Hi there,
I am looking at moving away from Objective C into Lua but having installed the Corona SDK Build 2013.2100 and several earlier ones the simulator displays an illegible screen (problem is just inside the simulator) whenever I try something simple e.g. print(“Hello World”) Am I missing something? My Macbook OpenGL driver is 1.8, Xcode 4.5 works fine and I have no other graphics issues at all.
Really frustrating as I what to get going! Any help gratefully received!!
Many thanks
Roger
You need to make sure you’re running the latest OpenGL drivers that support OpenGL 2.1 and later. If you run “corona-terminal” it will launch the terminal app which then launches Corona SDK. You can see output messages and one of the first ones will be information about your device. If you can post that string here, it will help us diagnose the issue.
Also, there is a newer build, 2014.2189 which you probably should get, but it won’t help with the OpenGL driver issue.
Rob
will do. I was under the impression that OpenGL drivers could not be updated on the mac? That is updates are released by apple only.
A 2007 Macbook is getting pretty old. Apple requires all new app submissions to be built on iOS 7 as the current SDK, which may require Xcode 5 (though some people have gotten it to work with 4.6 I think). Xcode 5 requires OS-X 10.9 Mavericks.
If you want to just play with it to see what Corona SDK can do for you, you can go to the build archive and get something prior to 2000. Those older builds run on OpenGL 1.x. You can get a build 1262 here: http://coronalabs.com/blog/2014/01/29/apples-ios-7-submission-requirements/
There are two things you need to be aware of using this build. First, it’s the old Graphics 1.0 engine. Starting with builds 2xxx and up, we changed engines (ergo the OpenGL 2.1 requirement) and that build has breaking changes. We deprecated some function calls like setReferencePoint. We changed color’s from 0…255 to 0…1 ranges. All API’s that take an X, Y as parameters are now center based, where as before some were center, others were top, left. All color setting functions should now be consistantly named :setFillColor() where before somethings were like :setTextColor(). The point is, if you try to build a serious app in 1262 and then want to migrate it to a current build (which you will probably need to do before you submit because of Apple and Google’s current requirements), you will have some conversion work to do.
Secondly, Apple has also recently changed their requirements on accepting apps that use the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). Your app cannot include this if you don’t use ads. It’s baked into the core of 1262. You would need to use 2189 or later to avoid this issue. There are also Facebook related changes that would also force you in to 2189 or later if you wanted to use Facebook in your app. Then in August, Google is going to require using AdMob to use a different SDK. We have that in place today, but again, you need 2189 or later to use it.
So basically, you can play around with Corona on your older Mac using an older build, but to release anything, you’re going to need a new Mac. Modern Mac Mini’s are not too expensive and there is also a rental place called MacInTheCloud or something like that where you can use Mac’s over the internet. People have been successful with it.
Rob
sorry for bumping on the topic, but does this issue will be related to windows users?
does windows users also have specific requirements for running the simulator as well?
Yes, in fact it may impact Windows users more. The requirement is still based around OpenGL 2.1 and some older computers don’t have modern enough graphics cards to run Corona SDK. If you can update your video drivers to handle OpenGL 2.1, you should be good, but frequently, on older hardware, typically running XP, you can’t get a more modern driver. Adding a new video card to a desktop might not work without upgrading to Windows 7 or later because some card makers have stopped making XP drivers.
Rob
if it is on the most simplistic features, can we still code in corona without simulator? In case we are discussing about these old hardwares incapabilities.
The simulator has to be open to build apps. Corona Enterprise is built using Xcode, and would not hit this issue. But Enterprise requires a Mac.
Rob
okay then. thanks for the thorough answer rob 
You need to make sure you’re running the latest OpenGL drivers that support OpenGL 2.1 and later. If you run “corona-terminal” it will launch the terminal app which then launches Corona SDK. You can see output messages and one of the first ones will be information about your device. If you can post that string here, it will help us diagnose the issue.
Also, there is a newer build, 2014.2189 which you probably should get, but it won’t help with the OpenGL driver issue.
Rob
will do. I was under the impression that OpenGL drivers could not be updated on the mac? That is updates are released by apple only.
A 2007 Macbook is getting pretty old. Apple requires all new app submissions to be built on iOS 7 as the current SDK, which may require Xcode 5 (though some people have gotten it to work with 4.6 I think). Xcode 5 requires OS-X 10.9 Mavericks.
If you want to just play with it to see what Corona SDK can do for you, you can go to the build archive and get something prior to 2000. Those older builds run on OpenGL 1.x. You can get a build 1262 here: http://coronalabs.com/blog/2014/01/29/apples-ios-7-submission-requirements/
There are two things you need to be aware of using this build. First, it’s the old Graphics 1.0 engine. Starting with builds 2xxx and up, we changed engines (ergo the OpenGL 2.1 requirement) and that build has breaking changes. We deprecated some function calls like setReferencePoint. We changed color’s from 0…255 to 0…1 ranges. All API’s that take an X, Y as parameters are now center based, where as before some were center, others were top, left. All color setting functions should now be consistantly named :setFillColor() where before somethings were like :setTextColor(). The point is, if you try to build a serious app in 1262 and then want to migrate it to a current build (which you will probably need to do before you submit because of Apple and Google’s current requirements), you will have some conversion work to do.
Secondly, Apple has also recently changed their requirements on accepting apps that use the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA). Your app cannot include this if you don’t use ads. It’s baked into the core of 1262. You would need to use 2189 or later to avoid this issue. There are also Facebook related changes that would also force you in to 2189 or later if you wanted to use Facebook in your app. Then in August, Google is going to require using AdMob to use a different SDK. We have that in place today, but again, you need 2189 or later to use it.
So basically, you can play around with Corona on your older Mac using an older build, but to release anything, you’re going to need a new Mac. Modern Mac Mini’s are not too expensive and there is also a rental place called MacInTheCloud or something like that where you can use Mac’s over the internet. People have been successful with it.
Rob
sorry for bumping on the topic, but does this issue will be related to windows users?
does windows users also have specific requirements for running the simulator as well?
Yes, in fact it may impact Windows users more. The requirement is still based around OpenGL 2.1 and some older computers don’t have modern enough graphics cards to run Corona SDK. If you can update your video drivers to handle OpenGL 2.1, you should be good, but frequently, on older hardware, typically running XP, you can’t get a more modern driver. Adding a new video card to a desktop might not work without upgrading to Windows 7 or later because some card makers have stopped making XP drivers.
Rob
if it is on the most simplistic features, can we still code in corona without simulator? In case we are discussing about these old hardwares incapabilities.
The simulator has to be open to build apps. Corona Enterprise is built using Xcode, and would not hit this issue. But Enterprise requires a Mac.
Rob
okay then. thanks for the thorough answer rob