So, what all did you try before falling in love with Gideros?

moopf

I came across it when I was trying a host of cross-platform development systems and it just seemed much better organised - it was joined up and made sense (unlike Corona which felt like a spaghetti mess of inconsistencies for instance). Unfortunately I had to step away for a few months and so development halted on my projects but now I'm back and working on the long-term project I started with it, along with other client projects.

However, whilst I still really like Gideros and find it great to develop with, I'm surprised it hasn't moved on much at all in the 5 months I've been away.

Michal

I played with Love2d to get some multiplatform code written in Lua. Then came mobile devices, so when I found about GiderosStudio I knew that was it. So I guess I falled in love with lua, be it Love2d for desktop or GiderosStudio for mobiles I don't have much time to learn new engines, and those two are easy to use.

jack0088

+1 for lua )

MikeHart

@Michal: Did you created a compatibility layer so you can stick your code into both engines and it work out of the box?

Michal

@Michal: Did you created a compatibility layer so you can stick your code into both engines and it work out of the box?

No, I have not written anything substantial for any of those platforms But the differences between the two are quite large, so I don't know if that would make much sense to create such a layer. I'd rather separate the game/application logic from its view (love2d/gideros), then use platform specific code for interfacing.

Dale

I've been programming for 34 years (wow, really?), starting with basic, assembler, machine code, c, c++, pascal, java, perl, python, php, etc., etc.,

I stumbled across Lua and corona and was very quickly won over by the slick and fast language and the rapid mobile development. After releasing one modest app, and becoming very frustrated with Ansca, I took a longer look at MOAI and Gideros.

MOAI still mystifies me, despite several attempts to check it out. Seriously, wtf?

And Gideros continues to impress me:

- The Player: the fastest code/test tool available, on device!

- Offline builds. Being a "mobile developer" in more than one sense of the word, I don't always have good net access. And it was hampering my development with Corona. (Clearly a case of putting business control ahead of useful functionality, on Ansca's part.)

- Plugins. Corona making these only available in their enterprise product was the final straw for me. I was holding out hope for Corona extensibility (since they were getting too slow at adding Or fixing features). And the tool that would let me do that, is beyond my reach. This solidly threw me into the Gideros camp.

- The community. It doesn't seem huge, but it sure seems helpful.

- Few "show stoppers." Most things lacking in Gideros aren't that major, IMHO. And I honestly can't think of anything significant that is actually "broken" (well, gdrbridge has some growing pains, but I'm sure that'll be ironed out, and it's hardly an essential feature). With Corona, I would find and demonstrate clearly broken things, important things, and they would be ignored, release after release. And the ability to dip into objective C via plugins, if something is missing, is huge peace of mind.

- At first, I worried the "one developer shop" thing would be a problem. But Gideros seems well enough designed, and @atlim seems to have such a great handle on everything, those fears have gone away. Hopefully they can keep the momentum through their growth (whoops, wrong thread!

Anyhow, I've got two or three Gideros apps on the go, and hope to have then in the app store before long. I'm definitely enjoying the process far more than my Corona days...

I also hope to contribute a plugin or two back to the community after my main app work is under control...

-d

MikeJensen

First language I got paid to write was COBOL. (Yes I'm old but haven't been in the game quite as long as @Dale). These days I pay the mortgage with C#.
With regard to mobile apps, a brief dabble with Objective-C and Corona, and I'm settling on Gideros. The remote compile thingy with Corona bothers me. I'm interested in MonoTouch for non-game apps because I have a solid background in .NET.

Tom2012

Flash game design
Objective-C (ouch)
Game Salad - Way too basic for what I wanted
Corona - Very slow to test on and a bit complex without IDE
Stencyl - Good software but bit buggy at present. More for flash.

Have yet to find a reason not to use Gideros yet. I am certainly in love. ;-)

cvieira

I'm a developer for about 12 years now (use mainly java, php, python, perl, ...) but in the mobile world development i'm a newbie (started to focus on this just in February this year).

I've released two apps for android (1 is a game) using the great AndEngine game engine.

But now i'm focused on using Gideros, with which i'm preparing my next games. Gideros impressed me from the moment i've first tried it. One of the things that pushed me to Gideros was the player... just fantastic another important factor was the community that is very commited and is growing. The licensing was also a factor that i have in consideration, of course... and also the option to still support armv6 devices (unlike Corona)!!!

Resuming, despite there are some issues to solve, features to be done, etc... Gideros + work done by community (plugins, extensions, etc...) makes it one the best at the moment for sure

BlastByte

Hey all, new here - only downloaded Gideros last night and I'm already falling in love!

I've been a "modder" since the Quake and Half-Life days so game development has always been in my blood although my professional career is in web design and I'm now a self employed app developer.

My mobile game dev journey has taken me from native Android through to libgdx, andengine, moai, jmonkeyengine, Unity3D and Corona.

I'm now settled on Unity3D for my bigger projects but after wanting a real 2D game solution I tried Corona again recently but wasn't happy with several of it's features / shortcomings. Enter Gideros! In the past 24 hours I've already got several game prototypes running and I'm truly impressed.

Development is so rapid thanks to Lua and the instant WiFi deployment to my test devices. The IDE is beautifully simple and runs fast which is great for me as I'm currently on a rather slow laptop. Engine performance so far has been blazing even on older devices.

Very excited to continue working with Gideros!

xhidnoda

Hello People
I'm from Paraguay. I come to use Corona. I use Gideros now. The tools It's wonderful.

atilim

welcome @xhidnoda

xhidnoda

Hey..guys!
Empiezo a realizar tutoriales para los de habla hispana como yo!
I say....start make tutorial in spanish here: http://www.supremacialinux.com/gideros-mobile-tutorial-de-como-agregar-una-imagen/

BigWinston

Professionally, I write good old ANSI-C for embedded uC targets. I also write a bunch of tools, mostly with C# or Python.

