LiveCode 5, launched today, brings 10X faster app rendering speed than ever before to LiveCode built apps. LiveCode developers can now use hardware accelerated graphics to make their apps and games faster than ever before and iOS 5 and In App purchasing support means these developers can maximise revenue by leveraging different monetization options on today’s most profitable platforms. Mark Taoilinn, RunRev Sales and Marketing Manager, talks about how exciting the new launch has been.

I love the run up to the launch of a new product! Talking to our customers to see what matters to them most, scheduling a development cycle to bring it to them, releasing Developer Previews and Release Candidates of the product to the LiveCode Developer Program to get their feedback and improve the product, planning a press release, new website, new mailers, new videos. Every launch we do pushes us to up our game and work even harder than ever before, and the results from that are always really pleasing. With LiveCode 5 we’ve gone even further and I’m proud to say that the results are staggering.

Ten Times Faster

Ben  and the development team have been pushing the LiveCode ecosystem to the max. First it was twice as fast, but we knew we could do better, so 5 times faster became our target. When we hit that, we decided to aim for 7 times faster. We weren’t sure just how far we could push it but we felt that LiveCode needed the best we could give it – long nights and weekends of later, today we ended up with a new version of LiveCode whose applications render up to ten times faster than ever before! The development team have done themselves proud, and we in customer service are thrilled to bring you, the customer, our best ever release.

To get these speed increases, we needed to incorporate enhanced hardware accelerated graphics into the LiveCode engine. And once we did, we needed to test it. This is where the real fun started – David made a neat little game to test the engine. Once we realised how much fun the game would be everyone got in on the action – our new web designer Steve made the graphics, Neil made the music and I got to write incredibly corny game descriptions.  What fun! We called the game Galactic Gauntlet and it will be shortly be available in the iOS app store. You can take a look at the source code for the game by downloading the stack here.

iOS 5 & In App Purchasing

I don’t know about you, but I was really excited to see last week’s Apple announcement ‘Let’s talk iPhone’, mainly because I knew that we would soon be delivering the iOS 5 ready LiveCode 5 and I wanted to see what new devices you could develop for. With full iOS 5 support, your LiveCode 5 built apps will open up the iPad2 and the iPhone 4s as devices for your apps.  The really great news is LiveCode 5 built apps will take full advantage of the faster A5 chips on both devices – you really will build better, faster, smoother apps than ever before.

LiveCode 5 goes farther than just giving you new devices to develop for, it opens up entirely new revenue streams. I’m delighted to announce that LiveCode 5 supports in app purchasing on iOS (with Android following very soon). Did you know that In App purchasing accounts for 72% of all revenue for iPhone Apps that include it. Now that revenue can be yours too. As I outlined in my presentation at RunRevLive.11 free to download apps can become a very profitable business model for developers if you incorporate In App purchasing options in your app make up.
We’re going to include In App purchasing in our Galactic Gauntlet app to show you how it’s done – watch this space.

Quick start centre

We’ve made it easier than ever before to get started with LiveCode with our revamped ‘Quick Start Centre’. Accessible from within LiveCode itself you can now follow along with 6 simple lessons designed to teach you the basics of Live Coding to make sure you get up to scratch in no time.  Check it out.

Special Introductory offer

As a special treat you can enjoy a copy of animationEngine, worth $79, free with every LiveCode 5 update or purchase in October. animationEngine offers you functions and handlers to move objects exactly as you desire. Create linear movement, polygonal movement, circular movement, elliptical movement and start and stop the action at any time under scripted control. This is simply the easiest and best way to add animations to LiveCode 5 apps. animationEngine has been fully optimized to work with LiveCode 5.

It’s been a really busy few months getting ready for this launch, but I’m so pleased with the results. Check out or new homepage, our new videos and most importantly your brand new LiveCode. New visitors can trial LiveCode for free here and existing users can upgrade here.