Corona SDK: New additions and overhauls
As our users know, we’re always focused on delivering the best new Corona features for them to use. Since our product is on a subscription basis, we literally work year-round to keep it on top of the latest developments in the rapidly changing mobile space.
Earlier this year, we created Corona Game Edition to offer our more advanced features to users who were interested specifically in mobile game development. However, over the past several months, we’ve noticed that everyone (whether they make simple apps or advanced games) wants those heavy-duty features in their utility belts.
So, the divided product line is no more!
We have merged Corona Game Edition into Corona SDK, so now all Corona users will have the same features at their fingertips. Not only does this make for an easier-to-understand product, but it also makes everything from forum support to watching tutorials and webinars a lot less confusing. (e.g. no more wondering “Will this only be for Game Edition?” before our next webinar)
We’ve also added a slew of new features to Corona SDK, many of which you might have been helping to beta-test over the past few months. Here are some of the highlights:
- Unlimited Free Trial: Previously, the Corona free trial only lasted 30 days. With this release, you can now try it out for as long as you like, building apps to your own personal devices free of charge. You will only have to pay for a subscription when you decide to build an app for the Apple App Store or the Android Market.
. 
New Audio API: The new Corona audio engine is built on the industry standard OpenAL — designed for low-latency, high performance mixing and supporting 32 audio channels.
.
Specifically, you can now play multiple long sounds simultaneously (like background music with a voiceover) and the concept of an “Event Sound” is gone, along with its associated volume mixing problems. You also have a choice between streaming a sound from a local source or preloading (we recommend streaming for any sounds longer than 20 seconds)..
- New Facebook API: Corona now integrates the latest version of the native Facebook library (currently iOS-only). In addition to supporting more features, the Corona API now is considerably simplified.
New MapView API: The long-awaited MapView feature lets developers integrate one or more Google Map views into apps, and supports various methods of two-way communication between the map contents and the surrounding application: address or landmark lookup, pin marking, and reverse geocoding (converting latitude/longitude into the closest street address), among others.
.
Maps are treated like any other Corona display object — they can be moved, rotated or animated. To learn more about using MapView, check out this page or the new “MapView” sample project included with the SDK.
.- Larger Texture Support: Textures are now supported for resolutions up to 2048×2048. This is hardware-dependent, and primarily for the iPad and iPhone 4. Most other devices are limited to 1024×1024.
- Samsung Galaxy Tab: The Corona Simulator now includes a mode for the Samsung Galaxy Tab, an Android tablet with a resolution of 600×1024.
.
You can get full details on these and additional updates over at our What’s New? page.
Be sure to let us know what you think of the new features, and show us what you make! 
RSS feed
Download not working. Always when I press the Download button I end up here, https://developer.anscamobile.com/downloads/game-edition-archive
Sweet! Excellent changes and makes things simpler!
Try refreshing to clear your browser’s cache
Cleared cache, logged in, and still getting “You’re not authorized to access this page” trying to download.
Fannar, that page no longer exist. Click on the download button at anscamobile.com to get the latest drop.
Great, thanks!
Excellent! I love you ansca!
Thx a lot! That’s really great.
YEAH!
Right when my 30 day trial was expiring!
This is absolutely great news!
And the sprite frame sorting was one of my requests… I’ll be able to use it in my game right away!
Thanks a lot!
That’s awesome news, i’ve been dying to use mapkit!
One question though; Is it possible to create custom markers? For example I want to show an icon of a car or ATM machine on coordinates X,Y? If not, would it be a lot of work to implement?
I know I, and many others, would love this feature =)
Thanks for the update!
-Nick
I literally just this weekend downloaded Corona to start testing, so this update is great news for me. I was initially concerned that because of the holidays my trial would run out before fully testing it, so the unlimited free trial is very appreciated.
I am probably going to try and build my entire game with the free trial, and if that works well then I’ll purchase.
One thing that’s preventing me from using Corona is: I’m not sure how good its Database (SQLite) handling is, especially for really big databases, and I’m not sure where to turn to find out more information such as best practice for handling large databases.
If Corona could explore this area, I think I’d be much happier to explore Corona
[...] wouldn’t be very polite of us to throw a bunch of new features at you without at least showing you how to use some of [...]
Loving the new mapkit, but what does this mean for those of us who paid for the Game Edition?
[...] Corona SDK: New additions and overhauls [...]
@AD
Corona fully supports SQLite via luasqlite3 and you can learn and find out more about SQLite support at http://developer.anscamobile.com/content/data-storage and there is also plenty of tutorials on LuaSQLite at luaforge.net/projects/luasqlite/ and the documentation for luasqlite3 can be viewed at luasqlite.luaforge.net/lsqlite3.html
———–
I’m not sure where to turn to find out more information such as best practice for handling large databases.
— That is not a Corona limitation. There is plenty on the web about SQLite management, including the SQLite website itself, http://sqlite.org/
Carlos.
[...] raising the bar on mobile apps at increasingly faster rates, and we’re having lots of fun keeping up with you! [...]
[...] our users, you already know that we’re always listening to what you have to say. And now, we have yet another feature that you’ve asked [...]
[...] after the rollout of our new audio engine, a few of our users reported some performance problems. We believe we have fixed this performance [...]
[...] other small, handy features which make the game that much more fun to have on your mobile device Facebook integration allows Beachballers anywhere to pop for bragging rights atop a worldwide leader board. Also, the [...]