I can't figure out why Ansca chose such a horribly contorted solution for dynamic image resolution as "newImageRect". Combined with the terrible lack of dynamic spritesheets, and the awefully broken Box2D implementation that doesn't allow for image scaling, it poses so many problems for people who want to program anything more advanced than "watch the crate fall to the ground."

What is the best way to get Ansca to address some of these issues? I don't think they ever will, and as much as I love Corona, I'm not going to spend another month trying to battle Corona for what should be the simplest of things.

Here are some things that need to be fixed:

1. Get rid of "newImageRect". It is simply not needed. The need to specify an image's width and height are absolutely ridiculous, and impose all sorts of inane restrictions around those who wish to develop frameworks and tools for Corona. It basically can only be used by developers who already know the exact width and height of all of the assets in their game.

2. Instead, add a new optional parameter to "newImage" that specifies whether dynamic resolution images should be loaded. If a higher resolution image is found, simply load it using the image's native dimensions, and then scale it using the current display's contentScaleX and contentScaleY.

3. "newImageRect" uses the black magic of proxies to Lua userdata structures for display objects to do things that Corona users can't do. For example, "newImageRect" reports values for "width", "height", "xScale", and "yScale" that take into account higher resolution images. This allows Box2D and other libraries to continue to work properly. However, Corona users can't access the same type of black magic, and it breaks all sorts of things. Please provide some method for doing this for all display objects.

4. "xScale" and "yScale" don't work properly when using physics. I've seen warnings in the forums and API documentation to "not use xScale or yScale on already existing physics bodies", however it's worse than that: you can't even set the scale of an image BEFORE adding it as a physics body; if you do, it will still break.

5. No spritesheets for dynamic image resolutions? Come on guys. There are a ton of people trying to code all sorts of clever and half-assed ways out of this nasty trap, and for something that should be a core feature, this is painfully missing. It's also impossible to work around this omission because of all the other traps pointed out above.

So anyways, yeah, I'm pretty much at the point of needing to stop working on desperate work-arounds for critical functionality gaps in Corona, and start evaluating other products now.

Aww Diddums.

You do know that you can make custom physics objects with a Lua Table. Their is actually a third party program that allows you to do so. Also, instead of using xScale and yScale, it might be easier to just shrink your images to the proper resolution.

Regards,
Jordan Schuetz
Ninja Pig Studios

Corona is great and I'm using it in my projects hoping for improvements. You will just have to know its limits and scale back, it's not meant to solve all your problems. I will admit tho even though there are many things that are easier to use, there are many hidden hurdles you have to overcome.

I would say the greatest obstacle and also the greatest benefit is frequent updates. Because everything is updated almost every week, it's a good thing to get new features. BUT, help and docs will get outdated. 3rd party libraries that are not following closely get outdated. When you do Google searches you may be looking at old code. You won't get much help many times in the forums, because there are so many questions, no ones knows the exact answer unless they try themselves. So in terms of time there is still a trade off.

I personally would like to get all core functionality fixed first. Then the special device specific stuff fixed later. It still seems like the best solution for 2D mobile, so I will stick with it.

As much as I like Corona and Im very happy it got me started in the programming world its still disappointing when it does not have features you want but I understand its impossible to make everyone happy. I will continue using Corona for the time being but Im going to keep studying hard to learn Obj-C to learn the "Official" language and If im correct that has no limitations. This is a third party SDK so obviously it will never be as complete as Xcode but its amazing the things you can do in such little time and for anyone who wants to port to Android and Iphone this gets the job done for you. Thanks Ansca please keep working hard and adding features we really need to be much more of a completed SDK some stuff on the Roadmap take forever to get it done :(

Merry Christmas!

As has been noted above it is impossible to please everyone all the time, but we do our best.

One of the biggest things people have been pushing for is GC independent of OF, that's coming soon - another thing was Mac Apps which is coming early next year.

So, if something is important to you and you think it would benefit the community, a thoughtful post talking about what you feel needs to be done an why is a good way to get it looked at and possibly added to the roadmap as a priority in the near future.

I can't guarantee sarcasm is necessarily going to be met with sincerity, so it's better to be up front and clear, like speaking with a colleague, rather than the lesser.

You can also contact the team directly via any one of the email addresses listed on the site, including both cofounders'.

Merry Christmas.

Peach :)

Unfortunately every solution has its pros and cons. If there was an indisputable "best" solution, all of the other solutions would disappear overnight.

Corona's biggest strength is the ability to get a lot done very quickly (especially if you know what you're doing). If you're equally skilled with Corona and Objective C/Xcode, you will easily produce apps 5x faster with Corona. Then of course there's the ability to build for Android/Nook/Fire and iOS with one set of code, so you could realistically be producing apps 10x faster when all is set and done.

The cost of that is being locked into Ansca's system. They decide what you CAN and CAN'T do, and much of the time HOW you will do it. That's really no different than GameSalad or Mono, except that they have made slightly different decisions on CAN/CAN'T/HOW.

+1 to blasterv

Well Said.