Hi everybody,
I'm following the corona growth since many months and I think it's time to ask some questions.

A tool for iphone and android development sounds great, but it can be hard to distinguish it among flash/actionscript and html5/css/javascript solutions.

However if I'm here, it's because I really want to be convinced that Corona is indeed a better, faster multi platform solution.
I had a very bad experience with 3rd party development tools with an antic software called SatelliteForms by pumatech when I coded games for palmOS (in an another life). One day, Pumatech decided to stop the software and I was ... caught and stupid.
Still ... I know how rapid development sytem and well thought tool made by people who know what to do can save many many time coding and even be fun to discover : that's why I can't help myself getting exciting by your corona sdk !

I had somme questions (I remember) :
- ok for android : is there a windows corona sdk version coming ?
- -this one is important- : Corona can talk with web servers ?
I mean, If I plan to develop a kind of web browser game (when data are stored on web), making it an app (iphone or android) (ok it's a web brower game without web browser but you know what kind of social game I mean....), how would it work :
solution 1 : make the app, find a way to communicate with the app and server via php (as I would do if my app was a flash game using php)
solution 2 : corona does the job, the app can communicate with the online storage server
solution 3 : there is no way to do that, corona makes app that only store data on the mobile devices.

That's a pretty long post, but I felt the need to introduce myself.
Thx for reading.
Any answer would be welcomed.

I had somme questions (I remember) :

- ok for android : is there a windows corona sdk version coming ?
This is a request we are seeing.

- -this one is important- : Corona can talk with web servers ?
yes. you can use luasockets which is built into corona, and a high priority request is async http. But Corona does support http://send/request and you can store any data on your server.

carlos

Thx for your answer Carlos.
You're working on a really impressive project.

( so my check list : -first get a mac, -second get corona :)

As far as your checklist goes, I know powermax.com is an authorized Apple reseller that has pretty good prices, especially their used macs (and free shipping I believe).

And about talking with a webserver, I would suggest:

- signing up for a free google appspot account (very reliable, and you have to have A LOT of bandwidth before they start charging, and even then, very affordable).

- use python on your appspot account to process the "messages" sent with your app (use json or something like that).

Thx for the advice jonbeebe.
Python seems more obscur to me than php but I really appreciate you share your tips :)

@Antheor: I'm also a PHP developer as well. Today I went searching for an alternative to Google App Engine because I wanted a way to connect to the Facebook API and have a "friends leaderboard" within my app (using web popups) but I didn't want to learn Python and this is what I found:

http://www.Kodingen.com/

I signed up and found that it is VERY easy to get started (even easier than signing up for a shared server), and this is what they offer (off the top of my head):

- Free to sign up

* 1gb of transfer/month, can be upgraded for only a couple dollars per month though. I plan on maximizing this by using the server ONLY to pass information to and from the php files (no images).

* 5 databases (and yes, you can use PHP + MySQL).

* easy ftp access to upload your scripts.

* instant signup (click a confirmation link in an email and you're good to go)

* is on the cloud so it scales, much like Google App Engine

* a bunch of other things I didn't pay attention to because I didn't need anything else but the above.

Hope that helps!

Very interesting indeed :)

Antheor, This might be a possible solution for the type of app you want to build. I've been looking at it and downloaded the demo although I haven't had time to try it yet. The best think about it is you don't need PHP or Python. It's in Lua on which Corona is based, so you only need to use/ master one language:

http://barracudaserver.com/products/BarracudaDrive/LuaServerPages.lsp

http://barracudaserver.com/

Also the people at Real Time Logic are very supportive: Below is the email in which they pointed me to a cloud solution that actually will host the BaraccudaDrive Server / Lua Server Pages: (The licensing he's talking about is for application server usage instead of file server usage)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You should not be concerned about licensing. You need one business license, which will be $85 -- i.e. the small version since you are not using the server for it's file server functionality. See the following page for the pricing:
http://barracudaserver.com/products/BarracudaDrive/purchase.lsp

I suggest that you use an online Linux server.
We have for some time tested Volume drive, a very cheap Linux provider and their service has been rock solid.
We have also created an installation script for their server.

Do the following:

Go to: http://volumedrive.com/order/
Select VPS Package 1, sign up, and pay the $5.
You must select Ubuntu 9.10 32 bit as operating system.

You will receive an email after some time. Make sure you change the password in the control panel and in your Linux VM by remoting in using SSH.

Login using SSH and run the 3 following commands:
apt-get install wget
wget http://barracudaserver.com/products/BarracudaDrive/BarracudaDrive.ubuntu.install
source BarracudaDrive.ubuntu.install

The installation script will ask you to select an admin user and password.
The script will also ask you if you want to install a BitTorrent plugin. Select "no" since you are not using this server for personal use.

You can browse to the server as soon as the script has installed the server. Login using the credentials you selected when running the installation script. You can mount/map the server using WebDAV and directly develop your LSP code on the online server.

Note that a BarracudaDrive application can optionally have a .preload script. This is probably where you should put the bulk of your AI code. You can access functions in the .preload scripts in LSP pages by prepending app.functionname() -- i.e. the .preload script is available as Lua table "app" in LSP pages.

Unpack some of our LSP plugins and study the code. You may also want to download and run our tutorial:
http://barracudaserver.com/online-demos.html
BarracudaDrive is developed using the Barracuda Embedded Web Server so you can use the complete LSP API provided by the Barracuda Embedded Web Server in BarracudaDrive.

Good luck with your project. I hope it works out for you.

a

b

c

:) Thx for your answer tokyodan.

The corona community is really cool.

Just one more word to say that I made the jump !

A mac just for corona !

see you soon :)

@ Antheor, just want to say I'm glad to see someone of my vintage finding his way here. I too was in the trenches with Satellite Forms starting all the way at the beginning before Puma and recall all the trials and tribulations. In the backdrop was the need to learn CodeWarrior C or ignore it and then came GNU tools for Palm etc but SF was the ticket for the speed to market and then the carpet got yanked out.

I think the IOS space has already seen its share of similar stories (Torgue, GS etc). My feeling is that we have a good thing going with ANSCA and Corona and we need to help them prosper and succeed as much as they need to help us prosper and succeed. In other words, all the talk about what we need from ANSCA is great but we also need to remember that they have a business to run, rent to pay, families to look after etc.

Lets not cut the branch we're sitting on... yet again! ANSCA please don't become a statistic like many before you have done. Please?

ksan, I thought I was the only one with Satellite Forms ....:)
Anyway, thx for your word

I'm sure we have plenty stories to exchange. Its all coming back slowly...

welcome @antheor

:-)

c