Corona: tvOS and Apple TV (Alpha)

Corona: tvOS and Apple TV (Alpha)

Today, we’re happy to announce that an alpha version of tvOS (Apple TV) is available, starting in daily build 2015.2765.

Alpha vs Beta

Corona’s support for tvOS is currently in an alpha state. In a nutshell, this means we have proven that Corona can work on tvOS. Concretely, the ‘PewPew’ demo sample works, but almost no testing has been done beyond that.

We’ve learned it’s generally a bad idea to release things too early. As a result, we normally choose to delay things until they reach Beta-level maturity.

However, we felt it was important to give you an opportunity to play with tvOS/Apple TV — mainly because we think you’ll want the extra time to think about how you can migrate your existing titles to this platform.

New Interaction Model

While tvOS shares its heritage with iOS, there are many fundamental differences beyond just a much larger screen size. The biggest difference is touch. Unlike iOS, there is no touch interaction in tvOS.

Instead, the primary interaction model with Apple TV (and other TV platforms, for that matter) is via a remote. In the case of Apple TV’s remote, the remote can also act as a mini-game controller (Apple calls this a microgamepad).

In most cases, you will likely have to rethink how your users will interact with your games.

Road to Beta

When will this get to Beta?

It depends. Right now, our priority is bringing Mac App and Win32 App support from Beta to 1.0 quality. Because of that, tvOS sits at a lower priority.

While it may look like the Alpha is pretty far along, it’s not battle-ready in the way that our support for iOS and Android are.

In other words, we took all the low-hanging fruit to quickly put together enough pieces so you can play with AppleTV; however, we estimate a significant amount of work remains, especially in terms of features, polish, and quality.

Therefore, it’s fair to say you should not expect frequent of regular updates until we bring our other projects across the finish line.

Resources

In spite of the low priority and lack of completeness, we think this alpha will be useful for you. You will need time to re-think your games for a much larger screen and a pure game controller-based interaction model. And we will want feedback to help prioritize our tvOS efforts post-Mac/Win32 app.

 

walter
12 Comments
  • Scott
    Posted at 17:37h, 10 November

    you guys forgot to talk about how you guys added input devices for ios

    • Rob Miracle
      Posted at 17:46h, 10 November

      Different post for a different day 🙂 Actually we are waiting on some documentation to post on MFi controllers before we mention it. Those docs should be posted soon.

  • Erich Grüttner D.
    Posted at 18:23h, 10 November

    Great news!!! Thank you CoronaLabs!!!

  • Toxa17
    Posted at 22:38h, 10 November

    Many thanks!!!

  • Carlos G. Varela
    Posted at 23:41h, 10 November

    Thanks guys again! Good input!

  • Jon Howard
    Posted at 01:05h, 11 November

    That’s awesome news – thanks for the update 🙂

  • Nathan
    Posted at 22:03h, 11 November

    Oooh – exciting. Thx Corona!

  • Pasquale
    Posted at 00:50h, 12 November

    Great News!
    Thanks!

  • Graham
    Posted at 04:49h, 12 November

    This is awesome news, understood it isn’t the highest priority, but at least it IS a priority somewhere 🙂
    A definite untapped market. Look forward to what the future may bring.
    May the Win/Mac versions be speedy and bug free 😛

    Thanks guys, you rock!

  • Steve
    Posted at 06:15h, 12 November

    This is great! Thanks Corona folks. So good that you are staying on top of developments and new markets!

  • Terry
    Posted at 13:38h, 12 November

    Most excellent. Doing this not only gives developers another powerful reason to target using Corona as their app framework but it also facilitates the learning curve with delivering to a new device family and user experience. Kudos!

  • Andreas
    Posted at 16:06h, 12 November

    I just used the Coronalabs SDK to compile and run the PewPew demo on the tvOS device without a problem, now I’ll start to port “Freeze! 2 – Brothers”.

    Thanks for this & best
    Andreas