What is Default Splash Screen?

  I would have added “We regularly change our pricing model.”  (btw, i’m already on record that the $99 splash remove plugin isn’t an issue for me - just so you know where my poor attempt at humor is coming from)

  Is it still true that the bulk of Corona’s nearly-invisible stream of “real” revenue beyond subscriptions (ie, the stuff that actually keeps you solvent day-to-day, not the nickle-and-dime splash screen -type stuff) is from ad network rev-share?  That is, deals along the lines of:  “Hey Vungle (et al), if we drive you more traffic with a plugin, will you cut us a share of your gross?”

  And, assuming that still is a significant portion of your operating revenue, to what extent are the newer ad network plugins (fe CA, FBN - that take their cut from the developer’s net, rather than the ad network’s gross) contributing to that?  Are you headed more in one direction than the other now that the perk/fuse experiments have failed?

  For example, and now with a paid plugin market, are you perhaps moving towards a choice between paid ad network plugins with back-end cuts, or free ad network plugins with front-end cuts?

  Your user-base seems widely divergent, from entry/newbie/hobby/indie/poor to very lucrative professionals.  (and, of course, all of the vast middle ground, myself included)   Flat fees versus percentages have an entirely different business impact on those two opposite ends of the spectrum.  The pros drive all your ad traffic income, but they’d likely pay the $99 without hesitation to eliminate any possible ‘nuisance factor’ that has even the slightest possibility of affecting their retention.  So no splash presence there.  On the other hand, it’s brutal out there, and many of the entry-levels (short of the 1-in-a-million next flappy fad) will be lucky to find 100 total lifetime installs, so I doubt they’ll be effective promoters of your splash OR generate much ad traffic.

  Just trying to puzzle together how all this fits together into some kind of cogent business plan, that gives us some sense of what your NEXT pricing policy will be twelve months from now.  I know you’ll say you have no plans for such at present, but history strongly STRONGLY suggests that it’ll happen anyway, planned or not – and not just an increase/decrease in response to changes in the economy, but likely a whole new model, with little advance warning – because that’s what you’ve been putting us through to date.

  I’d prefer if you guys stayed solvent, so I don’t mind contributing towards that. (but not beyond levels that would negatively affect my own self-interest/self-presentation/self-solvency)

[edited to restore Rob’s original quote]

I’ll be honest, I’ve paid 2 times the Pro edition but I don’t have the resources anymore to start paying again per year, I kept using Corona just because it was free but I’ve started working with Android Studio some weeks ago, it’s not the same but the control you have over your application is awsome. Corona gives you a lot of easy tools to use, but from my experience using it, the changes the company keeps making are not good at all. 

So, with that being said, I’ll keep looking for alternatives.

Hi Dave. First, I would respectfully ask that you update your post and not attribute that quote to me. Feel free to make it your own as part of your text, but editing a quote isn’t helpful to the discussion. I know you meant it in jest, but others may think it’s something I actually said.

I also am not in a position to go into any details about the rest of your questions, but I will say that as a business, its a best practice to have multiple streams of revenue to be successful. This is a competitive market and it takes resources to maintain a competitive edge. We now have experienced business leadership in place that has a history of creating successful products. We are going to steer the ship in the right direction. You want us continue to build a great platform. It’s only logical that you should want us to optimize our revenue streams.

Rob

Thank you for continuing to make Corona SDK available for free to me and to new users. This is an awesome opportunity to give back to a great organization and stay in a mature community of very helpful developers.  I volunteer with several non-profit and I teach Corona to kids and handicap adults. I appreciate your need to market while keeping your product accessible. You do a great job.

My bad, fixed.  :)

The biggest problem is that the Free version gave away too much… A “Powered by Corona” splash screen should have been implemented then for the Free version, with a Pro option for $99/year, and no one would have complained because at that time we were at $500-$600/year.

That said, the sudden purchase-a-plugin-to-remove-the-annoyance approach just doesn’t feel right. For one thing, it was done with no notice whatsoever. Some people may have chosen a different technology if they’d known about this a few months ago. I would still choose Corona, but I’m just saying that it feels a bit like you have the developers over a barrel. My client definitely will not want a “Powered by Corona” splash screen on their app.

It seems like an awkward way of implementing a “Pro” version and raises questions about what else might get moved to that model in the future. For example, what if suddenly accessing the Camera or Photo Library is moved to a $99/year plugin, then other features follow. It could be good that way, or it could be bad, depending on what kind of app you’re building. I mean, none of them are as good as “free” but I understand the need to support Corona and help it grow. 

One more suggestion for Corona to ease this transition. I would do the following, just to avoid all this backlash:

  1. Undo this pay-to-remove-the-splash-screen and push it off a few months to give folks who truly don’t want it and can’t afford the $99 at least a chance to change technologies if they choose. I think most serious developers will grumble and pay the $99 anyway, but at least they feel like they have a choice.

  2. Make the Splash Screen prettier; it’s way too in-your-face currently. It would be good if you could *always* use your own image as the splash screen, but maybe it would just put a subtle “powered by corona” in the bottom corner if you haven’t paid. That would at least be better.

