From Codea to iPhone App - Possible?

Questions
1

Hello, absolute, bottom tier noob question…

I’m a designer who has always wanted to make games. Codea kind of looked like a good ‘gateway drug’ to get into some kind of programming. So my question is, if I spend the time to work out how Lua/Codea works, how would I then apply that knowledge into making a real iOS app?

I’ve made a HTML app using PhoneGap but would prefer to make something closer to a native app.

Thanks!

2

Hi Rimfya

At the moment you can’t turn Codea projects into native apps (well, not without re-implementing the backend yourself). You can run them on Mac, Windows and Linux using LoveCodify (see the top of the forums for a discussion).

We are planning to open source the backend of Codea, which will allow porting of your projects to other platforms.

3

Okay great. So in the meantime, if I’m using Codea to learn Lua those skills aren’t completely wasted as there are other ways to leverage Lua into ios apps?

4

There is also the Corona SDK, which is a Lua based system for building iPhone apps.

5

Learning a new programming language, especially one different from what you’re used to, is never a waste of time. Lua especially so - it’s embedded in all sorts of places.

6

Okay neat! Thanks for the responses.

Side note: Seeing someone else with the name Simeon for the first time in my life is freaking me out…

7

Yeah that freaks me out too :stuck_out_tongue:

8

Any chance of this coming down the road? I can already see that I’m going to waste many hours playing in this environment. It would be great to at least have a way to share the results outside of passing along source.

9

It’s a poor substitute for the glory of an iPad app, but loveCodify (see the stick thread) will let you share your stuff on windows/linux/OSX, and maybe android (not sure that works yet)

10

Hi I am a new user and had a quick question about commands (this is probably not the right forum) but is there a command, like in .bat files you have set /p xxx=, for user data so that I could make like a calculator?

Basically I am planning on using lua’s mathematical abilities to build a neat, made by me type calculator.

Thank you very much for your time
-ldsguy1

11

And 1 more thing I might add is when I type the line (x,y,x,y) command it doesnt draw a line.

12

@Ldsguy1 The last one is because your line start position and end position are the same point.

line(x,y, x+100, y+100) should draw a line. (If not, make sure your stroke() colour is set to something visible.)

Regarding your first question, you should be able to make a calculator. You could use the print() statement to print your results, or if you wanted to be fancy you could have a look at using Bortel’s font rendering code to draw output to the screen.

13

Ok thanks

14

Well I went and tried the line thing again and it didn’t work again. Here’s my code…

function draw()

background(251, 1, 1, 255)

stroke(35, 0, 255, 255)

lineCapMode(ROUND)

line(6,3,77,90)

end

Thanks again

15

Btw those were supposed to have enters between them

16

try

1)exiting Codea 2) clicking the iPad button twice (a tray of apps with data should appear) 3) click and hold the Codea icon that appears (the one in the tray not the real one) 4) click the delete

Your code is fine

17

The easier solution to this bug (for the moment) is to add a call to rect(0,0,10,10) to your draw function. That seems to fix the shader state issue that sometimes comes up.

18

THAT needs to go in the FAQ!

19

Hmm - how can you tell what version of Codify you’re running? It’s not in the credits…

20

The only version is 1.1 at the moment. This has been suggested before and we’ll start putting it in the credits after version 1.1.2 (Codea).