From the Forum — Issue #4

24 January 2014

From the Forum — Issue #4

Welcome to the fourth installment of From the Forum. In this series, guest blogger Alex Jackson will highlight outstanding threads from the Corona Forum. The goal is to bring attention to the most captivating, interesting, and thought-provoking discussions taking place in our very own backyard.

Please visit the forum to join these conversations or start your own!

1. Hey, you got a Game Server in my App Server!

In our quest to become Lua gurus, we as Corona developers start realizing that mastery of a high-level programming language makes life so much easier. If only Lua could be extended to every facet of app design. Many have attempted to achieve the “nirvana” of an app server written exclusively in Lua, and the latest attempt to crack the code looks very promising.

Enter Coronium. Sound catchy, doesn’t it? Lua savant Develephant (@develephant) started a friendly conversation to gauge interest in an app server that would “offer push, data storage, and cloud code, all using Lua as the scripting language on both the front and back-end (no plug-ins).” It’s an incredibly interesting notion and it could be immensely useful!

If you’re interested, head over to the forum thread, take a look at the conversation, and join the Google group to help with the development:

http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/43103-comments-game-server-or-app-server/#entry225924

2. Best way to get from point A to point B?

All Corona developers know and love the transition library. It gives our projects dynamic movement and makes everything more interesting. It’s also probably the second topic (following display objects) that new users tackle when learning the SDK.

However, some folks may have encountered strange behavior when using the transition.cancel() function. It seems as though, when using a “for” loop, implementing a transition.cancel() function from within another transition’s “onComplete” listener for the alpha (this is important since it seems to cause the transition issue) prevents the “onComplete” function from completing in a timely manner. The users who originally reported this behavior noted almost 1500 milliseconds of latency before the function finishes.

If this is happening for you, rejoice — there is a solution and it simply involves adding tags to your transitions. Roll on over to the original thread and see if this helps you out.

http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/42975-issue-with-cancelling-a-transition/#entry223725

3. Isn’t the point of the Corona Simulator to test stuff?

I’m a huge fan of nougat. As far as I’m concerned, the world could be swept clean of all candy except for nougat, and we would all be much better off. Thank goodness I’m not in charge, because there are plenty of people who’d be grabbing pitchforks to drive me out of town.

The same goes for app testing and development. It would be much easier if there was just one computer, one mobile device, and one tablet to develop, test, and release apps for. However, this isn’t the case — we have at least 5 iOS devices to support and hundreds (or even thousands) of devices using various versions of Android. In addition, Mac OS and Windows have different subtleties which need to be addressed. This is why testing on as many actual devices as possible is important before delivering a successful app to market.

Remember this immutable fact: the Corona Simulator is your friend, but it isn’t the “be-all end-all” for app testing. Head over to the link below and weigh in on the role of testing and development.

http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/42495-is-it-safe-to-share-your-final-apk-file-with-developers-for-testing/

About Alex

Alex Jackson is an indie developer and the founder of Panc Software, specializing in retro-style gaming. He has created several mobile applications, enjoys long walks on the beach, pixel art, and reading the Corona forums. Contact him by email or follow him on Twitter: @pancsoftware.