I do agree, if the game is ready release it !
Interesting development, isn’t it?
Swift offers a script-based language quite similar to Lua, for free, and access to all the Objective C APIs.
I and I’m sure others will be interested to hear Corona’s response to this.
Very interesting! iOS 8 has 3 new APIs: TouchID, HealthKit, and HomeKit. I can’t wait to see what will happen.
It’s too early to speculate what all this means, but I think Objective C and the insanely complex API that is iOS is a real turn off to many developers. Lua is a much easier language to master and the Corona SDK API’s are far easier to work with than Apples. Where I think Swift may have an impact would be for people who want to do Enterprise (or Corona Cards) work and are intimidated by Objective C. I see this as a good thing.
At the end of the day Swift is still only going to build iOS apps, so for those looking to do Cross-platform, Swift has little to no impact. As far as the new API’s go, there is some good stuff in there and opens the door to a bunch of new types of apps to be created.
Now what Corona Labs will do with all of this is still up in the air. Like you we got access to Yosemite, Xcode 6 and Yosemite yesterday and are starting to toy with it. It’s way too early to speculate about what features we will and won’t support. All we can say is we will not officially support Yosemite, Xcode6 and iOS 8 until they are live and we’ve had time to test our stuff thoroughly. We will get you the ability to compile against the beta iOS 8 target some point during the beta period.
Finally, do not go and install Yosemite or iOS 8 on any machine you depend on to work. We know that Corona SDK isn’t working on Yosemite right now, and early beta’s of iOS can render your device somewhere between frustrating and near impossible to use. Only play with these on devices/computers you can afford to be without.
Rob
How about Metal? Will Corona remain dependent on OpenGL ES or will you be able to make calls directly to the A7 processor for the significantly higher graphical performance and lower CPU overhead?
Too early to speculate. A 10x improvement is speed is worth a lot, but also it makes crossPlatform a lot harder to do.
Rob
i’m developing a game using corona. What do you guys recommend, do i stop until the new announcements by corona and apple about ios8 came to public?
I’m afraid that after i spent many time developing and money to the corona liscence, i’ll have to change a bunch of things.
It would be nice to have some very common or promised features in Corona (like printing, or displaying a spinner during the completion of o for statement, or the ability to build for Windows, announced 5 months ago). Corona can’t compare with Swift for the moment but things could be change if some company could provide a compiler to “build for Android”.
For the time being, Corona is doing the job, as far as I’m concerned I will take a look to Swift but hope Corona will keep going on and improve.
@Ziad.Ali, the announcements by Apple this week really shouldn’t have any impact on your current app development plans. It will be a good 3-4 months before iOS 8 and such becomes available to build for. Even then Corona SDK will be building for the new operating system. This literally has no impact on people who want to use Corona SDK to build apps.
@jch_apple, the Windows support is getting closer. It’s very time consuming to move a product with the complexity of Corona SDK to another platform. Swift has ZERO value to the Android market. Even if someone ported the language to build for Android, you still have radically different SDK’s to build for iOS and Android. Corona bridges that. Think of Swift as the “Lua” in the equation. Lua is Lua, but Corona SDK is the parts that let you do the things you want to do (draw images, interact with them, etc.)
Rob
I was about to purchase to get the graphics 2.0 and the newOutline working, but I’m stuck. What guarantee do i have that if I shell out $588 today I can still build/submit to Apple 6-7 months from now… or am I missing something here entirely.
@Nemens You will be able to build for iOS 8. Apple won’t force iOS 8 builds on developers until iOS 8 has been out a while. As long as your building with the latest public build, you will be okay.
Rob
Apple have no plans to stop accepting apps made using third party sdks afaik.
However, unfortunately, when using a third party sdk you have no gaurentees as to whether they will be here 6 months from now, a year from now etc etc. It’s all part and parcel of the game. Like who knows if even the likes of Gremlin Interactive will be here x amount of years from now? (A joke of course 
)
It’s a question no one can answer. I have asked other sdks and third party tools similar questions, and they cannot give a definitive answer. Why? Because of the nature of the industry. Startups are appearing and disappearing day by day in this fast moving tech world.
