I recently wrote about several cross-platform iOS and Android development tools, and mentioned the Corona SDK.
Developer of the popular Doodle Dash game, John Beebe (a game that made it all the way up into the top 25 app store apps – that’s a lot of downloads!) has written an in-depth review on Corona SDK. What makes John’s perspective interesting is that he has never taken a programming course, but rather programs with rapid development tools like Corona, and previously had used Game Salad.
You can guess that John is a big fan of Corona with the success that he’s been having.
Here’s some of the pros listed:
- Fast development time
- Affordable when compared with a tool such as Game Salad
- No Objective-C
- Good support
You can read John Beebe’s full review here.
My Own Take On The Corona SDK
My opinion on Corona (I did decide to pick up a license the other day just before the recent price increase so I could do some Android development) is that it is fantastic for rapid development. I was able to port the action game programming tutorial written in Objective-C in a few hours despite not having used Lua or the Corona SDK for more than about an hour previously.
What I don’t like about the Corona SDK is that there is no access to the native API — and as of yet there is no iAds support, no Game Center support, and no in-app purchase support. I hope that these features are added in the near future even though they’re not fitting with the “cross-platform” development philosophy. OpenFeint and AdMob just don’t cut it on iOS right now.
You can pick up a trial of the Corona SDK here.
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