Particles, JSON, LFS - Oh my!!

Well it's time to have another fun meetup about Corona! For those of you who haven't seen the news, Corona has introduced the ability to use particles designed with Particle Designer 2.0 to be imported and used directly in Corona!

This is a third party app, and it costs $75 new (or $49 for an upgrade from a previous license). Here's their site: http://71squared.com/en/particledesigner. Mac-only. Don't have a mac? Shouldn't be too much of a problem, some folks in the community have come up with some alternatives (Haven't tested them, so use at your own risk!) http://roaminggamer.com/makegames/ . From what we can see, lets you run an editor in the corona simulator and export your JSON emitters right there or you can compile and build for your devices and presto! On-the-go particle editing!! Email yourself the JSON emitter data. Should mention these cost $30 or so, a little more for multi-seat licenses. Support the devs, they're just like you and me! I'll grab a copy and have it for demo.

We'll also cover using LFS (LUA File System) to do some neat tricks such as enumerating all files contained in a directory, checking to see if files exist or not, etc. These can come in to play when you have a directory of game levels, or graphics and you'd need to know all the filenames of each one of them for loading. Or, in an app, perhaps you'd want to display only the names of the files in a scrollview widget for a browser type solution.

We're meeting at the Rockin' Baja Lobster in Old Town at 11AM. Don't be a dummy like I was last time and park far away, drive right on into their parking lot. They are JUST opening at 11AM and there was plenty there last time when the other folks showed. I can carpool some of us on Downtown to the meetup, so hope to see you folks there. Should be a fun day!!