Livecode VS Corona SDK

[sefrojones]

I am working on an idea for a Simple 2-d RPG game with a few friends. I am already comfortable with livecode being able to do this this. But my friends want me to learn Lua and use Corona SDK, which looks to me that the only thing corona has over livecode at the moment is Box-2d physics. My freind has never used livecode, and thinks it looks like " Visual Basic or WSIWYG editor." Help me convince him otherwise... Thanks in advance.

[FourthWorld]

Help me convince him otherwise...

That may be harder than it might seem.

For all the productivity benefits of LiveCode, if someone is very experienced in another dynamically-compiled language like Lua the benefit for that person may not be significant enough to warrant switching all their years' worth of tools, libraries, and knowledge. Many good programmers work in multiple languages, but few switch from their main bread-and-butter if they're heavily invested in it.

On the one hand, LC has GUI components integrated as core language elements, while most other scripting languages treat user interfaces as an afterthought, and LC's approach helps keep the focus of your code on the app's business logic. Combined with being nearly completely typeless and having a class hierarchy that reflects visual layering, for many it's an uncommonly productive choice.

But on the other hand, LC has only been open source for less than a year, so it doesn't yet have as large an ecosystem of third-party libraries like Box2D physics.

RunRev has committed to incorporating Box2D into LC (see the Road Map at http://livecode.com/community/roadmap/ ), but that's probably several weeks away at best.

In the meantime, you might give Animation Engine a look to see if it can handle what you need: http://livecode.com/store/marketplace/a ... -engine-5/

But that's for you. When it comes to others, whether its operating systems or graphics tools or IDEs, tribalism often runs too deep for me to recommend spending much time trying to convince anyone. I just use what I enjoy, and encourage others to do the same.