How to start new activity in corona? - lua

I am new on Corona and worked with android sdk on Eclipse but i don't know how to pass from one activity to another in this one? What do you we use for this on Corona?

You do not have control over activities of your app when using Corona SDK.
What you need is the StoryBoard API which helps you to manage difference scenes.
Here are a few links regarding storyboard.
http://www.coronalabs.com/blog/2011/11/14/introducing-the-storyboard-api/
http://www.coronalabs.com/blog/2012/03/27/storyboard-scene-events-explained/
http://developer.anscamobile.com/content/storyboard
http://www.coronalabs.com/blog/2011/11/16/common-storyboard-api-questions/
Another unofficial but really efficient and useful method is the Director class
http://maniacdev.com/2011/05/using-the-director-class-for-easy-switching-in-the-corona-sdk/
http://developer.anscamobile.com/code/director-class-10
The PROS and CONS?
Director class is very simple and lightweight. And it has no known bugs. Used to be the only way until Storyboard was introduced a few months ago.
Story board is very flexible, and is officially supported. But it is relatively new and has some minor bugs.

Related

iOS SDK - How to know which kit, class to use?

I'm new to iOS development and was wanting to know how to efficiently locate which kit, class to use to achieve certain things.
For example, I'm planning to build an app that heavily makes use of calendar events and I found that I should be looking at using something like eventkit to build upon but it's not clear for me within this kit which class to instantiate and which method to use in what order.
Can someone please direct me to a place where I can see some code examples of using a range of different kits?
I think you can learn things as you described from 'Reference'.
Two ways to check Apple Official References in Xcode. One is clicking the function name, parameter or those colorful keywords while you pushing the 'option'. The second way is using three fingers to touch those "keywords" slightly on the touchPad.
Or you can check many kits references by visiting iOS Developer Library (website). I'm also new to iOS Development, I wish things I said can help you.

Sprite Kit and IOS Development

Just a few questions which I can't find answers to anywhere:
To code games for IOS using Sprite Kit, do you also need to know Objective-C or Swift?
Can you code high quality games without knowing Objective-C or Swift?
Thanks!
SpriteKit is an Apple framework developed for Objective-C / Swift application. So, yes you'll need at least some code basics notions.
"Yes". You might be able to develop game with Unity2D for example, but that would include using another language to write your scripts.
I'll try to expand a little bit previous answer.
SpriteKit is an Apple framework developed for 2D/3D games. It uses Swift or Objective-C. Advantage of using this is that you can be 100% sure that this game will work flawlessly on iOS devices. Disadvantage is that you are locked only to iOS devices. If you have 0 knowledge of Swift or Objective-C, and you wish only to develop for iOS, I would choose Objective-C. It seems a little harder to learn and understand, but compared to Swift to it seems that Objective-C is still (and will be for long time) superior to Swift. Although, it just be my personal preference, because I truly hate Swift. (You can achieve same things in both languages) :)
I started this way, I do not regret.
You can develop games and apps for iOS without knowledge of Objective-C or Swift. You can use programs like Unity, Unreal engine, Corona, Cocos2D/3D. However these programs require learning another language to write your game (c++ or something else). You can also use GameSalad for 2D games. It requires 0 coding, many things are drag and drop, but you do need to understand logic behind it. For example, it wouldn't be programming but it would be coding :)
GameSalad is easy to learn, fun as well, but forget that you will be able to create any serious game logic or more advanced game than 2D platform one. I tried it, but very soon changed to Objective C and XCode.
If you decide to go with learning actual language (which I would strongly suggest), I would recommend either Objective-C or to learn Ionic software. Ionic uses javascript, but when you learn how to make games/apps you can easily distribute it to ANY platform: iOS, Windows mobile, Android...XCode is better software, but learning Ionic has huge advantage, and that is single click to deploy app on any platform.
Good luck.