Dave

Hi @all,

This was reported earlier in this thread (somewhat unrelated but I wanted to address it): 

We tested and confirmed this, and we’ve issued a fix for an upcoming daily build to address it. I don’t have a specific build number yet, but it should be 2016.2953 and later.

 

In any case, in that fix, the API will return “iPhone OS” as before, so you won’t need to adjust your existing code base.

 

Brent

 

this + what @Hey Topher is talking about. Couldn’t agree more. 

I don’t mind paying 99%, I was paying more then that a couple of years ago. But a few months ago story was ‘unity uses splash screen, we don’t force our users to that’. Now of course it’s another story. And frankly, I simply can’t justify my faith in corona anymore.

But I do wish you all the luck, and I hope you make it as a company.

Strongly disagree with $448 for single mobile deploy.  Strongly.

The current structure of FREE for all platforms or $99 for no Corona logo at start is great.  And makes Corona just as accessible as it was before - with the addition of advertising for the platform.

The next tier should be Enterprise, and that is the tier that turns off the monetization drain…

The only other things would be for (a) Corona to more closely integrate Level Director X into the platform and work with the developer to create more exhaustive documentation and examples.  And (b) start writing Corona articles and postmortems on other game dev websites (gamasutra, gamesindustry.biz, develop, etc).

How can I make use of all the different splash screen dimensions using the CoronaSplashControl? 

If I understand correctly… before this update, I would just include the splash images with different naming conventions and I believe Corona would choose the correct one based on the name. (Default v. Default-568h@2x v. Default-667h v.  Default-Landscape-736h v. Default-Landscape)

Assuming I’m still providing all these images, will CoronaSplashControl choose the proper image if I just include the following?

splashScreen = { enable = true, image = "Default.png" },

In my test, it appears as though I’m getting my old splash screen. But I can’t tell if it’s the proper image or not. Also, now when I rotate my phone in portrait mode (the app is normally in landscape), the image rotates upside-down.

Some advice would be greatly appreciated as I’d like to get this release out as soon as possible. Thank you

This does not replace iOS Launch images. Your image defined in the splashScreen table would show after whatever launcher image is defined on iOS. If you want your splash screen image to be first, having an all black Default.png (and family) would provide a nice transition to the splash screen.

Rob

Got it, thanks.

@jhow, @Rob Miracle

How about the case of Android??

When I set:

splashScreen = { enable = false },

NO plash image shown, dark screen until the launch of the first app menu, although I have all the Defaultxxx.png included.

When I set:

splashScreen = { enable = true, image = “Default-Landscape.png”},

this “Default-Landscape.png” will be scaled to display as splash image. However, there will be a short period of dark screen afterwards, before the launch of the first app menu.

Hi Simon,

A1) I haven’t seen the submissions you sent to Charles yet, but I assume they’re tasteful and already meet most (perhaps all) of the guidelines we listed in the more formalized contest announcement. I doubt you submitted an entry with a green Corona logo on a pink background. :slight_smile: That being said, if you want to tweak your submissions and re-submit, you can, but we’ll also review what you already submitted and let you know if we need more updated versions.

A2) There will be more details coming on this in the near future. My advice is to just take a deep breath and not speculate on things needlessly. Again, there will be clarification coming. In the meantime, as Rob mentioned in an earlier post, we’re all pushing forward, heads down and keyboards clicking, working on things to make Corona even better.

Brent

What about corona cloud? The announcement of a corona based cloud was a minor reason for me to stick with corona. Now, when I have to pay for the plugin, it is a even more interesting question for me.

@wilsonwansun, Native android does not even support launch images. Many years ago our Android developers wanted a splash screen, so in an attempt to make it cross-platform and with iOS only using two different images, we had Corona look and show those images, but that code got old and didn’t keep up with Apple’s UILaunchImage system. As part of this, we now let you control the splash screen with the plugin with build.settings. You can now design something that looks good and not depend on the Default.png.

Based on what I know( I don’t work for corona), corona cloud is not being worked on. Chris is out doing other things.

Edit: there are other solutions available.

@Rob 

Because have not found daily build #2953 at https://developer.coronalabs.com/downloads/daily-builds/ , I upgraded #2954 to resolve that problem. " Powered by Corona Labs" splash became invisible but i also can’t setting my splash image when boot game.Splash screen look like not shown or disabled. 

 

Please confirm this bug and fix quickly as soon as able. I cant’t update new version for my game until this bug be resolved! Really troubling!

https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/65637-corona-enterprise-20162949-android-splash-screen-bug/

Apparently, this new “feature” has created a NEW issue. We can no longer use a single code-base in build.settings for multiple platforms. Yes, after paying your $99, you will no longer be able to create multi-platform builds without first changing code in build.settings every time.

The only way around this is to handle the Default Splash Screen in the same manner for every platform.

To read more about this, I’ve created a new Topic at: https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/65687-default-splash-screen-no-more-single-codebase-for-multiple-platforms/

@troylyndon
Agree with you.

@Rob Miracle
If I need to show launch screen as image on Android and as Storyboard on iOS do I need to edit build.settings?
[lua]settings = {
– splashScreen = { enable = false }, – for iOS
splashScreen = { enable = true, image = “Default-Landscape.png”}, – for Android[/lua]