Michelle M. Fernandez - Corona SDK Mobile Game Development Beginner’s Guide

Michelle M. Fernandez is a mobile game developer for iOS/Android devices and co-founder of MobiDojo (http://www.mobidojo.com). She is also a mentor for aspiring artists and programmers trying to break into the game industry. After experimenting with several game engines over the years, she was introduced to Corona SDK in late 2010 and has been an avid user of the program ever since. She enjoys creating tutorials and new game frameworks for others to learn from. When Michelle is not developing games, she is spending time with friends and family, playing video games, basketball, singing, or baking delicious pastries.

I would like to thank first and foremost my family and friends for their love and encouragement throughout the production of this book. To my dear friend and partner, Ed Ho, thanks for introducing me to Corona SDK. You have genuinely been my support throughout this project and always challenged and pushed me to succeed. To April Quileza and Yanglyn Ou, you guys have always been there for me to help review my work and become my personal cheerleaders when things got hectic. I would like to acknowledge the founders of Ansca Mobile, Carlos Icaza and Walter Luh for giving Corona developers an amazing platform to work with. Big thanks to David Barnes, Robin de Jongh, Chris Rodrigues, Alka Nayak, Manasi Poonthottam, Steven Wilding, the reviewers, and the rest of the Packt staff for giving me this opportunity to share my love and knowledge of mobile game development in this book.

Mitch Allen has worked on software projects for Lotus, IBM, Dragon, Nuance, Yahoo, and Intuit. He specializes in everything from Enterprise Web Apps to Mobile. He currently lives and works in Silicon Valley. For more information, please visit his website at: http://mitchallen.com.

Nicholas Golden can be found coding furiously away working on dozens of games and applications simultaneously. He is also heavily involved with helping others out and will go out of his way to assist. He is an accomplished professional with a jack of all trades, master of a few approach in key areas such as music composition and games, specifically game development. His thinking is extremely eccentric but focused, abstract but concentrated which results in approaching problem solving in non-standard ways while avoiding the status quo.

Nicholas Golden runs an indie development studio, information regarding his adventures can be found at: www.NicholasGolden.com and www.AngryCarrot.com.

I would like to thank my wife Michelle and my baby boy Ryan (3 months old at the time of writing), for putting up with my ramblings and late-night reviewing while being overly excited about the material. I am always pitching insane ideas at least dozens of times a day which amounts to me having so much work to do, it would literally take me 30 lifetimes to finish!

I would also like to of course thank Michelle Fernandez who let me in on this Corona SDK book in the first place. What started out as a curiosity on the Anscamobile.com forums, turned into an opportunity to communicate with a talented writer and review this fantastic book. I am sure you, the reader will enjoy this book as much as I did reviewing it!1!!11!11! (The 1s are on purpose and signify importance to a statement, ZoMg don't you know this?)

I would also like to give a shout out to CARLOS THE MAN over at Anscamobile.com for the Corona SDK! Without that, there would be no book! Carlos is FTW!

Alan Grace is a co-founder of Pixel Wolf Studios, an Indie game development studio based in Dublin, Ireland. Having worked for a number of years in Web and graphic design running his own company Alpha Solutions, Alan has a vast area of expertise across multimedia and game design. He recently completed his MSc in Digital Games and set up Pixel Wolf Studios moving his focus into game development for the iOS and Google Play Store.

Pixel Wolf Studios was established in 2011 and currently has three titles in development for the iOS and Google Play Store. All three are due for release in 2012 and will be developed using Corona SDK. For more information visit www.pixelwolfstudios.com.

Clement Ho is currently pursuing an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Abilene Christian University. He has a strong passion for mobile and web development which has led him to pursue multiple freelance and independent projects. He has developed for the iOS and BlackBerry platform using Corona SDK, xCode and Adobe Air technologies.

Steve Hoffman (also known as Captain Hoff) is a high tech serial entrepreneur. He's currently involved in Playkast, a stealth startup that will be launching a new type of entertainment platform later this year.

Hoffman is a founding member of the Academy of Television's Interactive Media Group and was the Chairman and Founder of the San Francisco Chapter of the Producers Guild. He is also as serving on the Board of Governors for the New Media Council.Hoffman and co-founded LavaMind, which publishes Founders Space, as well as numerous websites, games and mobile applications.

In 2007, Hoffman founded RocketOn, a social media and virtual world startup. Prior to this, Hoffman was the COO of Tap11 (formerly Zannel), a venture-funded startup that provides businesses with advanced analytics and CRM for Twitter.