From the Forum — Issue #94

16 October 2015

From the Forum — Issue #94

Welcome to the latest installment of From the Forum. In this series, guest blogger Alex Jackson highlights 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. But wait, there’s more about deeplinking!

Last week, I highlighted a link regarding using new features to allow custom URL hooks to operate normally within Corona-developed apps. It’s an oft-overlooked feature that adds some serious polish to your games and apps, and can pick up where the Social plugin leaves off.

Another developer was having trouble getting the deeplinking to work correctly, specifically with using Maps on certain OSes. They were able to get to the bottom of their problem, and in addition, actually found an interesting way to handle the process. To top it all off, they shared both a really great resource for looking up some popular custom URLs, and the code they used to solve their problem!

Check out the original thread now to see how to incorporate these hooks into your apps.

https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/59576-opening-other-apps-from-corona-app/

2. The next iteration of Coronium WILL be televised

We Corona developers have a pretty good set of options when we are getting our server on. One of the most popular has been Coronium, a Lua-based framework that plays very nicely with other Corona-developed applications. The developer behind it, Develephant, has been devoted to the Corona community, and it shows in the products he is putting out.

Along these lines comes Coronium ACE, which, in Develephant’s own words, “is small, but used properly can build big things, or small things“. There is also a compiled version that runs on the Raspberry PI, making it interesting for IoT applications. It’s scaleable, easily manageable, and can easily be run in pretty much any environment.

New Youtube videos have been added to provide some additional documentation for Coronium ACE, so head over to the original thread and see how you can start using it. Don’t be afraid of the buzzwords; ACE won’t bite!

https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/59392-coronium-ace-preview-one

3. Keep your eye out for new developments with desktop apps

I’m enthralled by the headway made by Corona engineers regarding desktop development. New features and mechanics are being validated for desktop-deployed Corona apps and games faster than I can count. I don’t want anyone else to be left out in the cold, so I wanted to put together some quick links to keep our eyes on, so that we all can benefit from the love Corona is giving desktop these days.

Passing launch arguments during startup (from the command terminal, no less), handling the drag-and-drop mechanic with a desktop icon, and handling the scroll/thumbwheel on computer mice are repped below, and they are all gold. Head down to the threads, read up, and keep an eye out for the builds that incorporate these awesome features!

https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/59353-how-can-we-handle-the-passed-launch-arguments
https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/59624-support-for-drag-file-onto-desktop-app-icon
https://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/59563-mouse-right-click/

About Alex

Alex Jackson is an indie developer and the founder of Panc Interactive, 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: @pancinteractive. Check out his new game Segreta on iOS, Android, Windows Phone and Amazon devices.