Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
• Inconsistency between the performances you get from the simulator (yes,
Corona SDK offers a simulator to run your tests!) and the actual device.
• Unexpected crashes without proper reporting, which generated a common
statement among the community of developers that Corona is not fit to de-
velop for the Android platform at all. Corona SDK requires your code to be
uploaded to Ansca Mobile servers for compilation. You send them your code
and they return you the executable. This fact has two main consequences:
the first is that, if you are offline, you can't compile your code. The second
and more severe problem is that you must send them your code, without
knowing what they actually do with it, as Ansca Mobile is known for not being
particularly transparent about its internal procedures.
• Finally, many users complain that applications developed with Corona SDK
tend to be slower when compared to other frameworks and it doesn't allow
integration with external libraries.
3D game engines
Though mobile gaming instilled new life in 2D titles and strongly propelled old-school
game mechanics to appeal to the casual audience, as demonstrated by the large
popularity of 2D games such as
Angry Birds
,
Fruit Ninja
, or
Jetpack Joyride
, 3D is
the players' most expected feature in today's games.
What follows here is a description of the most popular game engines which we re-
commend to develop 3D games for mobile.
Shiva 3D
Shiva 3D is a 3D game engine developed by StoneTrip (
http://www.stonetrip.com/
),
which can be used to develop games for any target platform you may choose, such
as Windows and Windows Phone, OSX and iOS, Linux, Android, Blackberry, PSP,
and Wii. With the release of the Android SDK in 2010, Shiva 3D was the first engine
to support the development of 3D games for the Android platform.
Shiva's advantages are as follows:
• Shiva 3D supports native C++ compilation, which means you can import your
own libraries to add functionality to your games
• It uses Lua as its scripting language
