App of the Week: Fun Run

07 January 2013

App of the Week: Fun Run


Android, iPad, Mobile App of the Week

Fun RunFun Run is a multiplayer, cross-platform game that allows players to partake in an action-packed race. Topping the App Store charts, Fun Run has secured its place as #1 in both the action and racing categories and garnered thousands of positive reviews from fans on iOS and Android alike. Just today, Fun Run soared to #3 free game on the App Store, (following Google Maps!).

In Fun Run, your cute character moves forward automatically, but in order to avoid obstacles and outrun opponents, you must jump by pressing an arrow at the bottom right of the screen. As you make a dash for the finish line, racing against either friends or random opponents, you can slow fellow racers by hurling weapons such as saw blades and lightning bolts. Of course, your opponents are likely to throw similar objects in your direction.

Fun Run - Top 3Fun Run is a simple, addicting game that takes a bit of practice and strategy to master. The more you play, the better familiarized you become with the track, making the obstacles more predictable. Join in on the fun and head over to the App Store or Google Play for a free download!

Honorable Mention

What We Mean

What We Mean

What We Mean shares a captivating collection of poetry based on love letters between the developer’s (J. A. Fisher’s) grandparents during World War II. As a poetry lover and history buff, I absolutely loved the compilation of beautiful poems inspired by the original content from the letters. J. A. Fisher also shares 20 blackout poems – by redacting sections of his grandfather’s letters, he simulates a poetic War Department Censurer. What We Mean offers a unique, one-of-a-kind experience that you can enjoy from the App Store.

inna
25 Comments
  • Jordan Schuetz
    Posted at 15:10h, 07 January

    I play this game! I didn’t know that it was made with Corona! Thats awesome, I love that game. What multiplayer service did you use for the game?

  • Marc
    Posted at 15:56h, 07 January

    It looks great.
    Would have been useful to give the name of the makers of Fun Run, and also which features from Corona made this game easier to develop.
    But the most important : what service provides the online multiplayer functionality so we can see how to integrate it in our own games.
    Can you clarify? Thank you 🙂

    • Martin Sangolt
      Posted at 21:11h, 10 January

      We are 6 students behind this game project – some of whom also is behind the game studio DirtyBit, which released the game.

      The network service was internally made by three programmers of DirtyBit.

  • Alex M
    Posted at 21:36h, 07 January

    Yet again corona labs chooses an app that isn’t really an app of the week since according to apple it was submitted in september 2012, yet it still wins 6 months later, when it just so happens to be ranking highly on the app store.The selection process seems to get worse each week, you may as well kill app of the week entirely. Choosing employees a few weeks ago sucked but this is just getting stupid now. The search function is totally broken so I can’t even search the showcase and find this app there, if it even is there at all.

    • J. A. Whye
      Posted at 22:41h, 07 January

      App of the Week/Month does NOT have to be a new app. It could be an app CL just found out about that was published 6 months or a year ago.

      Which is good news for those of us passed by — we can always hold out hope that the judges will FINALLY recognize the brilliance of our apps at some point and give us a prize! 😉

      Jay

      • theName
        Posted at 07:34h, 10 January

        If something is good for marketing then it is brilliant.

    • Scott
      Posted at 09:37h, 08 January

      Why did choosing employees a few ago suck? I think Rob and Corona Geek are good additions to CL.

    • theName
      Posted at 07:29h, 10 January

      Hype is everything. At least here. And almost every other place.

  • J. A. Whye
    Posted at 22:49h, 07 January

    Oh, the first link in the article up above links to Fun Run in the Corona Labs showcase. And while you do have to click around for it, they do have a Corona SDK badge on the Fun Run page on their site. Looks like a legit win to me.

    Jay

  • Dean
    Posted at 00:22h, 08 January

    Another constructive and useful message from Alex M, where is Rob, can you please write something as ridiculous so we can get it out of the way.

    But seriously Alex, I am just guessing here, you don’t seem to be happy with Corona, why oh why do you still hang around here? What are you gaining out of this?

    I am telling you there are other tools out there that are 100 times better than Corona, I would recommend you spend your time and talent with them. Corona does not deserve you, you deserve better.

