I want to start building 2D cross platform mobile games. I’ve heard a lot of great things about Corona SDK. But I’ve been reading through the 2020 switch to open source and it has me a little worried.
Tl;Dr if I start learning Corona now will it die in a year? If so where should I go?
I’ve been using Corona for a long while and I don’t have any plans of migrating.
Personally, the switch to open source and rebranding to Solar2D has me more excited than worried. Rather than slowing down the development, it seems that for the first time in a long while there’s a possibility that the development of the engine may even speed up.
The engine is robust, powerful and easy to learn. I am personally not worried about its survival.
When you start working on a new platform there’s a little bit of risk but from what I see on Slack and GitHub, the community is more vibrant than the past years. I’m not entirely in the process so I can’t guarantee anything but it seems Solar2D is here to stay.
My $0.02…
Solar2D out of the gate is a robust 2D cross platform engine. There are other great engines out there, but they are not 2D first (like Unity, Unreal, etc) and have steeper learning curves or they are 2D first but aren’t as robust (Defold, Love2D in Lua, Phaser and 100 others in JS)
Solar2D hits a sweet spot for me and my team. We have released an Apple Game of the Day with it (and others here have done that as well) Ludum Dare top 10 games and multiple titles on Steam too. We’re working on projects that won’t come out for months and I’m confident that we’ll be able to launch just like before.
Your first sentence says “2d cross platform mobile games”. That right there is where Solar/Corona shines and is better than any other engine we’ve used. Yes there are concerns about the future, but this engine has 10 years of momentum and features behind it and is not going to just disappear. Vlad is getting the support he needs and he’s been the main driver the last few years anyway.
There are hundreds of millions (dare I say a BILLION!?) downloads of Corona apps. It’s a great engine to learn with and the community is very helpful.
Solar2D is great. It’s different to many other engines that it doesn’t have an IDE, but coding with Solar2D is so easy you don’t really need an IDE. VS Code with Lua and Corona extensions is fine.
If you decide to switch to other engine, your knowledge won’t be lost because game development principals are the same pretty much everywhere.
I wont recommend, there are better and more supportive options out there, It may be simple but lua lacks a lot in terms of the ability to achieve something which is outside the generic usage, also there is not enough community resources for help
Corona/Solar2D is a great place to start.
While it is going through some transition pains right now, it looks like it will be around for a long time to me.
Also, if anyone is having trouble finding ‘community resources’ is, just remember, Solar2D used to be called Corona SDK, so search for both on the web and you’ll find TONS…
Tip: Search https://github.com/ for ‘solar2d’ and ‘corona sdk’, you’ll find tons.
Corona Site:
Many community members have Solar2D/Corona SDK content on their sites/gits:
I have some things too:
PS - Also, the simulator comes bundled with dozens of examples.
Can you give an example as to what those non-generic uses are that Solar2D can’t do?
I understand your frustrations concerning Ads sample project not showing ads, but you’ve received more dedicated and personalised help from @roaminggamer than I think I’ve seen anyone receive, so I find your comment about there being “more supportive options out there” to be a bit unfounded.
Please keep in mind that Solar2D is currently undergoing a big transition and the plugin system and other features are changing a bit. Many people are trying to get their bearings as things fall into their final place.
The fact that I needed to create a topic myself which is barely done in many of my programming problems (including creating apps) stats the fact. also im lucky to have @roaminggamer to help me, but he is the only one who have done so, ofcourse this is better then stack overflow which 90% of the questions get thrown under the bus due to huge traffic, this is true for every coding community , most answers given are for simple problems that can be googled
anyway its not only that , I found myself unable to achieve proper solutions to rather generic coding problems with lua, although it has many positive and easy to use functions, if you want to build something more serious, you should pass this
I’m also new to Solar2D. I’ve coded in Lua in the past and found it not only accessible, but incredibly extensible. I think, @tal-Naham, that you are judging Lua & Solar2D a little too harshly. Sure it may not be able to do EVERYTHING, but what language does? Perhaps if you knuckle down to the very core base languages like C, C++, Kotlin, C#, Swift, etc, etc you can do almost everything you want on that particular platform, but every dev has their own needs.
Consider this, Lua has been used in everything from little piddly backyard apps to well-known smash success like Free Birds, World of Warcraft, Wireshark, etc. Lua may not always be the engine driving everything, but being able to control these powerhouses with Lua goes a long way. Here’s a short list of a few titles that are either coded in, or support extension and operational scripting, using Lua:
Lego Mindworks
Angry Birds
World of Warcraft
Apache HTTP - accepts Lua scripts
Cocos
CHDK (Canon Camera open source firmware)
ModSecurity - Apache firewall
Roblox
VIM (Lua script support)
ZeroBrane IDE
Wireshark
TeamSpeak
Snort
RPM (Red Hat Linux software management package)
Flame - cyber Espionage malware
CryEngine (game engine used for “Far Cry”)
FreePOPs - mail proxy
NodeMCU (IoT hardware device )
I think Solar2D has a lot to offer. If you are new to the game it is a relatively friendly language to work with, gives someone a good idea of what coding actually involves and THEN they can decide if they want to dig deeper.
To @mavr1k, the switch of Solar2D to open-source is always a little concerning. However, it also means that there are more people (and some of them are very, very clever people) that can get involved to make things better. When a proprietary package needs bug fixes or is looking for features, you need to rely on the core of PAID employees to do it; open-source hands the reigns to anyone that wants to step up to the table.
From what I’ve seen and read, @vlads is committed to Solar2D and will make it work. Another good sign is that the initial fund raising goal Vlad put up was met almost instantly - this tells me that there are a lot of interested and supportive people. The names on this forum are too numerous to mention, but they also have a passion for Solar2D and will see it succeed.
@mavr1k, worst case scenario is that you’ll start using Solar2D (free of charge…) and then if you decide it’s not for you, you’ve lost nothing but time. You will however, walk away with a better understanding of protocols, procedures and coding.
Just my $0.02
Cheers
To anyone not sure about Solar2D (formerly Corona SDK) now that it’s open source, I can tell you that I’ve released 4 apps and a 5th coming this month - with my last UPDATE being an Offline Build using 3598 with third-party plugins using the new Solar2D marketplace; and I’m happy to report two important things. Although I, too, was wondering if the time had come to go somewhere else, I realized that Solar2D is unique and special among code-centric development platforms, where it seems like other engines are moving more and more to using a user-interface to set properties, rather than doing so in code. So, I really wanted to stay; so what happened when I went to create my new OFFLINE build UPDATE of a LIVE app?
I’m thrilled to be a Solar2D Evangelist and Supporter. if you like it, send Vlad some cash or a monthly amount to help us all insure Solar2D moves forward over the next decode! And if you can, read through the new posts and see how you can help others, too! It only takes a few moments to save someone else hours. 