Corona major build release 2016.2949

19 September 2016

Corona major build release 2016.2949

Corona Labs is pleased to announce the immediate availability of build 2016.2949 as a major release.

There are several reasons for this, but the main impetus was recent changes in Apple’s submission process. Because of their new requirements for app submissions, our previous public build (2016.2906) can’t be used by developers submitting apps for iOS/tvOS, and it was not practical to retrofit that build to meet Apple’s new guidelines. Since our next intended public release is at least a month away, we felt it necessary to provide a major release that works with Apple’s new rules.

This major release also includes the iOS 10 SDK — you can now use Xcode 8 and the iOS 10 SDK to build apps, or you can continue with Xcode 7.3 and the iOS 9 SDK.

Starting today, downloading the public build will get you build 2016.2949 instead of 2016.2906.

And more…

In the current development cycle, our engineers have been working hard on addressing infrastructure and core improvements to Corona to make a more stable platform. See the release notes below for a list of many of the changes in this release, including new features which we plan to announce over the next couple of weeks.

One of these features is new “splash screen” controls, a system which will drastically simplify splash screen implementation. Starting with this build, a default Corona-branded splash screen will appear briefly when the app starts. We continue to believe in keeping Corona free to use, but we also need to grow Corona. A few seconds of branding will help improve our brand awareness. For those who want to use their own branding, you can purchase a plugin from the Corona Marketplace for $99/year per user — this will let you use your own image for the splash screen or disable it completely. In summary, the splash screen feature will help us continue to build the best cross-platform 2D app development platform in the market.

As a bonus, we’ve also re-designed the developer portal at portal.coronalabs.com. With this new portal, you have quick access to useful resources like the Corona Ads dashboard, documentation, the Getting Started guide, bug reporting, community forums, and the Corona Marketplace. You can also quickly view your existing subscriptions and access/update your account information.

Release notes (2016.2949)

• macOS: improve reliability of “Copy to device” option on build dialogs; add “Retry” button for when you forget to plug in a device.
• Simulators: add missing “Borderless” skin in iPad Pro size.
• Fixed issue with splash screen code which caused stacktraces to appear for some people when the splash screen was disabled.
• macOS: Removed beta tag from iOS and tvOS building with Xcode 8.0.
• iOS, tvOS: fix issue which prevented apps being submitted to the App Store.
• macOS: Added Back key support for Android skins in Simulator (Hardware→Back).
• Core: Fixed crash when custom shader contains empty table. Casenum 5894470.
• Core: Added ability to read/write custom “app” preferences to storage. See APIs system.getPreference(), system.setPreferences(), and system.deletePreferences().
• Android: Fixed a potential crash that can occur when an app with notification permissions is updated to remove said permissions. Casenum 40070.
• Windows: Fixed bug where “mouse” event would not provide a double right click or double middle click’s 2nd down phase.
• macOS, Windows: fix issue with app sometimes exiting when a build is requested. No casenum.
• Core: Fixes crash caused by an out-of-range frame index for Image Sheets when used with display.newImage(). Now it will display a warning message and default to the last frame in the Image Sheet (same behavior as with display.newImageRect()). Casenum: 47013.
• Physics: Fixed debug draw mode to show the real position of physics bodies in groups that have been scaled or translated. This doesn’t fix the issue with using physics objects in groups but will display the true location of the physics body in relation to the display object. Casenum: 46663.
• Windows, macOS: display a message in the console if an app closes because native.requestExit() was called. No casenum.
• Android: Fixed an issue where setting the minSdkVersion in build.settings could only go as high as API Level 21 (Android 5.0). Now this can be set as high as API Level 23 (Android 6.0).
• Android – Enterprise: Added new APIs for interacting with packages on Android devices (PackageServices). These can be used to quickly tell if a package is installed and enabled on a device.
• Core: fixing new display objects not triggering scene update after display.save().
• macOS: Handle hung iOS device installs correctly. No casenum.
• Updated viewer subrepo to latest version.
• Core: fixing culling offscreen objects with display.save(). Casenum 43011.
• Enterprise: fix issue with signing apps. No casenum.
• iOS: tweaks for iOS 10 beta.
• OS X: Support builds against iOS/tvOS 10.0 beta.
• Core: fixing crash when using TextureResourceCanvas as mask. Hit testing doesn’t work for these masks.
• Core: fixing TextureResourceCanvas not invalidating if released in same frame.
• Core: tweaking warning messages when fill images contain invalid data.
• Core: fixing containers sometimes affecting masked objects (casenum 46668).
• Core: fixing crash when changing masks within frame (casenum 46685).
• Windows: Improved clarity of text in top-right corner of the Welcome window (was blurry).
• Add total elapsed time to the “build succeeded” line for all build types.
• OS X, Windows: change build process to download built app directly from S3 to improve build latencies. No casenum.
• tvOS Enterprise: fixing various issues with bitcode.
• OS X: improve dafaults for Build dialog. Casenum 44272.
• Make the location of the output archive more deterministic.
• OS X: improve logging performance under some circumstances. No casenum.
• Fix issue with some iOS plugin builds.
• OS X, Windows: improve unconfigured plugins warning message. No casenum.
• Android: Fixed an issue introduced in build 2016.2825 where media.selectPhoto() and media.selectVideo() would fail on devices older than Android 4.1. Casenum 46579.
• OS X: don’t warn incorrectly about plugins in Desktop apps. Casenum 46336.
• OS X: fix issue with downloading very large apps during builds. No casenum.
• OS X: fix performance issues with native controls and mouse cursor on some computers. Casenum 46495.
• OS X: fix issue with running Simulator on OS X 10.9. No casenum.
• Remove references to [NSString constainsString:] and replace with [NSString+Extensions contains:].
• OS X: stop mouse and location events firing when Simulator is suspended. Casenums 46574, 44126.
• OS X: don’t include build.settings in built app. No casenum.
• Android – Enterprise: Maintenance.
• Android – Enterprise: Fixed an issue where PermissionsServices.findAllPermissionsInManifestForGroup() would return null if a permission was requested that doesn’t exist on the device, e.g. "com.sec.android.provider.badge.permission.READ" on a non-Samsung device. Casenum 46616.
• Android: system.hasEventSource(“heading”) no longer assumes all Android devices have compass hardware.
• tvOS: adding native.showPopup(“appStore”); fixing error message for iOS.
• iOS Enterprise: added CoronaEventDataKey().

Conclusion

Corona Labs is committed to bringing you the best 2D programming platform on the market. If you would like to discuss this release, please join us in our Community Forums.