Tag: iphone

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Corona Game Example: OOP, Scope, and Box2D Collisions – Part 1

I took a break from working on another side project to devote my Sunday and part of my Monday to playing more with Corona. Specifically, I wanted to:

  • Learn how to do better OOP in Lua
  • Learn how to extend the base Corona GUI classes like Group
  • Learn about collision detection via their Box2D implementation

Mutha-grabbin success.

I set out to re-build 1942. It’s the perfect Corona game in that it has a lot collisions, sprites, and simple bitmap animations. I want to talk about what I learned in my 2 days. If you’re not familiar with Lua and know some ActionScript, hit my Lua for ActionScript Programmers Crash Course and check out a more simple example first. Here’s a quick sample video. You can download/follow the code on Github.

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2010: What’s Next for Flash and Flex Developers?

Preface

With all the economic and tech turmoil the past year, many have shown a yearning for something stable amidst it all. Some of the mobile & device hype has actually come to fruition without Flash Player taking a starring role. This has had harsh marketing/PR consequences for many peoples continued, or lack of, faith in the platform.  This is ecspecially true for those of us in the Flash community for awhile; we’ve been hearing for a decade about Flash on mobile, and have long since been tired of hearing it.

We’ve already seen some luminaries leave the platform for iPhone like Aral Balkan & Keith Peters, some for good, some returning (welcome back sexy man Keith). Others have thrown in their joy with Unity 3D. All the while we have HTML5 deceitful propaganda biting at the heels for those of us who have stayed.

What’s next? What technology is coming that we should invest our time in to ensure a continued prosperous career? Should we stay with Flash Player?  Is there something I can focus on that’ll help me find a niche and as an early adopter get a payoff?

Today, I want to layout what I think is coming the next 6 years to at least put your mind at ease if you’re a Flash/Flex Developer.  These are my projections based on what I’ve read, corroborated from talking to colleagues and other reading, and based on past experience.

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Cocoa Chronicles #1: ActionScript vs. Objective C

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*** Update: Paul Taylor (@guyinthechair) has a more recent post on the same subject. ***

*** NOTE: I’m a n00b at Cocoa and Objective C. Unlike Python, I don’t like learning it, either. If you perceive something below is inaccurate, please comment, and I’ll update. ***

Preface

I was having a lot of fun using the iPhone packager. Then Apple changed their licensing to prevent people like me from using ActionScript for iPhone/iPad, and instead being forced to use their toolsets, or those unofficially approved. At first I was furious. Then I tried to get a simple list to scroll in AS3. Even using a fake mask, device fonts, and cacheAsBitmap for all items + container, it just wasn’t smooth, even with just 30 items, regardless of frame rate. If you use an out of the box UITableView in Cocoa, it “just works”.

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