You just have to use your best judgement, based on research and stand by your decision 
Sorry if that sounded all doom and gloom
@Rob thanks for the reply. I know just recently Apple required that developers submit with at least 5.1.1 - I guess I fear that since they invested so much into Swift they will expedite Xcode 6/Swift etc. etc.
@Gremlin Interactive thank you as well for your response - appreciated. I understand what you’re suggesting. Part of my research is asking around.
You are welcome. I can tell you that Corona has as large of a user base as the best of them. So imho your in safe hands here.
All the best!
Apple won’t do it until those OS’s are out and there will be a time period before they start forcing people to use Xcode 6. I doubt they will ever force Swift on anyone. Objective C, C, C++ are all still valid languages to write in even with Swift. There are too many lines of code out there in the millions of apps that forcing them all to switch to Swift would be political suicide on Apple’s part.
Rob
Yup. Google has Go and now Apple has Swift. Everyone happy. Corona SDK won’t be affected at all in a negative way. If anything, as Rob indicated in another post, this may be a good thing as more people can write plugins using Enterprise + Swift…
As I mentioned, Corona is doing the job and I understand that going to a new platform like Windows is very hard. I didn’t mentioned a very important point, Corona Labs is taking care of us, having people like you answering to forums, preparing tutus and working sample for everything. As far as I’m concerned, Corona is a very good choice, offering ability to test and develop without spending a cent and upgrading to other plans if necessary.
Whilst you are right, it wouldn’t surprise me what sort of technical suicide Apple do. If I was Apple I would be absolutely petrified of the Android hardware that’s available now for a quarter of the price of an iPad (probably why they are desperately sueing people regarding case shapes). Once people realise trendy isn’t worth the money, they will replay the Apple II / Macintosh scenario again.
Having said that, this would be extreme even for them. I am not worried about Corona though, and I wouldn’t worry if I was a developer. Corona seems to be large enough with a big enough user base to cope with changes, and this will be Priority 1 for them - not so much getting it working on the Desktop, but making sure their produced apps are compatible with iOS 8. This isn’t likely to be a big problem, I wouldn’t have thought, because if Corona have difficulty making their apps work on iOS 8, the general ecosystem will find it a nightmare and it would kill the app store overnight, medium term this is their cash cow.
Corona apps are , I guess, just lua running on top of a set of libraries that provide the system functionality.
It is much easier than (say) producing a port than generates for the Desktop platform which requires a whole new set of libraries for an entirely different API. Though this itself isn’t too difficult, the problem is that there is an enormous amount of checking involved to make it work. I’ve written emulators in the past, and emulating the CPU/Hardware isn’t usually that difficult (though on 386 systems it was interesting …) but getting every weird case usage working isn’t that easy. (Incidentally, Corona should perhaps be clearer about what is and isn’t allowed - I’ve seen code that modifies internal object, code that access tables that are clearly meant to be hidden).
This is hugely important. In some ways, There are things about Corona I’d like to change (chaining methods !) but what it does have is an extensive support network, both people like Rob and the users themselves.
There are an awful lot of systems out there, some are really smart but if you look at the forum there is often not very much activity, or it is a company of 2 or 3 people. Sometimes the people are very helpful, but objectively Corona is far less likely to shut down than a company with one developer. Indeed, one product I looked at, its main developer wrote a blogpost along the lines of ‘not making enough money, development is likely to stall’ which from a developer POV is suicide no matter how good the product is.
Swift doesn’t make Objective-C obsolete. They run in the same compiler and will run side-by-side in the same project, so not only should Swift not have any major negative effect on the Corona SDK, it will actually be easier for the team to start incorporating bits and pieces of Swift into the Corona SDK. They should even be able to concentrate on the areas where Swift will do the most good.
I think Metal will be a more time-consuming conversion. But Open GL isn’t going away.
As with any iOS update, there will obviously need to be some changes in the SDK and new apps being submitted after it is released may want to make sure they are on the latest version.
Personally, I use Corona because of the cross platform capabilities. (Really looking forward to Windows RT!) Developers that are strictly iOS will no doubt want to evaluate if they want to switch to Swift. After looking at the language, I can say that development time will definitely be higher with Swift (Its so fast-and-easy to program with LUA), but it should also perform better and open up more options (and is free, of course), so I suspect it will be better for some and not-so-much for others.
Dan