What Tools Do I Need?

Getting Started Newbie Questions
#41

About OOP and the last two posts: it is certainly not necessary to go overboard with object oriented programming in Lua and Corona, because for 99% of projects it is really overkill (so J.A. Whye has a point there). In reality though, Corona allows for some really lightweight and “easy to understand” pseudo-OOP or prototyping using modules and metatables. That’s something most developers in Corona would really benefit from in my mind. True OOP is a pain in Corona and overkill, the lightweight stuff is easy to do and superhandy and powerful.

Regarding composer for scene management, I have to say that I do always roll my own, because I find it helps me to program more cleanly, and understand and have control over everything that is going on - even down to the point of optimizing texture memory and loading and purging graphics and audio etc… But it’s a personal thing - I tend not to like to use preset stuff all that much.

#42

On a side note, do you have a type of project in mind? We could probably give some good pointers on how to structure and tackle your project if we have a better view on what exactly you’d like to do.

#43

Thanks all for your informative feedback everyone.
I was actually referring to Composer GUI - i am on a PC and so that editor is not available to me: aren’t you MAC guys lucky!
The Composer API i will certainly be learning as i will be creating scenes for interactive book apps and learning games: i was looking at a few 2D game engines like Gamemaker Studio, Stencyl 3 and Construct 2. But Corona seems ideal for my needs and i know that i could also create platform type games with it too. It also has amazing documentation which is always a plus. I am just a bit unsure about how much the Starter version will give me and whether i’ll need to go Basic $16pm or Pro $49 which is beginning to get a little too pricey for someone starting out. I have been looking at Marmalade SDK Quick which has an awesome emulator and apparently you can create for iOS on a PC machine. But to get those juicy exrtas - like Corona - i’d have to start paying similar monthly tariff.
OOP is a bit over my head here. I have a basic grasp of AS 3.0 and i understand classes and inheritance to a reasonable degree.
Lua seems like an amazing language and close to native speeds on mobile. I look forward to mastering it in Corona SDK.

Regarding my own struggling research so far for the best tool, here’s my shortlist - PC friendly.

Photoshop CS3 is my best buddy and can do almost everything. I enjoy Inkscape for vector art and it’s pretty good for a FREE tool.
There is also Serif DrawPlus X6  (£81.69) which is like a cheaper version of Adobe Illustrator and looks powerful.
For pixel art there is Graphicsgale FREE and Piskelapp - FREE online sprite editor.
I have read good things about Zerobrane Editor and Sublime Text with the Corona plugin. 
Level Director looks like an essential tool as i am unable to utilize Composer GUI.
Texturepacker for packing sprites and also a FREE AIR app called Shoebox which does similar .

I will definitely need Spine or Spriter for modular skeletal animation. So far, my research tells me that Spine has better support with Corona and many other API’s and also has it’s own build-in texturepacker. But the essential license doesn’t offer Inverse Kinematics - disappointing. For that feature, i’d need the Pro version at $289 -oh pricey!

I would appreciate any feedback on these tools if you agree they’re worth using or not! Please add your own suggestions if i’ve missed a few.

Thanks again guys

 

#44

Guys, I’m going to let you be the very first to get a sneak peak video of my work in progress platform game - with level editor on the device! The video shows how I’m doing walk cycles using only math (just a sine of the timer). I don’t think Spine is necessary for repetitive stuff like this.

Here’s WeTransfer link:

https://www.wetransfer.com/downloads/468578c72a3b5f27dac98724198fc56c20141204123932/c3a465dc1f4fa2031a1305f1657ceffb20141204123932/00f5a9

#45

Wow, it looks awesome. A tutorial would be great :slight_smile:

#46

Thanks Toga! A tutorial on what exactly? The walk cycle?

#47

On first place i would love to learn how to write “cool effects” with just simple trigonometry and transitions. In my opinion it is very important to have cool effects in games. If there would be a cheap effects library i would buy it.

The walk cycle is on second place:-)

#48

I agree on the cool effects: a lot of Corona games are a bit plain-looking and I believe it is because they lack the polish that more famous games have. I’m curious though: did you see any cool effects in my video? Ah, was it the coin “dissolve?” That stuff is super-simple!

#49

yes, the coin dissolve effect. And yes you are right that a lot of cool effects are very “simple” to implement (if you know how:-)). With transitions it would be possible to do a lot of nice effects. but i have a lack of Imagination:-)

#50

Very nice thomas6. Love these edgy/polygon style. The bird is really cool!

Effects: I think these kind of effects are rather important because they give feedback to the player that keeps the player motivated to play. In game feedback and how to implement it would be a nice (blog) article.

#51

Okay, here’s a simple one.

Take the coin-glow.png image attached.

Create three images: coin1, coin2, coin3. All three are the same coin image of course. Place them all in the same position (on top of eachother). Anchorpoints should be in dead center.

Tint the first in pink, tint the second in baby blue, tint the third in green.

Set alphas to .4 or something similar

Set blendmodes to “add”.

Create three transitions:

transition.to(coin1, {time = 1000, alpha = 0, rotation = 190, xScale = 1.3, yScale = 1.3})

transition.to(coin2, {time = 1000, alpha = 0, rotation = 270, xScale = 1.2, yScale = 1.2})

transition.to(coin3, {time = 1000, alpha = 0, rotation = 330, xScale = 1.4, yScale = 1.4})

Voila! Play around with the values in the transitions and remember to remove the images when done!

Let me know how this works out for you!

T

#52

Thanks a lot. very cool. Any additional effects a very welcome :slight_smile:

#53

Thanks for sharing!

#54

Actually, here are some snippets from my code. They won’t really work like this, but you can distill the exact values from this code for timing. Turns out it’s only two image on top of eachother!

newGlow.image = display.newSprite(enemiesImageSheet, enemiesSequenceData) newGlow.image:setFrame(enemiesSheetInfo:getFrameIndex("coin-glow")) newGlow.image.blendMode = "add" newGlow.image:setFillColor(0, 1, 1) newGlow.image2 = display.newSprite(enemiesImageSheet, enemiesSequenceData) newGlow.image2:setFrame(enemiesSheetInfo:getFrameIndex("coin-glow")) newGlow.image2.xScale = -1 newGlow.image2.blendMode = "add" newGlow.image2:setFillColor(1, 0, 1)

And the transition timing:

transition.to(self.image, {time = 2000, xScale = 4, yScale = 4, alpha = 0, rotation = -360, transition=easing.outQuad}) transition.to(self.image2, {time = 2000, xScale = -4, yScale = 4, alpha = 0, rotation = 360, transition=easing.outQuad})
#55

thomas6 could you possibly upload those to Youtube.
I really don’t like downloading large files like this for obvious reasons

Thanks!

#56

Hi MisterK.

Don’t know what the obvious reason is - it’s a .mov file so it’s not going to run any code when you open it with a movie player. Either way, I don’t have a YouTube account so this is the only way for me - sorry!

#57

@thomas6 If you want, I can upload it to YouTube and share the link here?

#58

Youtube account takes 5 minutes to set up.
BB Flashback Express screen recording software is FREE and you can upload to Youtube directly.
I don’t like downloading any file blindly from fileshare client sites - even mov files. They too have been known to get corrupted with links to malicious sites.
NO offence intended 

#59

Hi Rene,

If you’d be willing to do that, that would be cool! I’m a bit too busy for the moment to create accounts and passwords for a one-time thing!

#60

Ok, here is the link to the video: http://youtu.be/aixyWdqiAUU