** UPDATE **
Peter won 1st place in the regional computer fair.  Now he moves on to compete at the State level in May

My son Peter has been working on a mobile app for computer fair.  He’s 15, was not a programmer, and the “challenge” was to create an educational game for K-12, or any group in that range.  He had seen me working on a game tutorial class hosted on masteringCoronaSDK.com – a fantastic site, with great tutorials if you want to learn.  He took Jay’s Froggie Went a Hoppin’ game (the game you build as you go through the video series) and put a twist to it.

In Jay Whye’s game, you play a frog, and on each level you move your frog through the pond, from start to finish, hopping on as many lilly pads as possible. Each lilly pad you hop on disappears so you can not go back, or retrace your hops.  Once at the end, you lose 5 points for each pad you left in the pond.  In the higher levels, a snake slithers through, and will kill you if it touches you.  Also, if you take a path that leads to a dead end (since you can’t go back) you die.  Very addicting game actually, and a great way to learn how to code in Corona.

His video series, Beginning Mobile Game Development, starts with a Lua boot camp, which goes through the basics and some more advanced topics of the Lua language, and then walks the student through each step to build out the game.

Professor Hopalong’s Math Adventure Title Screen

Peter wanted to build a math game for little kids, and decided to use Jay’s game framework as a basis, and change it up a bit.  In Peter’s game, your a bunny.  Each level presents a math problem (ie level 1 is 1+1=?).  The board is a path of carrots that lead to 3 different rabbit holes.  One hole contains the correct answer to the math problem.  You eat as many carrots as you can to get to the correct answer, and when you do, you win the level.  If you hop to the wrong answer (rabbit hole), you die (nice right?).

Peter changed all the graphics so your main character is now Professor Hopalong.  Since you’re a rabbit, you hop through a garden, eating a path of carrots, hopping to one of three rabbit holes.  The title sequence displays Professor Hopalong, in front of a bunch of carrots, with the default play, options, and credits buttons from Jay’s game.  All the graphics are either from Vicki Wenderlich, or from free use graphics, clip art and sound track sites.  Here’s a screen shot of level 2 -

Level 2 Screen shot with carrot path and 3 rabbit holes.

There are still a few little things he’d like to change, for example – right now each level is a static math problem.  So level 1 is always 1+1.  He wants to give each level a range of numbers to include in the math problem, and randomly choose those numbers.  So maybe level 1 contains a low and high of 1 and 2 – so that math problem could be 1+1, 1+2, or 2+1.  Level 2 might be 1 and 3 and so on.  Level 5 might start getting harder and be 2 and 6, so the number 1 is not in any of the math problems now.  As you go to higher levels, the problems get harder.  Starting at level 10, 20, 30 – he wants to change up and introduce subtraction, multiplication and division respectively, and each of these first levels with the new operators will start with lower numbered problems.

Its pretty neat, and I’m proud of what he’s done, however, it’ll never be published to the app store, its strictly going to just be a simulator demo for the fair.  I can’t afford to purchase a license for this, and I think since its based on Jay’s tutorial code, we’d have to work out a deal or something, not sure.  For the purposes of him learning to code, getting excited about programming, and the improvements I’ve seen in his ability to debug things (like a real programmer), I think it was worth the time.  Plus I got to spend time with my son helping him learn something I love.

The fair is March 25th, we’ll see how he does.

Code it right
theCodeDog

I like to play with mobile stuff…

That said, I’m making my rounds with mobile development frameworks.  I’ve published apps with both Rhomobile and Titanium.  I was turned on to Corona SDK about 5 months ago by a friend that was building a game.  I downloaded it and started a tutorial I found and since then, I can’t get enough.  I think I’ve downloaded or looked at every tutorial I can find.  There are so many resources available and a fantastic community.  One of the resources I really enjoy is Corona Geek.  This weekly video cast / google hangout is fantastic.  They’ve recently released the audio portion of the weekly show on iTunes, Stitcher or if you use Chrome, you can install a Chrome Extension - I’m loving the audio podcast option now, because I can download it and listen in the car or if I’m splitting wood or something.

Why is it such a good show?

The guys. Charles McKeever - ok that link didn’t go to a page about Charles, just listed his uploads on CoronaGeek.com, which is pretty much everything on the site, this link does though .  Anyway, he’s great.  He has great insight, seems quite connected and asks the questions I want to know about.  His two co-hosts (sorry guys, I think that’s what you are) Brian Burton is the author of a few Corona books that come highly recommended. I’m hoping Santa [wife, cough, cough] brings me one for Christmas.  The other co-host is Toff Ward all around developer, who really likes Corona and is pretty funny. These three guys know their stuff and really enjoy getting together to talk about mobile development.  They’re not just there to read the release notes, and digest the news, its like hanging out in the break-room with some geek friends and talking about mobile development.  So if you want to know what is going on with the latest version, hear reviews of resources and tools you can use to build apps, or just want to keep in touch with the community, this show is a must. I pretty much stalk them on Google+, Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

Recently (last couple months I think) they’ve started to have guests on the show, which makes it really interesting.  Typically these guests are app developers of newly released Corona apps or service providers and they talk about how they built an app or how what they do supports the Corona community.  More proof the overall world of Corona is amazing. I like how fast CoronaGeek.com has grown, and how connected they’ve become. You can’t argue they’ve had some great interviews and  guests on the show. I only wish I lived closer so I could hang with these guys.

So what am I doing with Corona?

I’ve started working on an app for a friend using Corona SDK. Yea, I know, most of us fall prey to that Bad-Idea-By-Friend-Syndrome, but this time he actually had a good one, and I’m running with it. I thought I’d use it as an opportunity to learn Corona. I’m hardly fluent, and still have to look up too many things right now, but I’m learning the SDK, playing with sprites and physics, its pretty easy to understand, and I really like the Lua language.

Which one is best?

Even though Corona is coming out with widgets to build more mobile app-ish UI screens, people still think of Corona as a game development SDK. I think its strong point is indeed graphic apps, which sometimes equate in many people’s minds to game type apps.  Corona handles animation, sprites, physics, scrolling and everything you would expect from a ‘game’ development environment.  It can build ‘normal’ app UI screens but that isn’t really its strong point, or at least, its not marketed as such right now.

I’ve built and published 2 apps (2 different ones for both iOS and Android) using Titanium.  These are functional ‘business’ apps and Titanium excels at these types of apps. Currently it is difficult to build a game with animation, sprites, etc with Titanium.  They do have a partnership with Lanica who is developing a game engine, which should be interesting because I think the founder of Lanica started Corona (insert mystery-intrigue-music here).

So right now, my unofficial preferences are to develop in both.  I’m not deep enough into Corona to make a clear decision yet.  I imagine if I could build a business app in Corona, I may jump the fence for good, although its hard to turn my back on all the Titanium knowledge I have.  I do know that the cheap-developer in me likes Titanium because its free (for now), and the $349 for Corona is a bit steep, especially when I’m releasing free apps.  Maybe I’ll roll that price into the cost of development for my next client. Plus there’s the great Corona community…

Until then – keep coding with whatever is easiest for you.

Code it right
theCodeDog