Mobile Game Development With Corona SDK ( 2014 )

Explore Lua, a fast, easy to use scripting language for game development, and learn its dynamic typing, case sensitivity, and core types nil, boolean, number, string, function, and table.

Explore Lua variables, including global and local scope, along with numbers and strings. Practice arithmetic, relational and logical operators, and string concatenation to build readable code.

Explore Lua functions in Corona SDK by defining local functions, passing parameters, returning values, and calling them with examples like add to score and print.

Learn how to use Lua tables by turning a color variable into a four-element table, indexing elements (2 yields white, 4 yields blue) and concatenating values.

Master creating and accessing Lua tables with named properties, nesting tables, and organizing multiple players to print data and loop through names, ages, and cities for Corona sdk game development.

Learn lua control structures and loops by iterating the siblings table with a for loop to print all names. Use if-then and break, and apply # operator to get length.

Learn to display an image in Corona SDK, position it with coordinates, center it on screen, and control placement with x and y properties for layering and movement.

Hide the status bar to maximize game space and set a space-like sky color. Animate the saucer with transition.to, using milliseconds timing, and adjust x and y to move on-screen.

Explore how display objects in Corona SDK respond to properties like alpha, x scale, y scale, and rotation, and learn to animate them with transitions.

Learn to trigger follow-up code after animations in Corona SDK using on complete callbacks, chained transitions, and functions that receive the display object to control movement, rotation, and alpha.

Learn to create a simple explosion by displaying a laser image at the saucer's x and y when it reaches the bottom, then fade, scale, and rotate it using transitions.

Explore event driven programming for mobile devices by handling touch and tap events, orientation changes, and runtime events using sample code and a ready-to-run project.

Set up interactive tap events by attaching event listeners to the tree, cloud, and scenery, and use a shared was tapped function with event.target.name to identify what was tapped.

Learn how touch events differ from taps in Corona SDK, and use touch phases—began, moved, ended, canceled—to drag objects and paint with a finger.

Master dragging display objects by handling began, moved, and ended phases, setting focus on touch, saving start x/y positions, and updating object x and y to follow the touch smoothly.

Explore bonus sample code featuring bigger or smaller and drifty cross, with a 200 ms transition that scales objects to 1.2 and back, triggered by taps.

Create buttons using the Corona SDK widget library, set a theme, position with anchor points, and handle presses with a shared handler; explore image-based buttons.

Learn to create graphical buttons with Corona SDK widgets, using images for default and pressed states, handling on release by button ID, and customizing labels, colors, and layout.

Explore creating on/off switches and checkboxes with the corona widget library, wire up a listener, use is on to drive button enablement, and customize styling for these controls.

Explore the scroll view widget in the krona sdk framework to display large images by scrolling, insert a dungeon image, and enable full-resolution rendering with background options.

Use the scroll view widget to display six pictures in a 3 across by 2 down grid, loading image names by concatenating the loop index to the base name.

Learn to load and play sounds in Corona SDK using audio.loadSound and audio.play, trigger them via a tap, and toggle sound with a boolean while handling mp3 and wave files.

Learn to play background music in a Corona SDK app by loading an electro house dot wave file with loadStream, then control playback with play, stop, and rewind.

Learn how to manage audio channels in Corona SDK by reserving a music channel and reusing available channels for sound effects, with play, stop, and fade controls.

Master game sounds in Corona SDK by aliasing game sounds to main.lua, testing with outlaw, and adding sound effects and background music in a sample project.

Learn to use Audacity, a free cross-platform audio editor, to convert stereo to mono, adjust volume, fade out, and export edits as wav, mp3, or Ogg Vorbis for games.

Learn to create and display text on the screen with Corona SDK, using text display objects, fonts, positioning, and simple tap interactions.

Add a custom true type font in corona sdk by integrating Herro print, configuring iOS plist UIAppFonts, and handling Android font names with separate iOS and Android builds.

Build a scoring module in a Corona SDK game by displaying a score text, initializing score to zero, and updating it with add and reset functions linked to on-screen buttons.

Utilize the line printer library to display multiple lines of text on screen by configuring size, color, and alignment for game credits and other on-screen text.

Discover composer, the official scene management solution in the Corona SDK, enabling you to create scenes and transitions—from main menu to options and beyond.

Locate the composer scene management folder, create a composer variable, load the composer library, and implement a play scene with create, show, hide, and destroy, will and did phases.

Turn a previous UFO demo into a composer based game demo by building a menu with a play button and managing scenes with proper display object insertion.

Learn to convert a ufo game to the composer framework by creating a background and flying saucer, organizing display objects into groups, and using scene show and will/did phases.

Explore the composer framework and how to pass level selections between scenes using set variable and get variable, wiring level buttons to play levels 1–3 and navigate between screens.

Write data to text files in Corona SDK by creating and opening a high score file in the documents directory, appending scores with a newline, and reading them back later.

Learn to read text data with file io by opening a file for read, looping through lines, and printing them using a load text file function with base directories.

Learn to integrate a third-party library, G-G data, to save and load game scores with minimal code, including initializing the data store, saving scores, and validating loaded values.

Use the composer framework and G.G. data to load and save options in the options scene, loading scores and player names on show and saving settings on hide.

Learn sprite animation by using an image sheet with six images to create frame-by-frame, cell-based motion, including arms and legs moving as a character runs, walks, or jumps.

Create a sprite sheet for corona sdk animations by using texture packer to pack multiple images into a single image sheet, adjust packing settings, and export for efficient sprite animation.

Learn to create sprite animations in Corona SDK using image sheets and sequence data, build a three-frame walk cycle, and control playback timing.

Learn to implement sprite sequences in Corona SDK by loading run, walk, box, and hit animations, using event and sprite listeners to switch sequences on tap and when ended.

Develop and orchestrate sprite sequences—stand, walk, and boxing—using transitions and the x property changes to move a character across the screen, with on complete returning to stand.

Group display objects with display.newGroup and fade the scene using the all group; flip sprites with negative scale and sequence actions with timer.performWithDelay.