Corona Development eBook v1.0

(Buyers are eligible for all future updates)

Basic Programming with Corona SDK and Lua(pdf)

Everything you need to know to create games for iPhone and Android devices. Covers Corona SDK and Lua programming language.
Price: $20

eBook Contents

A lot of college students and teenage programmers ask us “where do I start to become a game developer?”. Usually I would point them to our tutorials on how to make games, but I think it’s worth a post or two about what to do before diving into the technology.

Step one: Clone something

Sure, you have an idea for a new type of gameplay. Guys in Activision and Electronic Arts have those ideas too, but they don’t get any budget to make them either. Why? Because new types of gameplay are hard to sell. Gamers say they want something new, but when staring new in the face, they’ll pick up the ‘new’ Call of Duty anyway.

So our advice: clone something. Make a total, blatant not-even-hiding-it rip-off. This way you have a good example of what you’re trying to make and you’ll get familiar with the dynamics and architecture needed to make a game fun.

Of course, add your own flare to it when the game mechanics work. It takes discipline not to be original, but your sales will spike and fund that crazy gameplay idea of yours.

Step two: Start smaller than small!

Puh-lease don’t make a first person shooter to start with. Yes, it’s easy to make your character walk around and carry a gun. But when it comes to enemy behavior, you’ve thrown yourself in a deep web of complexity that you’ll never code your way out of. Sure, you can make something work, but your friends will always compare it to top hits and tell you it sucks, because they don’t understand how much it takes to make games.
We’ve made games in high-school and for four years all we heard was ‘is your game done yet?’ or ‘it’s promising… but when is it done?’. They didn’t know we spent 4 hours in C++ just to make a GUI graphic half transparent.

Start smaller than small. Start with a 2D App. Clone something simple (Cut the Rope, Angry Birds, etc). Go to miniclip.com for inspiration, not your local game store.

Again, it takes discipline not to try and be Call of Duty. But Call of Duty guys have 200+ people working 2+ years. In one-man years, that will take you over four lifetimes considering you already know everything. Bad move. Start small. Good move.

Step three: Finish it!

In my opinion nobody deserves the term ‘game developer’ until they’ve actually made a game. Everyone can hobby around in an never-ending project. Those with discipline bite their lips in the second half of the project and continue on.

Trust me: you’ll KNOW when you’re in the middle of a project. Because all of the sudden, you get all kinds of ideas of new games that you’re far more excited about than what you’re working on now.

That’s when to decide what separates the boys from the men. Finish, publish, celebrate. Even if the game isn’t great, you’ve made a game and 2 billion other people your age have not. Hooray.

Don’t give up. If you started with a team of enthusiasts, they will drop your project in the middle. You never end with the same people you start with. This is the same in the paid-world of making games. Freelancers and staff come and go. People hate the middle. But conquer the middle in your teen/college years a couple times and you’ll be a world class producer (and we’ll hire you any day!).

We’ll go this far: Finishing well is far more important than making the game in the first place. And you get there faster when you implement step one and two.

Good luck!

Robert Nay is a tremendously successful little man. Only 14 years old, Nay developed the iPhone game Bubble Ball, which quickly soared up the charts in January to become the #1 free iPhone app for a number of continuous days. But while Robert’s story is heart-warming, we’re also concerned about the young man’s future. College isn’t cheap, and being a full time game developer is hard work.

see what advice 4 industry veterans have for young developer

Peter Relan, chairman of OpenFeint

Early in your career, it’s important to surround yourself with like-minded,entrepreneurialpeople. Next summer Robert should come work at an incubator like YouWeb, where he can continue to foster his interests.

Alexander Okafor, One Man Left

Other than the proverbial “stay in school” mantra, I would say keep doing what you’re doing. Game development is a unique field where you can directly apply what you learn in school, no matter the subject, with hands on projects without the need for super expensive equipment. Being someone who takes what they learn outside the classroom and goes and does something interesting or fun with that knowledge is already a huge step ahead of those that simply read things from a book and pass a test when it comes to hiring. The little but important details you learn when going out on your own to make a game usually aren’t covered in a class assignment or homework.

Having played Bubble Ball, it’s amazingly well put together. There are different routes you can definitely take to help make it into something profitable. The most straightforward one is keeping the game and initial set of levels free, and releasing different level packs that cater to different skill levels. Having played some of the harder levels, I’d be willing to check out an ‘expert/insane’ pack. One thing we’ve learned is that your most dedicated fans and hardcore players are willing to support you if you can keep the content coming. Depending on the amount of active users you have ads can also be a viable alternative. A more drastic route would be releasing a sequel or ‘Deluxe’ version on the app store. In the end, just make sure you’re open and honest about it. The app store can sometimes be a fickle place. As long as your users are aware of any big upcoming changes to the original game, they’ll be happy to continue to support you and give you feedback if you’re way off base.

