I’m Picking Up Corona

A couple days ago I downloaded the Corona SDK from Ansca Mobile and have been playing with the 30-day trial version. And I’m really, really impressed with it. So much so that I’m ditching my Torque plans for now.

I had been thinking to get “good” with Torque Game Builder for 2D games and then get iTGB to put them on iOS devices. But the ease with which you can put an iPhone game together with Corona has me changing plans.

While there are a bazillion (roughly) apps in the App Store, I think iOS devices are still “new” enough that a one-man shop can still make some noise — at least easier than in the world of desktop apps. So ditching the desktop and going to mobile apps just makes sense to me.

And while I’ve been going through Objective-C tutorials and playing around with iPhone programming, I think I’m still at least a couple months away from being able to do what I need to do in order to make a game.

But with Corona? After playing with it off and on for a couple days, I think I’m probably 2-3 weeks away from being able to make a game.

Look at this quick video that shows how their physics engine works — and yes, it’s actually that easy to get graphics animating on the screen:

I don’t get any kind of kickback for recommending Corona, but if you’re wanting to do iPhone games you may want to check out that SDK:

Ansca Mobile – Corona SDK

As soon as my latest domain name sale clears escrow.com I’m going to pay $349 and graduate from the trial version to the full thing — and start writing iPhone apps.