Simple Trail : Finally a Corona plugin to render trails

david.ciaudo · October 11, 2019, 12:41pm

Hi fellow developers,

I’ve spent quite some time to develop a plugin that could add a very cool feature in Corona framework. The plugin is called Simple Trail and can be used to attach a trail effect on a display objects without using a particle heavy performance solution.

I think it’s an important feature to have to make good visual quality games. Other frameworks, like Unity for example, already allows such things and I thought it could be nice to have a ready to use solution in Corona SDK too. You can even animate the trail with a scrolling movement.

You can see the plugin in action here :

http://honeyponey.fr/SHARED/SimpleTrail/

and you can find the plugin in the corona market place here :

https://marketplace.coronalabs.com/corona-plugins/simple-trail

As for the price, I’m still trying to find a fair price so any feedbacks can help.

Michael_Flad · October 11, 2019, 2:58pm

Looks pretty cool … it’s always great to see some decent Corona plugins in the store.

sporkfin · October 11, 2019, 3:25pm

I love it and just got a subscription. I developed my own trail system but it it totally different from this one so I’ll use both!

As for fair price, $9.99/year is totally reasonable. This is a premium plugin and there is no reason not to ask for a fair premium price and I think a subscription model is smart.

Personally, I struggled to find a price for my plugin as some developers in economies that don’t compare favorably to the dollar had a hard time buying it when it was $20 so I reduced the price and went the a subscription model. I haven’t made a mint but it was enough to take my wife and kids out for dinner a couple times.

The real value is that you made a quality product that the community can utilize and share (for a small fee). Job well done!

XeduR · October 12, 2019, 4:37am

Some times I feel like I’ve done too much programming when I can recognise the code/functions behind some effect instantly.

I think that your trail plugin looks great and it is well priced. One good way of approaching pricing is to consider how much time and money you’ll save whoever would buy your plugin. Your current price of 10 dollars seems more than fair given that I would expect to spend an hour or two at least to create a similarly polished trail effect, at which point I’d have already saved tens of dollars to over a hundred dollars by just using your plugin.

vb66r55 · November 24, 2019, 7:02pm

Hi,

This looks pretty good, I am planning to buy it.

But I have a little doubt before buying, how is it performance?

I have found that using a particle system during combat can cause a significant increase in system memory and a stuttering situation.

I am considering replacing particle system with your product.

You may be able to make people more willing to buy by providing more of this information.

david.ciaudo · November 25, 2019, 12:21am

I think performances are really good but how can I provide more information about it? Do you have any idea?

vb66r55 · November 25, 2019, 12:43am

I think it might be possible to explain the difference with the particle system in Corona.

After all, using the particle system for special effects is very bad. I just want to abandon it.

More correctly, I can’t use too many particle system effects in a battle, can your product be?

I would be very interested if your product could create multiple in a battle without delaying the game.

In addition, most of my effects are now made in Unity, so I don’t use the Corona particle system, but similar to the rocket, which requires long distance effects, there is no way to do it with frames, it will be too large, so I plan to use Trail.

Although it can also be done with the particle system, but the performance is too bad, haha.

david.ciaudo · November 25, 2019, 2:27am

Unlike to particle system, the trail here is a unique object that’s why the performances are better.

I was able to display many trails keeping framerate high.

Maybe I can try to make a benchmark scene with many trail objects and display the framerate on some medium end devices like iPhone 6s or Android Galaxy S7?

vb66r55 · November 25, 2019, 6:10pm

Sounds good, I will buy it.

Cheers!

cyberparkstudios · April 15, 2020, 2:47am

Thought I would give this plugin a try… nice plugin!

I actually have a particle trail method I already use and have used in previous game, but thought this would be more efficient and easier to use… and it is, but I ran into a problem.

Works when I run in the simulator, but when going to build for iOS … that plugin in the build settings I believe is

causing this to ‘problem linking’ and the build fails.

I know this most likely os do to the changes being made at Corona with plugins maybe being moved from corona labs to another server? Am I right? what is the thing I need to do to get this plugin to not crash the build?

I just activated the plugin today, after using the link to the plugin, listed above in this post.

Thanks

cyberparkstudios · April 15, 2020, 2:47am

Thought I would give this plugin a try… nice plugin!

I actually have a particle trail method I already use and have used in previous game, but thought this would be more efficient and easier to use… and it is, but I ran into a problem.

Works when I run in the simulator, but when going to build for iOS … that plugin in the build settings I believe is

causing this to ‘problem linking’ and the build fails.

I know this most likely os do to the changes being made at Corona with plugins maybe being moved from corona labs to another server? Am I right? what is the thing I need to do to get this plugin to not crash the build?

I just activated the plugin today, after using the link to the plugin, listed above in this post.

Thanks

EncoldG · June 23, 2022, 11:35am

Hello!
Where i can find and get this plugin now?

redbol · June 27, 2022, 9:48am

Here https://github.com/H0neyP0ney/SimpleTrail

aclementerodrguez · June 28, 2022, 4:29am

Currently that plugin is not available at Solar2D server. I would like to see it again.

alanFlickGames · June 28, 2022, 9:39am

It’s not exactly the same, but for anyone still looking for a trail function I use Ponywolf’s newTrail function, found his ponyfx.lua library:

github.com

ponywolf/ponyblitz/blob/master/com/ponywolf/ponyfx.lua

-- ponyfx

local M = {}

local function lenSqr(dx,dy,dz) return (dx * dx + dy * dy + dz * dz) end

local function offScreen(object)
  local bounds = object.contentBounds
  if not bounds then return false end
  local sox, soy = display.screenOriginX, display.screenOriginY
  if bounds.xMax < sox then return true end
  if bounds.yMax < soy then return true end
  if bounds.xMin > display.actualContentWidth - sox then return true end
  if bounds.yMin > display.actualContentHeight - soy then return true end
  return false
end

function M.flashHurt(object, frames, listener)
  if not object.contentBounds then
    print("WARNING: Object not found")

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aclementerodrguez · June 29, 2022, 5:29am

Great! … thank you for sharing