HN, I just built this 2D game designer. What do you think?
spritedeck.com
spritedeck.com
However, I'll say that the website didn't feel very clear about what the app is supposed to do. My first assumption was that this was a game engine.
After glancing over the first page, I saw it depends on Corona. I had never heard of Corona before. (I'm slightly more familiar with PC gaming than mobile gaming.) My next thought was "Which of these two things is the game engine, and what is the second one?" I had to Google to find out what Corona does.
From what I gather, Corona is a Flash-like compatibility layer over iOS, HTML5, and Android. Your app seems to be a sprite editor that exports to Corona. Apparently neither one provides a full game engine.
Is that correct? Whether I'm correct or not, I would recommend updating your site so that people can find that out without having to dig like I did.
You are correct, Corona is similar to Flash, and just like Flash, it leaves engine building to the community. Most developers I know have their own custom engines. SpriteDeck has a XSLT based code exporter that can target custom engines. I'm documenting that today.
Couple of suggestions:
1) Please mention somewhere that it requires Adobe Air. Not everyone wants to install it (I didn't mind though)
2) Allow exporting of the layout to some generic vanilla xml/json format (so it can be used by people who are not using Corona). Alternatively, support export plugins
3) When importing images, allow the user to specify if the image should 'stretch' or 'tile' when resizing.
Haven't explored any more of it. It's a good looking app though!
SpriteDeck has a customizable, XSLT based code exporter. If you save the project as a ".deck" file, and open it in a text editor, you will see the full dom of the project. I'm working on documentations for that today.
Btw, if you drag the bottom or right resize handle, it stretches. If you use the bottom-right handle, it resizes while preserving aspect-ratio.
Here is one that shows you how to build comic book apps with no coding, http://www.spritedeck.com/learn/comic.html
And here is one that shows all the fundamental features, http://www.spritedeck.com/learn/
Better docs are coming soon :)
Of course being able to publish to the web would be an awesome addition (even if it's Flash).
Many when told they will get "X" but can't find "X" will click away to one of the other gabazillion things the internet has to offer.
It's a game studio for mobile platforms, including ios and android. It has a yearly fee.
Corona uses the Lua vm, which reminds of AS2.
I've been messing around with Corona since we all read about that 14 year old who "won" the app store.
As it turns out... I kindof dislike Corona in general. Although physics in five lines is cool, and I do have an interactive game compiled for both iPod and Android, I find that Corona is poorly documented and inconsistent.
Maybe I'm being picky and impatient - there's a lot to be said for the ridiculously rapid application development and the incredibly low price of their software license.
At the end of the day though, it's not the cost of the tools that is the main issue - it's your ability to develop with them.
I find asset management in Corona development & the lack of good debugging tools to be positively stifling.
A functioning IDE is a third-party tool.
Oh and LUA as a language? I know WOW supports it, but I hate the lack of direct support for OO (can be done with a big of hacky-ness but it's a frigging pain).
Since then I've picked up the Unity3d engine and run with it.
GUI dev environment. Your choice of C#, Javascript, and some other languages... An active "stack overflow" style support forum. Used by 100,000 developers. Compiles game code for iPhone, XBOX, PS3, Wii & the Web... (not sure about android)
Has physics. 3D native. Imports models from everything from Blender through Maya & 3Dstudio... Bajillions of pre-fab functions standard. Amazing series of tutorials on youtube (look up Tornado Twins). Free license for everyone earning less than $100K (enough to get you rolling)
After a week in Corona with good, but not stellar results, I jumped onto the Unity engine and had fantastic results very quickly.
I really hate to say it because I followed Carlos' tutorials and the anscamobile team seems to very genuinely care about providing a top-of-the-line product, but it's really just not there yet.
Unity 3d is a far better choice. (for now, in my opinion) - you'll at the very least be able to use C# and Javascript "in the wild" if your game plans don't work out. Think about it... what are you going to do with LUA? Write a WOW addon? (to be fair, some of those guys make $100k in profit sharing from sites like curse... but that's another rant)
Anyways.
@ZYANG - you may want to compare notes with your tool against the Corona Rapid Prototype tool built by nerder in Silverlight http://www.nerderer.com/crp/ I was planning on working this weekend on a Unity project, but I'll try to find the time to have a play about with this and get your some, constructive feedback. (if my opinion's worth anything ;)
and can create for iPhone. http://www.zombievilleusa.com/zombieville1.html http://appadvice.com/appnn/2009/12/apptalk-interview-with-no...
They're both development environments, they're both designed to help you create code for mobile devices, they both have physics and are currently marketing in the 'game engine' space.
It may be apples to oranges - but they're still both fruit.
I'm not saying corona has no advantages. There are some... but in terms of product maturity and value for dev time spent (learning the framework, system and language), In my opinion Unity comes out way further ahead.