[Disclaimer: This blog has no intentions to be a definitive opinion on Lua or Corona development. It is just an opinion, under the perspective of a non-professional developer, working for the first time with both technologies. If you find anything wrong with the expressed opinions, please feel free to comment and I will revise the text.]
I had lots of progresses in the past days, not only with Lua, but also with Corona. I bought the SDK, which gave me access to beta 2. Although I am not using any features from the beta code, it seemed to be very stable and with good potential.
I spent most of my time setting the interface (portrait and landscape modes), also learning the correct way to align text (thanks to all support coming from Corona forums!) and positioning/animating my main icons. Here a list of situations I found:
– As I mentioned, my app has portrait and landscape modes. In landscape, users will see a full 480×320 picture rendered. In portrait, they must see part of the “big picture”, in 320×480. I couldn’t find a way to use just one big image and position it accordingly. At the end, my temporary solution was to use 2 images, one for each scenario. My main concern here is the total size of the application, as I am duplicating files;
– I found a bug in rotating the status bar (it does not rotate at this moment). Ansca already flagged this as an official bug (see the image below);
App in portrait mode, with full menu closed (see the arrow).
Checking the current design, plus considering my and Corona’s limitations, I have reviewed some features and changing a little the application scope. Also, getting involved with Lua, I decided to review some coding too (that’s why I am not posting it here). I am cleaning the current code and I will post an update late today or tomorrow.
Overall, I am starting to enjoy Lua and looking forward to finish this app, in order to start a new one (probably a game).
App in landscape mode, with full menu opened.