmart or BestBuy, the only real way to make money on the desktop is to get on Steam. We’ve had quite a few games make it there with success. Mobile is a growing segment. But I understand the perception. Unity and Unreal are “we build big major important games and oh by the way you can do mobile” is a different message than “We rock the mobile world and oh by the way you can do desktop” and I can see where that can be an issue. Unless you’re a AAA studio, mobile is the profit zone right now. I’d rather have a framework that lets me make great mobile games and then port to desktop/TV. It’s perception vs. pocketbook. But I understand what you are saying.
Showcase: This is challenging page. Previously it was a pure HTML/CSS page that we have to write code, gather links and download artwork. It was a painful manual experience and we simply didn’t have time to update it. One of my requests was a way that page could be generated from existing data. We showcase many really good looking games on the blog and I wanted an automated way to take those posts and generate the showcase page from that. We may get there still, but for now we have a source that finds the current hot games made by Corona and that’s what’s feeding the page. This is really cool. I learned about many new Corona apps I didn’t know about. We are talking about changing the name from “Hall of Fame” to something more descriptive to what’s there. We are also talking about adding an additional carousel that could be our featured games or a true “Hall of Fame” best of the best/well known games.
Platform based on ads not premium: I’m guessing this perception comes from our large ad plugin library. But we have In-App Purchases for every platform in some form. We provide iOS, Google Play, Amazon and Steam micro-payments. Community plugins support macOS and tvOS. And there is nothing preventing you from releasing your game for a fee. That said, we do encourage ads as a way to monetize your app.
And finally… no one knows about us/growing our community: This used to not be true. Four to five years ago in the framework world we were quite well known. But we were one of the very few people in the market. It was easy to stand out. But over time the competition has increased. We have not done nearly enough public relations and advertising and now we are way behind the curve with regards to popularity. We are quite aware of this and have to fix this. We have access to Appodeal’s great PR team and they are helping work with us on this. We are working to be more active in game development communities outside of our own. It’s critical that we be more successful in this area. I have a good feeling working with Appodeal that we will improve our visibility.
Rob
Thanks for the responses! I realize my previous post might have been slightly offensive, but at least now I have a better idea of the situation (and the people) here.
About the “ads” thing - I just thought “How is Appodeal going to earn off a free closed-source framework?”. I saw no incentive in pushing Corona in directions, different than ad-enabled platforms (mobile & HTML), which still worries me a bit.
I personally wouldn’t mind seeing new features in the form of paid first-party plugins if that’s a viable way to expand Corona’s capabilities in those other areas.
I think it’s a good idea to move away from the ‘hall of fame’ labelling. It carries a kind of ‘link to the past’ vibe, which is fine of course, it works in many ways. But… could it be better? Could you label the display in a way that captures the achievements of the past along with the hopes of the future?
In many ways, the main purpose of the page is to promote what’s possible in the future, based upon the achievements of the past. ‘hall of fame’ doesn’t quite fit that scope for me. It’s lacking in the ‘inspirational future’ part i feel. Food for thought.
Also, in my experience as an artist/designer, when you showcase something as an enticement, you really have to be careful. It can sometimes do more harm than good, especially in a fast paced, ever evolving world.
How about using the name “Corona Showcase” for that matter? I know “Stories” will draw people to that link but I guess it would be better to use a standard word in this case. You can also link to “Stories” at the top of the page and use it like a “Featured Games & Apps” area where you showcase 3 randomly selected games each week.
They’ve been around for 7 years. No-one can predict the future.
IMHO they’ve gotten pretty savvy at picking investors and the like.
This forum is probably not the place to be asking that question, tbh.
Like any technology, framework, OS, you never know the future. Just look at thing like Flash, Silverlight, etc., those were from big players, and some people invested a lot in them. At the end, they did go away. Its part of evolution! Can look terrifying but long term its working.
If your starting your business, you must always have contingency plan ready and diversify yourself, so you have a few revenue stream that can help you if something unexpected happen.
I’ve built a business on Corona so I sincerely hope so too!
Corona has been around for 7 years or so, but surprisingly there hasn’t been enough buzz around it, not a big enough community or online resources, unlike cocos or unity for example, and has been acquired a couple of times during that period.
I hope the new owners have some sort of a long-term plan that involves better marketing for the product and attracting new users.
We are not going anywhere anytime soon. To have survived in this industry as long as we have should be an attribute to our resilience.
We have the best, most mature 2D platform on the planet. Sure Love2D might do X better, Defold might do Y better, but none of them as a total package is better than Corona.
We recognize that we need to do a better job at marketing ourselves and to that extent we are making changes to assist with that. We have access to Appodeal’s excellent PR team and they are working closely with us.
Let me close with our new leadership from Appodeal is taking our success very much to heart. They are actively working to help make Corona great.
Rob