Hi Everyone,

I'm new to corona development and I have not officially purchased the corona license yet. Would someone please clarify some doubts I have? I was digging through the forum to see what the difference in terms of restriction for the student license vs. the pro license. But I couldn't find an obvious answer. Are there limitations on the student license? I will like to be able to publish and sell the apps that I create using the corona platform, so I was wondering which license I should get. I'm currently a student, but if there are limitations to the student license, it may make sense to fork out more money ahead of time to buy the pro license. What do you think?

I have another question. Once we publish our apps on the app store, would we need to continue paying for the corona license? Or once we're satisfied with the development, can we maintain the objective c code without having to pay for the corona license? I do not want to be tied to corona forever as long as the app should live in the app world.

Thank you for your answers in advance.

Jen

1. I think the Student/Academic license has been removed for a while now.
2. Get the Indie License instead of the PRO if you are working on one platform only
3. Yes, the fee is an annual subscription

Well, when you sign up with Apple as a developer, you have to keep paying Apple $99 annually to keep your subscription and your apps on the iTunes store. Even if they are free.

Similarly, You might be comfortable maintaining the Objective-C code (but with CoronaSDK, you do not have to bother about Objective-C and there is no Objective-C code) It uses a language called Lua which is easier to use in comparison to Objective-C, Read up on Lua (it will save me from talking about it).

In my opinion, there is a bit of a cost, but the advantages are all well worth the price.

Therefore Ansca has the Free model, i.e. they offer the CoronaSDK for FREE and let you play with it, including allowing you to upload test apps to the device. Then when you are ready to ship your app, you can buy the subscription.

cheers,

?:)

Thanks for the reply!

I thought you can export the Lua code in objective C once you're ready to upload it to app store. So there's objective C code, or one can't modify that? I know objective C but it seems that with corona platform, one can implement things much quickly.

Furthermore, it makes sense to me about the apple's $99 license that we have to pay annually (it's like you're paying them to host/distribute your app), but not the annual fee for Corona SDK once the app is out. I know we have to subscribe once in order to ship out the app, but after that, it's still unclear to me why we have to keep paying for the subscription for Corona once we're done with the development. Are we forced to keep paying the annual fee for corona?

Aaah.. if you want to be the one-track wonder, something like Mili-Vanilli with "Blame it on the Rain" (oh, that was not their's anyways), then you can do the following

1. Purchase a subscription
2. Compile your app
3. Upload to iTunes Store

.
.
.

that's it. Do not renew your subscription. However, if you need to update your app withint he 12 months of your subscription, you are *free* to do so. After that 12 months, if you want to recompile or whatever, you have to pay for the subscription again.

There is *absolutely* no pressure to renew your subscription so there is no *force*.

As for your first part of the question, you are mistaking Corona with some other framework where your Lua code is wrapped around in Objective-C.

I have been an Objective-C developer myself, I have quite a few apps on the store made with Objective-C, but I find it so much easier with Lua and CoronaSDK. However I choose as per the client's requirements and the time/specs of the project.

cheers,

?:)

Thanks again for clarifying my doubts. You've been very helpful. Have you found limitations with Lua/Corona that you couldn't do as oppose to writing the apps in Objective C? How long did it take you to code your first Lua program? Why would your clients care whether you create their apps using Corona SDK or otherwise? When would you recommend using the SDK vs. not?

Thanks again! :)

by the way... there's a 30-day trial limit. What happens if you continue developing pass that time? I haven't had time to play extensively and it's now couple of months later....

1, There used to be a 30-day trial. Now it is free to try till you decide to buy, I doubt if that has been changed.

When I first looked at CoronaSDK, I put it aside for a while and continued to finish my projects that I was working on using Obj-C. It happens, but then when I put time towards CoronaSDK, it is all a different story, I have not been able to put much time to Obj-C for game development.

2. Your question on have I found any limitations is a tricky one. If you are asking me can one do everything with CoronaSDK that one can do with Obj-C? then the answer is NO! CoronaSDK has some limitations in comparison to Objective-C. However the question is, how many of those features would I actively use that limit my development process, practically None. So i can safely use CoronaSDK for most of my projects.

3. How long... it would have been fair if you asked me how long did my first Obj-C program take in the first place. It took me about a week for the first app I wrote with Obj-C. With Lua it took approximately the same time, however it was *not* because Lua was difficult, it was because Lua offered so many more options that I had gotten distracted trying to figure out what to use and what not to use.

4. Why would my clients... Some clients prefer to have Obj-C as they might want to have their internal teams manage the code at a latter stage. Some clients are happy with the turnaround time they can have with CoronaSDK.

5. When would... right, I can chose not to answer this one, but still... One of the factors that determines when is the budget of the client, the project of the client and the time frames that they have associated with it. If they need something more graphical for cheap and fast, then definitely it is using CoronaSDK as I can provide them an app much faster, then in other cases, if I can chose, I would again chose CoronaSDK for the ease of use, I can prototype an app in about 30 minutes that the client can play around with. Using Obj-C I could try that with IB, but it is not the same, I can have physics, tinting, gradients, etc all in simple few lines of code.

I would suggest that you spend some time looking at the code exchange, look at the sample code, if you want to lean some basics, you can have a look at my site http://howto.oz-apps.com there are several articles on "HowTo..."

cheers,

?:)

PS: Mr. Jayant just forgot to say that his brain is something special btw. :)

"1 app coded with Obj-C in 1 week done?"

So it confirms my fisrt conclusion. lol

regards,

i purchased a student license many months ago, and i finally got to the point that i finished my first game, and i have been able to publish it to the app store and android marketplace, no issues with licensing. It is worth the money if you are willing to learn to code in LUA. I had always attempted to learn to program in the past, but every time i tried i got discouraged, coding in LUA has been the perfect warm up so i now have a decent idea of coding and the rules and practices.

check out my games trailer here!: http://youtu.be/Q-zwD9PAUZQ
its called TIRE, i think its pretty sweet for my first game.

Jen, look here: http://developer.anscamobile.com/forms/educators-and-students

-David