What are your thoughts? I’m a big Unity fan, but from what I’ve read up on the other two, they seem far superior in terms of basic 2D implementation (in terms of speed of production). Unity of course wins on the 3D front, but I’m not so sure it’s a worthy tool for 2D games (over the other two). I feel like Unity requires a ton more code for stuff that the other two could do much easier. What are your thoughts? Am I wrong? I don’t have an extensive knowledge of the other two, so I’m sure I could be wrong.
I need my Nomex suit to say this, but I think TGB is pretty decent for 2D.
Since when has GameSalad to do anything with programming?
Thats ultra limited “click your game together and combine it with very shallow and restricted logic”. Its great if you have no plan of programming at all but shortly after thats it.
if unity or corona depends on what you want to do in detail, what kind of assets you have and your budget as the price point, performance and other things differ seriously (corona has some rather android performance problems with many objects which makes “tile based” 2d games pretty tricky at times for example)
Torque is very similar to Unity isn’t it? I used it a while back and could hardly tell the difference. I think the biggest difference is you can program in C++.
I really like the idea of GameSalad because it is a script-less engine. That seems like it would severely limit the amount of depth you could have in a game (shaders, advanced pathfinding/AI, lighting), but make for some crazy fast simple games. Corona seems like a mix between Unity and GameSalad. It has more built in functionality to rapid prototype, but still requires you to script a bunch.
GameSalad is much more problematic for publishing.
lol really? They seem to tout their ease of publishing as one of their key features. That’s kind of funny that you say that if it’s true.
have had a look at corona’s showcase but not found any decent game yet, apart of ghosts vs monsters “angry birds - like” concept
is it the box or the developers? some sort of platformer with stylish artwork would come nicely, I think
I think I’m in love with the corona website…
Oh… and the pricing 
Code is a tad verbose though.
I never look at an engine’s showcase to make opinions of it. Showcases have too much dependence on luck and when a company’s engine was released vs. others. Typically I’ll look at the features, community base, and documentation to make a good general opinion on it.
But yeah, I think Corona and Gamesalad would both make great platformer engines. I feel like they would do well for TDs, twin stick shooters, beatem-ups, puzzle games, and plenty of others as well. I don’t see them being very intuitive or useful for physics based puzzlers or grid based games like Advanced Wars or Final Fantasy Tactics. Too much AI involved in those and I feel like the engines are limited in that department.
Usually most 2D-focussed engines do 2D better than any 3D engine, but at the same time they do 3D really poorly if at all, and it’s mainly because 2D is so much easier to implement and program for than 3D. So 3D really is the advanced system and 2D usually is a more basic system, but then sometimes that simplicity makes the 2D systems easier to work with. Add 3D on top and try to get it to be simple-n-easy isn’t a simple or easy task.
Corona is good, easy to use, and has lots of learning resources. I use it and think its a great choice for 2d.
I can’t say if it’s better or worse then unity for 2d because I have never done a 2d project in unity.
Goes without saying! Unity is way better than those other two things you mentioned!!!
Hahaha that’s awesome. I wonder where they took their design inspiration from.
I hear it’s better than God and sex too… I wish I had married Unity instead of my wife. Unity has light-mapping, all she had was my son… Sooo 20th century.
; `)
I think it all depends on what kind of workflow you want or used to.
GameSalad: Visual IDE, programming is limited to the behaviors that are available, no freeform collision/physics.
Corona: No visual IDE just the simulator, LUA scripting, Box2D based physics.
Unity: Visual IDE, programming in C# JavaScript Boo, nvidia PhysX.
There is Gumbo for corona that gives you a simple visual IDE. I have only used it a little but you can do a lot with it and its free.
It also runs in browser it uses xml and can export as LUA. There is a way to download it and run as a standalone but I don’t see the button.
Didn’t know about that. Thanks for the info!
Well obviously Unity is the best ;). I’ve just been pondering the possibility of using GameSalad of Corona as my primary 2D engine.
What about Cocos2d? Its opensource and has plenty of learning resources around the web.
I’ve been using Corona on a project this last half year… I hate it. Especially having to program in lua, what a retarded language.
Ohwell!