  • Vik
    Posted at 03:58h, 08 January

    does anyone know what online service these guys are using?

  • Inna Treyger
    Posted at 15:39h, 08 January

    Thanks for the support guys! 🙂

    Alex – You should check out the App of the Week rules here: https://www.coronalabs.com/blog/2012/05/07/app-of-the-weekmonth-updated-rules/.
    These should clear up any outstanding questions you may have about the selection process.

    -Inna

    • theName
      Posted at 07:36h, 10 January

      there was something about App of the week helping developers with marketing of apps. This one helps corona in marketing corona.

  • Marc
    Posted at 23:47h, 08 January

    In case nobody from CoronaLabs saw the question asked several times in the comments section (…) :

    – What multiplayer service did you use for the game?
    – What service provides the online multiplayer functionality so we can see how to integrate it in our own games?
    – Does anyone know what online service these guys are using?

    In case we would be interested to use it and/or subscribe to Corona Sdk, you know.

    • theName
      Posted at 07:31h, 10 January

      that is the question also I have. Is there an answer?

    • Martin Sangolt
      Posted at 21:16h, 10 January

      The network service was made internally by us.

      • Vik
        Posted at 15:13h, 11 January

        First congratulations, the online service works fab

        does that mean you guys are hosting this on your own server?

        did you use anything like noobhub?

        any helpful advice to someone who wants to start creating an online multiplayer game would be fab. The services I have looked at seem quite expensive

        • Erlend
          Posted at 05:34h, 13 January

          Hi,

          Thank you!
          We use the amazon ec2 instances, as they where easy to scale and place where we need them. We have written our own programs that run on the servers using java and the Netty project. Most of our communication goes over tcp using the lua sockets that corona supports.

          Amazon gives you a free tier one server for a year that you can use to develop on and then scale from this when the need arise. This was how we started.

  • Andreas
    Posted at 00:08h, 09 January

    I agree with Marc – these infos would be most enlightening.

    Best,
    Andreas

  • Steve
    Posted at 15:59h, 09 January

    Simply in the interest of honesty and openness, a courteous answer to the repeated question would be nice.

  • David
    Posted at 17:41h, 10 January

    Hey everyone – short answer to what these guys are using in terms of online service: we don’t know yet! We are trying to find out 🙂

    I do know one thing: it is not Corona Cloud (yet!).

    When we find out, we’ll post.

    Thanks!

  • Erlend
    Posted at 05:40h, 13 January

    Hi,

    We used the amazon ec2 instances, as they where easy to scale and place where we need them. We have written our own programs that run on the servers using java and the Netty project. Most of our communication goes over tcp using the lua sockets that corona supports.

    Amazon gives you a free tier one server for a year that you can use to develop on and then scale from this when the need arise. This was how we started.

    • Ed
      Posted at 17:16h, 30 January

      Erlend, Thanks for the advice. I’m building a turn based game, but I’ll definitely take a look at AWS if I don’t make it into the Corona Cloud beta.

      Fun Run is awesome. It’s like Mario Kart as a platformer.

  • CG
    Posted at 23:53h, 14 January

    I understand, you are saying you “We have written our own programs that run on the servers using java and the Netty project. Most of our communication goes over tcp using the lua sockets that corona supports.” My background is network engineering, so to get more specific do you mean UDP and not TCP? TCP has a lot of header information that slows packets down, most/all multiplayer gaming uses UDP for it’s smaller and quicker size / transmission. UDP isn’t a rebuilding protocol like TCP is (packet gets dropped it doesn’t rebuild the stream)………

    So, ok let’s start with lua sockets – did you do that Natively in Corona, or did you have to go with Corona Enterprise?

    That’s the deciding factor. Enterprise, from what I understand can be expensive.

    –=================================================================
    On a side note, does anyone have any suggestions for a multiplayer service, that can do real time and could be natively implemented into Corona WITHOUT having to pay for Enterprise?

    -CG

    • Chris Evans
      Posted at 20:17h, 01 March

      LuaSockets 2 are in Lua and do not require access to Enterprise edition. It’s in the Corona Docs.