From the Forum — Issue #44

31 October 2014

From the Forum — Issue #44

Welcome to the latest installment of From the Forum. In this series, guest blogger Alex Jackson highlights outstanding threads from the Corona Forum. The goal is to bring attention to the most captivating, interesting, and thought-provoking discussions taking place in our very own backyard.

Please visit the forum to join these conversations or start your own!

1. Collision pointers

When developing your game, getting the collisions to feel natural is the first thing you work on, and usually the last thing you tweak. It can be a very delicate balance between making your character seem like a hero or heroine but still human enough to fall through that sewer pipe, giving your player that visceral thrill and making them want to play again.

Recently a discussion took place in the forums regarding fine-tuning collisions and when they would occur. It seemed like certain collisions would only be caught certain times, and others they would be completely missed by the Box2D physics system. Fortunately, some tips were provided that seemed to help out the developer.

Head on down to the original thread to check out some tips that could come in handy when you’re working towards making the next great mobile platformer. Have a suggestion of your own? Throw it in!

http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/51661-collisions-on-occasion-seem-to-be-missed-using-latest-build-2393

2. Streamline development, saves you time and tucks you in at night

Sometimes programmers stumble upon some great programming gems. Some cosmically empowered Corona developers have put together (individually) some tools that, when combined, form like Voltron to make a powerful robot of efficiency.

I was tipped off about the potent cocktail by distinguished developer schroederapps. He rightly noticed that when you couple Renato’s script for icon creation on Mac machines with the “right-click to do everything” regarding TestFlight beta testing provided by MochiBits, you essentially cut out about 40 steps from your distribution process, letting folks start testing your apps more quickly, letting you fix things sooner, and making you an app dev superstar in the process.

Really, if you are releasing to iOS (or just want a better way to control beta testing) head to the below links and see how easy getting started with TestFlight can be.

http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/52171-icons-generation-for-corona-with-1-click-mac-only/
http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/32715-right-click-app-to-prep-payload-and-upload-to-testflight/

3. Keep an eye on that keyboard height

This is another in my long line of PSAs for Corona SDK developers. For those of you that want to use the native keyboard but are having a bear of a time making your app’s size change dynamically based on the size of the keyboard, the size of the device and the dimensions of your app, please keep an eye on the below thread. Corona engineers are working diligently to allow us to detect keyboard height.

It’s been a bit of a struggle, if the comments in the thread are any clue. Give it a read and subscribe to the thread so you can be the first to know when you can take advantage of this new feature!

Admin NOTE: This is new feature being added to Corona SDK.  Daily build 2482 now has this panning support for iOS only.  We are working on Android support.

http://forums.coronalabs.com/topic/50905-detect-keyboard-height

About Alex

Alex Jackson is an indie developer and the founder of Panc Software, specializing in retro-style gaming. He has created several mobile applications, enjoys long walks on the beach, pixel art, and reading the Corona forums. Contact him by email or follow him on Twitter: @pancsoftware. Check out his new game Crosstown Smash on iOS, Android, and Amazon devices!