Mobile development is purely a hobby for me, and one in which I love. I released an app with a buddy around a year or so ago. It was quite simple, but as it was done in Java for Android, it took a long time to get anything done.

I wanted to write and release with a fast turnaround. Being married and having other commitments, it would be near impossible for me to spend the time required to develop strong native applications, so I looked into cross-platform frameworks. This is how I found Corona. I liked Corona, but the pricing model for Gideros can not be beat. Plus, as one of my main issues coming from the C syntax style languages was the lack of OOD - it felt alien. Gideros class system helped there.

Now, I love Gideros. I can develop applications quickly - before a project becomes "stale". I fully intend to spend the first $150 I make on my apps on a full Gideros license. Heck, I'll probably do it a lot sooner than that!! :O)

plamen

I tried Corona and Unity but havent been very far. With MOAI I almost did same project as the one i work on now. As i said before frustration from often changes in the API and bad documentation forced me to search for another LUA tool and i stumbled upon Gideros.

Cyberience

Well my 2Cents. seeing we are talking Age.
I started on Punch card, CBM, wrote Games on Vic 20,->ZX8->Sprectrum->Comador 64->First IBM PC->
Languages ->Basic->DB3->clipper->DB4->Foxpro->Pascal->Assembler->Delphi->c++->Java->J2ME(Published 4 games)->Symbian->CGI(Various)->Powebuilder->MSQL->PHP(Fav)->Oracle->JavascriptWith HTML->HTML5(Published Game using titanium webview on ios and Android)->Now!!!
With languages around those technologies. I avoided frameworks and used my own templating framwork thats easy to migrate.

Anyone know the Difference between a peek and a poke? lol
And we have it easy now with SSD drives, My first computer had to be loaded with a Tape cassette.

So now I am converting my HTML5 game into LUA.

I am now 50, and still creative, so old jokes please.

OZApps

@Cyberience, you will find a lot of people on this forum that *actually* know the difference between peek and poke and have used it extensively and may also have done some Z80 assembly development on either a Spectrum or an Amstrad.

on your age, there are a couple of slightly more experienced (i.e. with few more years) members on this forum.

thanhquan1512

OMG so many experienced and experts here.Hope I can learn from you guys.

In game development, my ex-gf is Corona and now Gideros, that's all I have

plamen

on your age, there are a couple of slightly more experienced (i.e. with few more years) members on this forum.

This one was refreshing :-) now it makes me feel so young and innocent on 43...
The peek and poke reminds me of the story back in '85 when i was locked down in my school after the classes. I didn't noticed what time is it until the cops entered the room with guns looking for burglar... I was digging the code of some Apple ][ game.

GregBUG

10 poke 53280, 1

run

ahahah!!!! anyone remember (c64) ?

WauloK

I first wrote small programs in BASIC on Microbee computers at school. At home, it was Z80 and 6502 Assembler.
I also taught myself some Perl, C, PHP, BASH scripting, Java but never became an expert in any
I wrote a small app in Obj-C then rewrote it with the C*SDK. I also used that to make a game with my 9yo daughter co-designing.
After the C*SDK debacle, I had a break for a while and decided to look again, when Gideros caught my attention...

OZApps

as mentioned on another thread, welcome Waulok. You must also let the community know about your voice talent, some can definitely use those services.

jdbc

I will try a few lua based mobile SDKs before using Gideros.

I do not like Corona for its building process outside of my control, and Lua Wax is cool but only works for iOS and you need to know Cocoa framework too.

Gideros is great because you can extend with plugins if you need more performance and really easy to develop with it.

hosamred

s s

OZApps

@hosamred, are you studying or working in Doha? My office was on Salwa Road and the city was very different then (2004) that it could be now as it was before the Asiad games.

hosamred

s s

Garyk1968

@gregBUG yes remember doing 'pokes' on Vic20 to disable keys and the like

didnt poke 16384,1 change the border colour or something?

I started on zx81 doing BASIC and then started doing 6800 assembler on C64. Then work using GW-BASIC and BASICA on early IBM XTs and then went onto dbase II, clipper '87 then foxpro for a few years. After that Delphi which Ive kinda stuck with but for day job last few years has been primarily DB work.

Games wise I started with gamesalad but found performance on the device lacking, had a quick dabble with GLBasic (which is pretty good and multi-platform) before joining the corona beta which is some time back now, back in the days when you could submit code for a build and get an app back instantly!

During this time I had also been learning objectiveC and released a couple of utility apps on the app store. I then did a simple game in Cocos2D and a simple one in Lua.

And found Gideros by accident but haven't done much more than play with it!

OZApps

@Gary1968, 16384 (0x4000) was the first byte of the display address, and if you poked it with 1, it would show a dot on the screen equivalent of plot 7,175

The colour attributes started at 6144 bytes after this address, i.e. 0x5800 and if you poked it with 1, you would set the paper to 0 (Black) and the ink to 1 (Blue) but you would see nothing but a black square on a blank screen.

Scouser

@OZApps: You are quite correct about the screen & attribute area, unfortunately, these were on the ZX Spectrum and I think @Garyk1968 was talking about the Commodore Vic20.

Mells

@OZApps, @Scouser
It seems that things have changed a lot because I and a few other members probably don't know what you are talking about

I have a question for you : what do you think the young generation will talk about in the future like you are doing now?
I can't see what, from the things I'm doing today in programming, will be even more abstracted.
Could you, in the past, have guessed how much and how the things would change?