Best 2D/3D Game engine for a map-based game in iOS

I am not very familiar with Game engines for iOS app. Can anyone suggest an open source game engine for my game development?
My game scenario is as follows: The user selects a map, and a character inside of the game I moves through a path predefined in the map.
I was thinking about writing this game in OpenGL but it seems like I have to write a huge amount of code. Do any game engines exist in which I can successfully write this game?
Lua is easier to learn than Objective-C. There are several Lua development environments:
Gideros Studio: http://www.giderosmobile.com/
Corona SDK: http://www.coronalabs.com/
Moai: http://getmoai.com/
My favourite is Gideros Studio, because it seemed to me the easiest to get started, and is free until you want to remove the splash screen, and has a very friendly forum with access to the developers. You can also include native plugins (Objective C and C++ for Android).
Moai is the only actual open source one, if you really need to change the source, but it is probably the hardest one to learn.
cocos2d is popular and easy to use and learn. you could also use kobald2d as that includes cocos2d and other frameworks as well. you can download them through a search on google
As state by the other user cocos2d would be a good solution for what you want. Although you asked for "open source", you can always check, for free, Unity for iOS. You could also check a question I made some time ago, which can give you some hints of some options you have, here. From the Unity site:
Oh, and don't forget that Unity is free and we have fully-functional
30-day trials available for Unity Pro and Unity iOS Pro!
I know it's not perfect, but still, if you see it's worth, it can make a huge difference in your project.
Try Stencyl, it's not free, but it is a good engine that doesnt require a lot of code

Animations in flash to IOS

I am developing an application that presents different stories for kids.
These stories are already made ​​in flash.
My problem is how to add to the storys That app.
Initially one of the approaches was to create an app in Coco2D and make the animations in this language (converting the animations in pictures). However due to possess many animations and sounds, this process is very complicated
Thus, I asked opinions on what approach should I do to solve this problem.
Any opinion will help.
Thanks...
If you want to change the way you will solve the problem, you can try Adore Air which let you use Flash on iOS Apps : An example on how to do this
If you want to continue with Cocos2D, you can find good tutorials there for your project :
Good Tutorials to make a project with Cocos2D
If your stories doesn't have any interactive elements, you can try to convert your stories in Flash to Video Files with some softwares (try to enter it in Google).

iOS (iPad) application on Flex/Flash Builder 4.5 - SplitView component?

(Disclaimer: I'm a beginner in mobile application development and I'm quite weak with programming but I'm willing to learn new things and take on new challenges. I apologise in advance if my question turns you off, or if it seems as though I haven't done any research. I did all the research I could but it didn't help me much.)
I'm new to developing iOS applications and my school gave me approximately 5 months to develop an iPad application. I have no knowledge or practice on Objective C so since Flash Builder 4.5 allows the development of mobile applications (and I have experiences with Flash Builder), I decided to develop my application on Flash Builder instead.
Everything is going fine until I was told to include a SplitView in my application. I implemented a List on the left side of the application. Clicking on any of the list items will navigate the user to a to another view but i also included and retained the list on the left side of the new view in order to simulate a "SplitView".
Initially it felt as though it will do the job of a SplitView like how it does when I attempted it on XCODE but it doesn't look or feel natural.
I found this video which shows that it is possible to create a SplitView on FB but I've cracked my brains and I really can't figure out how it is done. Is there anyone who can provide me with a rough guide on how to implement this? Thank you very much in advance.
Edit:
At the moment I implemented
<s:Application
xmlns:fx="http://ns.adobe.com/mxml/2009" xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark">
<s:ViewNavigator id="MainView" left="292" width="732" height="748" firstView="views.MainView"/>
</s:Application>
this way, i can manage to navigate through the views without effecting the Root View Controller. this might not be the best way but it'll suffice at the moment. Are there are any better way to do this?
Take a look at the eskimo library
It has a lot of nice mobile features like "native" look and feel for both android and iOS.
Furthermore, it features some mobile components.
I believe the one you are looking for is called SplitViewApplication.
You will have to download the zip file though to unveil it since it is currently not on the feature list on their website.
EDIT
Apparently, Flex SDK 4.6 also supports this feature.
It has been released 2 days ago. You might want to check that out as well.
Cheers
Looks like HDividedBox is a right component for you.

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