The Corona Labs Blog

Happy Holidays! An update on what's coming in 2011

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To Our Corona Developers:

First and foremost, I want to wish you — our Corona SDK development community — safe and happy holidays! Thank you all for your continued support and trust in us and our product. With 2011 upon us, I want to let you know what is ahead and what to expect from us in the first few weeks of January and the first half of the new year:
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  1. Big Announcements Coming Soon
    Stay tuned as we will make two major product announcements in January. While we can’t disclose exactly what they are yet, we can say they will open up mobile development to an even larger market! ;-)
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  2. Unlimited Trial Period
    Effective January, we are no longer going to limit Corona SDK to a 30-day trial period – the Corona SDK trial will be unlimited. We have heard from many of our developers that they want more than 30 days to try out Corona and this is, I believe, a way for developers to really get to know Corona well and understand its full potential.
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  3. Daily Builds
    We are going to have daily build drops of Corona for those of you who want to be on the “bleeding edge.” The mobile world moves fast, and as much as we try to keep a two/three-week development cycle, we also heard from some of you and how you are willing to try out the latest drops with the latest features and bug fixes. So, within the January/February time frame, we will give you daily access to the latest builds of Corona SDK.
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  4. Open Bug Base
    Since we are going to provide you with daily builds of Corona, we also are going to open up and give you access to our bug base so that you can enter and keep track of bugs. This is a winning move for both of us as we collaborate together in strengthening Corona SDK and making it the industry standard for mobile game and graphics.
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  5. Premium Support
    We have also heard that a lot of you want access to premium support. We have been looking at ways to best provide you with the support level that you need in order to create award winning games and applications. We plan on rolling this out fairly soon. In the meantime, if you have any awesome ideas on how we should go about it, please drop us a line.
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  6. More Features
    We published a road map a few weeks ago and we are hard at work in prioritizing the feature set, dependencies, and everything else that comes with adding features to a product. Which also means that we are looking at services which will allow you to vote and like/dislike a feature so you, our developer, can help us prioritize. I know that in-app purchases is one of the top requested features, and that is going in soon, together with Game Center and others. But by having a means for you to vote, we will get a better sense of what features we can implement next and continue on making Corona that much better.

I believe that with the feedback that you continually provide us, we are on our way to making Corona SDK the standard in mobile games. With the combination of daily builds, an open bug base and premium support, I strongly believe we will be well positioned to get there.

Feature implementation, bug fixing, support, and product release cycles are well understood in traditional “brick and mortar” software publishing.  In this fast-changing and fast-paced mobile world, one needs to adjust to the changing landscape fast — traditional software publishing is no longer the norm. As a matter of fact, I strongly believe that successful companies can’t adhere to the traditional publishing model, and what gives us an advantage over our competitors is the fact that we can be quick, nimble and make decisions fast. Open communication and collaboration between you, our developers, and us will be key in the future success of Corona SDK and Ansca Mobile.

When the new year arrives, we will have more information to share. For now, I wanted to let you all know that this is where we are headed the first few months of 2011. And once again, I want to thank you and wish you a safe and happy holiday season.

As always, you can reach me at cicaza@anscamobile.com for any questions, suggestions, amplifications or just to simply say “Hi!” :-)

Happy Holiday!
Carlos

22 Responses to “Happy Holidays! An update on what's coming in 2011”

  1. 3cordDesign

    I have yet to release my first app with Corona as I am busy guy doing this on the side, but I can honestly say this level of communication is what sets Ansca apart from the competition. Merry Christmas guys!

    Reply

  6. Ben

    Very cool. Can’t wait.

    Still deciding between Corona and Cocos2d but you guys are convincing me to take the plunge and go with Corona.

    Keep it up, I’m looking forward to announcements and new features.

    Reply

  7. Oliver

    Have found Corona accidentally as i searched for an android game development framework.unfortunately it’s for mac only.

    To Santa:
    I would like to have a corona sdk for android game development only without iOS and for windows:-)

    Reply

  11. Ruben

    I began developing with Corona few months ago.. and I absolutely love it, so easy to learn!
    Can’t wait to see new features implemented!

    Reply

  12. Michele Foley

    Thx for the tips. You say that content size provide the coordinate system for your Corona code. Considering : width = 320, height = 480, in a landscape locked app. Shouldn’t be width = 480, height = 320, ? If not, it becomes confusing : If I place someting at far right of my screen I should “translate” to far bottom … and what about trying to make things move … What do you, corona veterans, do ?:)

    Reply

  13. Alan Bourke

    Hope it will be the ability to develop on Windows. Why would you go out and get a Mac if you didn’t have one just to target Android using Corona ?

    Reply

  14. sam

    i have three games written in objective-c, after looking at this development environment i cant wait to start creating my next game … need to get a little more into lua. Ive played with many samples and i give this five stars… great job guys. I hope to be one of the featured apps … maybe soon. Seriously, this is the environment to create cross platform applications.

    Reply

  15. Rich

    Definitely hope the news is the ability to develop on windows, nice to see the trial extended

    Reply

  17. Ben

    I think networking to allow for multiplayer games would be a very good/important system to be included in Corona.

    Reply

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