Introducing Corona Support for Windows Phone 8

21 October 2014

Introducing Corona Support for Windows Phone 8

We are very happy to announce v1 support for Windows Phone 8!

For now, support for WP8 is done via CoronaCards, which brings a lot of flexibility to how Corona developers can start developing for WP8. CoronaCards is a version of the Corona platform (running the usual Corona Lua code) that can be embedded into any native app and that allows developers to also hook in any native functionality via a native/Lua bridge.

There is an unlimited trial for CoronaCards for WP8, so download the bits right away and start building WP8 apps and games! You can see more about how to get started with CoronaCards for WP8 in our guides and videos. You will need a Windows 8.1 machine, along with Visual Studio (of which there are free versions). We currently build Windows Phone 8 apps and games, which also run on Windows Phone 8.1 devices.

If you are an existing Corona developer, you rely heavily on the Corona Simulator. When building for WP8, this will largely stay the same: we will add Windows Phone skins to a daily build in the next few days and you will be able to use the Corona Simulator to work on all your Lua code (as usual) and then just do builds quickly inside Visual Studio and CoronaCards.

Licensing

We want all Corona developers to build for WP8 as soon as possible, so starting now ALL purchases of Corona SDK Pro and Corona Enterprise will include a CoronaCards for WP8 license. We are also giving ALL current Pro and Enterprise developers a license of CoronaCards for WP8 (with the same expiration date as your existing Pro or Enterprise license). You should see that appear in your account in the next day.

There is a guide on how licensing works here.

Support

As always, we have a specific CoronaCards for WP8 forum where you can ask questions and discuss. There are a good number of valuable threads already in there from our beta testers.

Finally, I’d like to thank the Corona team (all of whom worked very hard on this), our contacts at Microsoft (who have been great to work with), as well as all the beta testers that have been using the product for the last month or so.

There are several games built with CoronaCards for WP8 that are already in the Windows Phone app store, including OmNomster, Basketball Superstar, Bloody Monsters, My Boo and Toilet Time! Check them out – several of these have millions of downloads on iOS and Android and are sure to do equally well on Windows Phone!