I have looked everywhere (youtube, udemy, books etc) to find something to learn corona sdk but nothing works! Images dont show the way they are supposed to (size and placement). It’s impossible to learn anything if the learningmaterial is wrong and no explanation is given. Would be most grateful if someone could give some advice on where to go to start learning.
Thanks
Hi and welcome to the Corona community.
There are loads of tutorials and guides here: http://coronalabs.com/resources/tutorials/getting-started-with-corona/
There is also loads of sample apps on the Corona welcome screen.
By the sounds of your issue regarding image size and placement it probably relates to your config.lua.
Open one of the sample apps via the Corona simulator and take a look around the code to see how it works.
Best to start on the Hello World sample first and take it from there.
Good Luck !
Hi Anders, in addition to what Icy Spark mentioned, we also have our “Guides” as part of our documentation system:
http://docs.coronalabs.com/guide/index.html
The reason you are struggling with most of the 3rd party tutorials has to do with a change we made last summer to move to our new “Graphics 2.0” OpenGL engine. This new engine brought a bunch of changes that fixes up problems in our old API like somethings drawing at X, Y meant drawing the top, left at X, Y where other times it meant drawing the center at X, Y. We made sure every thing’s X, Y means center now. We also stopped using a concept called reference points as a way to let you change the meaning of what X, Y means to an object and use a new construct called Anchor Points. We also modernized our color system from the antiquated 0…255 per color value to 0…1 giving you access to a wider range of colors than before.
We really couldn’t this without breaking changes. However, you can in most cases add this line:
graphicsCompatibility = 1
in your config.lua where you set the width and height and your code will behave as the old engine would expect, making those tutorials work like they should.
There is one other breaking change. We used to use a sprite library that we’ve been warning the community for a while now that we were going to remove. We did that as well. If you’re code uses a line like: sprite = require(“sprite”), and you feel you need to continue using the old sprite library, you can download it from
https://github.com/coronalabs/framework-sprite-legacy
If you want to learn more about moving Graphics 1 based code to Graphics 2 based code, you can read the migration guide here:
Thank you very much for that detailed explaination. Coming from only having used software like GameMaker and GameSalad I realize that there is a lot to learn even if I understand the concepts of loading images and sounds as variables and manipulatiing the with the use of attributes such as x, y, opacity/alpha and so on. Guess “start small” is my new motto from here on 
Thanks again.
I don’t have any experience with Gamesalad and a little with GameMaker, but their approach is different as they start visual and let you add code when necessary. Corona SDK is more start with code which is something programmers are more accustomed to. I like to describe it like this. When you start with a tool like GS or GM, you’re like an artist with a blank canvas. Then you grab brushes and paint (i.e. images, sprites) and start painting. Some people struggle with this because they can’t imagine something out of nothing. Now abstract that another step and a programmer steps up to the blank canvas and using words, numbers and symbols tell the artist how to paint the scene and oh, by the way, you might just have to tell them how to build the brush and paint too.
Hi and welcome to the Corona community.
There are loads of tutorials and guides here: http://coronalabs.com/resources/tutorials/getting-started-with-corona/
There is also loads of sample apps on the Corona welcome screen.
By the sounds of your issue regarding image size and placement it probably relates to your config.lua.
Open one of the sample apps via the Corona simulator and take a look around the code to see how it works.
Best to start on the Hello World sample first and take it from there.
Good Luck !
Hi Anders, in addition to what Icy Spark mentioned, we also have our “Guides” as part of our documentation system:
http://docs.coronalabs.com/guide/index.html
The reason you are struggling with most of the 3rd party tutorials has to do with a change we made last summer to move to our new “Graphics 2.0” OpenGL engine. This new engine brought a bunch of changes that fixes up problems in our old API like somethings drawing at X, Y meant drawing the top, left at X, Y where other times it meant drawing the center at X, Y. We made sure every thing’s X, Y means center now. We also stopped using a concept called reference points as a way to let you change the meaning of what X, Y means to an object and use a new construct called Anchor Points. We also modernized our color system from the antiquated 0…255 per color value to 0…1 giving you access to a wider range of colors than before.
We really couldn’t this without breaking changes. However, you can in most cases add this line:
graphicsCompatibility = 1
in your config.lua where you set the width and height and your code will behave as the old engine would expect, making those tutorials work like they should.
There is one other breaking change. We used to use a sprite library that we’ve been warning the community for a while now that we were going to remove. We did that as well. If you’re code uses a line like: sprite = require(“sprite”), and you feel you need to continue using the old sprite library, you can download it from
https://github.com/coronalabs/framework-sprite-legacy
If you want to learn more about moving Graphics 1 based code to Graphics 2 based code, you can read the migration guide here:
Thank you very much for that detailed explaination. Coming from only having used software like GameMaker and GameSalad I realize that there is a lot to learn even if I understand the concepts of loading images and sounds as variables and manipulatiing the with the use of attributes such as x, y, opacity/alpha and so on. Guess “start small” is my new motto from here on
Thanks again.
I don’t have any experience with Gamesalad and a little with GameMaker, but their approach is different as they start visual and let you add code when necessary. Corona SDK is more start with code which is something programmers are more accustomed to. I like to describe it like this. When you start with a tool like GS or GM, you’re like an artist with a blank canvas. Then you grab brushes and paint (i.e. images, sprites) and start painting. Some people struggle with this because they can’t imagine something out of nothing. Now abstract that another step and a programmer steps up to the blank canvas and using words, numbers and symbols tell the artist how to paint the scene and oh, by the way, you might just have to tell them how to build the brush and paint too.