Ansca Mobile launched the upgraded Corona SDK and Corona Game Edition toolkits for mobile app and game development. The main new thing is the addition of cross-platform capabilities, allowing developers to build apps for iOS and Android devices from the same set of code. As part of this implementation, Corona SDK will automatically scale graphics for each separate platform, which is obviously a time-saving feature.
As for the Corona Game Edition, in addition to the mentioned cross-platform capabilities, there are also new features included for building more demanding mobile games. For instance, there’s the OpenFeint integration for easily adding social networking capabilities to games, sprite sheets for advanced texture handling, and a full-fledged physics engine. According to Evan Kirchhoff (Senior Software Engineer at Ansca Mobile), using the updated Corona Game Edition, developers will be able to integrate physics in just five lines of code! That’s super impressive in my book.
Price wise, Corona SDK is available for $249/year and Corona Game Edition for $349/year (introductory price). Both SDKs can be downloaded directly from Ansca Mobile, and include all new feature rollouts for the full year’s subscription.