When Packt Publishing asked me to review the Corona SDK Application Design book by Daniel Williams I was more than happy to read this book. Actually, I had been staring at this book before on the Amazon site; wondering to buy or not to buy. After reading the book I was positively surprised.
Let me start with with the most surprising part, Daniel Williams succeed to explain the basics of the Corona SDK in only 98 pages, which is a perfect size if you want to get more acquainted with the Corona SDK platform before starting a complete study out of it, and reading long introduction chapters before the exciting parts start. So in case you are not sure if you like Corona SDK or if it will fit your development needs, the Corona SDK Application Design book is a good choice. Having said that, as the book is relatively small in size, this book is not very suitable, if you’re looking for a complete reference guide.
The title of the book might be a bit misleading, its not so much about application design but actually Corona SDK/ Lua development. Unique to the approach of the author is the inclusion of two code examples, a game development example, but also a business oriented application. For the latter one the author explains how to build a simple business app with information about a fitness company. This example can very easily be reused for other sorts of businesses. The other example is a jigsaw game. So if you are looking to either use Corona SDK for a business oriented application or to jump start your game developments this book might be a good introduction. The Jigsaw puzzle game is a bit more difficult and more challenging to understand if your are completely new to Corona SDK and Lua. But I believe adding an intermediate level of game to the book is an addition; as it touches a bit more in expanding your Lua skills and goes also a bit beyond the introduction to Corona.
The book explains the process from installing the tools and SDK up till the release of your apps in the app stores, following this approach really gives you enough background to start making your own simple Corona based apps.
Final verdict: when you’re looking for an introduction to Corona SDK and Lua I would absolutely recommend this book. Its a book which is very useful to quickly get enough background on the framework. In case you are already acquainted with the Corona SDK framework this book might not be for you, but still I believe the book is a nice addition of code samples which might or might not become useful for you in the future.
Interested in this book? You can buy the Corona SDK Application design book here.