Matthew Hall, Klicktock

It’s important to not make games only for ourselves, but for others. Take your game, hand it over to friends and family, young and old, and watch them play and don’t say a word, but remember everything you WANT to say. ‘err that’s not quite done’ or ‘ignore that bit’ or ‘just run past that monster’. Until you can be really proud watching someone else play your game, then it’s probably not ready yet.

Alex Peters, Communications Manager at Firemint

First and most important, congratulations on reaching #1! If you’re interested in pursuing a career in game development, you’re most of the way there since you’ve already developed, finished and published a game. Finishing can often be the hardest part. When we interview people for positions at Firemint, this is one of the most important things we consider – has the person actually finished a game? For a programmer, we also look for a very solid grounding in mathematics, preferably at University level – so we’d definitely encourage you to continue on to BYU, whether you want to keep running your own business, or join a larger studio. Finally, best of luck with your second game!

Joel Brodie, Gamezebo founder

College is expensive so make some money while the game is in the Top 10 on iTunes. A zillion game companies would love to be in your position right now so don’t think about the future, carpe diem.

Charge $1 for your game app. You will drop out of the Top 10 but you’ll make a lot of money as you drop. Then, contact any of the leading “App of the Day” programs and offer Bubble Ball as a free app for the day. Since there has been so much news around Bubble Ball, they will be interested and it’s likely you will end up back in the Top 10. After your day is up, go back to charging $1 again.

You should also be working with an ad network to help monetize the free game and do ad swaps with different games to drive more traffic to your game. Add Game Center support and try to get the user’s information so you can market your future games to them.

This all is pretty heavy for a youngster like yourself, but it’s actually pretty easy. Find an adult with business savvy (your parents, an aunt or uncle) and have them do this with you. It’s a good learning experience. And contact any iPhone game publishers or game companies you respect and ask them to mentor you to help manage this pricing strategy and just to learn more about how to be a successful game developer.

Good luck!

| Technowand Singapore | iPhone and iPad Application Development | Android Application Development | iPhone and iPad Game Development | Android Game Development | iPhone Training | Android Training | Corona SDK Training | iPhone Training Singapore | Android Training Singapore | Game Development Singapore | Singapore iPhone Apps |

Corona SDK is a mobile development framework by Ansca Mobile (established by a team of former Adobe mobile engineers) for creating high-performance, multimedia rich mobile applications and games for the iPhone, iPad, and Android.

Corona SDK uses Lua programming language. Although this is a new language to most application developers, I can assure you that this scripting language is pretty easy to learn and master, much easier than Objective-C, C++ and even Java.

One of the success stories of mobile application developed with Corona SDK is that: a 14 years old kid from Utah, Robert Nay, has developed a popular games with Corona SDK called Bubble Ball, and uploaded it to iTunes App Store. Within a very short period of time, this game has attracted millions of download, outshining the famous Angry Birds games.

The Corona SDK contains an integrated simulator for iPhone, iPad and Android. It also comes with a debugger, and a rapidly growing library of APIs and sample codes. It is integrated with Box2D physics engine, make it easy for games development. It can also take care of different screen size and resolution of mobile devices, and scale the application display accordingly.

Corona SDK is available for Mac OS X and Windows (still beta). It is free for trial during development stage. However, you’ll need to pay for the annual Corona SDK Subscription in order to distribute and/or sell your mobile apps developed with it.

for Corona SDK training in Singapore contact: mail@technowand.com

| Technowand Singapore | iPhone and iPad Application Development | Android Application Development | iPhone and iPad Game Development | Android Game Development | iPhone Training | Android Training | Corona SDK Training | iPhone Training Singapore | Android Training Singapore | Game Development Singapore | Singapore iPhone Apps | iPhone App Development |

An introduction to the easy-to-use 2D physics engine in Corona Game Edition for iPhone, iPad and Android game development.

for Corona SDK  training in Singapore contact:  mail@technowand.com
| Technowand Singapore | iPhone and iPad Application Development | Android Application Development | iPhone and iPad Game Development | Android Game Development | iPhone Training | Android Training | Corona SDK Training | iPhone Training Singapore | Android Training Singapore | Game Development Singapore | Singapore iPhone Apps |