We’ve been busy doing some in-house spring cleaning, so I wanted to take a quick break to give you an update.
Bugs
In my last post, I talked about making our bugs publicly available. It’s not ready for prime-time, but I did want to give you a preview (see screenshot).
We structured it so that you can see the recently closed bugs, the ones in our queue, and the ones in our backlog.
This way you’ll be able to see if the issues as the Corona engineering team sees them. If you’ve submitted a bug and it’s been verified as an issue, you’ll now be able to see where it sits in the engineering queue.
We’re still working some kinks out so in the mean time, let us know what you think!
Next Stable Release
We officially kicked off our bug fix cycle three weeks ago. For those of you keeping track of daily builds, we’ve been making steady progress on some of the most annoying bugs and regressions. We have closed over 70 high priority bugs, and we think we’ve made great progress in daily build quality. We really do appreciate the feedback you guys have been giving us on them.
We are still fixing bugs this week. At the end of this week, we will have a candiate for a public release. After that, we will be doing final testing to get to an official public release. We expect that to happen within 1-2 weeks.
More Stable Daily Builds and Frequent Public Releases
Some of you may be wondering what happened to the 2-on-2 schedule (2 weeks of features followed by 2 weeks of bug fixes). It’s something we’re very serious about. What we decided to do was put the feature cycle on a holding pattern, and instead, extend the bug fix cycle longer than normal. Why? Because it was important that we have a solid release out before we can make the 2-on-2 cycle a working reality. (For the math geeks, the 2-on-2 is the “inductive” step; the solid release is the base case.)
At the end of each feature/bug 1 month cycle, we will be “blessing” a daily build, meaning you should feel very confident about shipping your app with that particular build. In addition, every 3 months, we aim to deliver an official public release. In either case, you’ll be able to more comfortably take advantage of all the latest Corona features.
Roadmap?
Yes, the elusive roadmap. Next week, we’re going to put a static, preliminary version of our roadmap in our forums. It will be open to your feedback. Soon after that, we’ll be taking this one step further and provide a way for you to vote on the features you think are important. We’re still working out the details but something along the lines of subscribers being able to select the top 3 features they want the most.
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I know a lot of you are passionate about Corona. Sometimes we get pretty raw feedback publicly or privately. Other folks shy away from that, but I want you to keep ‘em coming!
We’re all trying to do the same thing which is make Corona the best development platform on the planet! Just keep in mind that sometimes it’s a game of inches
When developing applications, it’s important to handle scenarios that occur as a result of the user interacting with your game in as many different ways possible. It’s equally as important to handle scenarios that occur as a result of “system” events, whether they are explicitly triggered by the user or not.
Things that immediately come to mind are things that cause your app to become “suspended” such as the user receiving a phone call, or pressing the “home” button on their device (your app is still running in the background, but in a suspended/paused state). What about when the user comes back to your app while it is suspended, or when your app exits completely?
All of those things are handled by “system” events in Corona, and that’s what I’ll be going over today.
A quirky and beautiful tale on self acceptance, Sparky the Shark by Biscuit Interactive, tells the story of a friendly shark named Sparky and his sidekick penguin Dax. Though sharks have quite a bad rep among beach-goers, Sparky desperately wants to make a friend. When Dax breaks the news of the “No Sharks Allowed” beach policy, Sparky is devastated. On Dax’s advice, Sparky goes to all ends to change himself in an attempt to be accepted – he sports a friendlier set of teeth, gets a less intimidating dorsal fin, and purchases a new set of clothes. Dressed as a clown, Sparky heads to the beach to compete in a sandcastle competition, and the story takes an unexpected turn. You’ll have to read for yourself to find out how Sparky makes friends, and saves the day.
Sparky the Shark features beautiful illustrations, unique musical backgrounds and incredible interactive elements that keep the reader’s attention throughout all 33 pages. It was also fun to discover the hidden animations scattered throughout the book. For those of you who remember Mr. Potato Head, you’ll also love the bonus ’Dress Up Sparky Page’ – where you can dress Sparky in silly disguises, goofy teeth, hats and boggle eyes. You’ll quickly fall in love with the unlikely shark and penguin pair, and through their adventure, learn about the importance of always being yourself.
Fun for readers of all ages, Sparky the Shark is a beautifully crafted story of self-acceptance, kindness and friendship. The digital tale is available for download at the App Store and for Android.
As usual, more great stuff has been pushed into the Daily Builds since the update from just last week.
Some notable additions include a few useful new features such as per-file iCloud backups, audio event changes, Storyboard “debug” mode and auto-purging capabilities, as well as many notable bug fixes in regards to native video objects, in-Simulator require() calls, display.newEmbossedText() inconsistencies, and more.
To see everything that’s been pushed into the daily builds, visit the Daily Build Summary page to get a complete rundown. Remember, access to cutting edge features and the latest bug fixes through our Daily Builds program is a subscriber-only benefit—so become a subscriber if you want to get the latest build.
Inspired by his pre-k sons’ love of construction vehicles, Scott Adelman created the Kids Trucks educational app series. The interactive series includes colorful graphics and positive reinforcement, allowing young children to work on learning the alphabet, developing critical thinking skills, number identification and more in an engaging way. Check out Scott’s post below, for a range of helpful tips on creating mobile apps for tots. Stay tuned for Scott’s upcoming post on marketing apps for children!
It’s Wednesday and time for another FAQ session. Here are five frequently asked questions (FAQ).
Question 1
When I create functions, I sometimes get error messages saying the function name was nil. I play with the code until the error goes away. What are the rules for getting it right?
In my last post, I talked about making our bugs publicly available. It’s not ready for prime-time, but I did want to give you a preview (see screenshot).
When developing applications, it’s important to handle scenarios that occur as a result of the user interacting with your game in as many different ways possible. It’s equally as important to handle scenarios that occur as a result of “system” events, whether they are explicitly triggered by the user or not.
As usual, more great stuff has been pushed into the Daily Builds since the update from just last week.
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