Hi. I'm looking for a real, true, no-holds barred Idiot's guide to DM. I grew up with procedural-based programming languages, starting at a very early age, and as such, it is incredibly difficult for me to forget everything I learned and start from scratch with object oriented coding.
So, to that end, I'm looking for a guide, a tutorial series, something, that breaks DM down so that I can understand it. I've tried the Blue book, no dice. I've read a large portion of the reference guide, that's left me often more confused than I was going into it. I've even tried a select number of tutorials written by various members, and they start out just fine, but leave me scratching my head after a short while. I'm on the verge of just giving up, but I'd rather not if I can just get some good help on these issues I'm having.
I would appreciate any advice, or if someone could point me to a tutorial they think might work for me, I would be eternally grateful. Thank you very much.
At my wit's end.
ID:155845
 Mar 3 2011, 10:44 am
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Mar 3 2011, 11:47 am
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OrangeWeapons
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Did you check out Falacy's tutorials?
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Lanaka wrote:
I'm looking for a guide, a tutorial series Although the following are a little outdated, they teach the basics really well: Zilal's Beginner Tutorial Part 1,2, and 3. Also, Your First World and Step BYOND are excellent beginner demos. (http://www.byond.com/developer/) I've tried the Blue book, no dice. I've read a large portion of the reference guide, that's left me often more confused than I was going into it. I've even tried a select number of tutorials written by various members, and they start out just fine, but leave me scratching my head after a short while. When you get to this point, that's the time to come on the forum and search. New members don't realize that the forum is a full archive of questions from people just like you and they sometimes even have long answers explaining how things work. If you still don't find your answer then you should make a post on developer how-to. No one wants to spoon feed you answers so you have to at least show some attempt and be really specific about what you're trying to do. I'm on the verge of just giving up, but I'd rather not if I can just get some good help on these issues I'm having. Don't do that. Keep at it. Learning a new language isn't something you can do overnight. I would appreciate any advice, I really recommend reading the guide. Although it can be somewhat dry at some points it really covers everything you need to start working on a very basic game. | |
Not to be rude, but what you basically told him is to do what he already said he attempted. People learn in different ways, you have to accept that.
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OrangeWeapons wrote:
Not to be rude, but what you basically told him is to do what he already said he attempted. People learn in different ways, you have to accept that. You're right. Some people are visual learners and grasp concepts better by looking at snippets. The links I posted are that and more. The OP said that he read tutorials but as soon as they got more difficult he gets lost. Therefore I gave him a list of tutorials that have survived through the ages as being the best tutorials for newbies. I've read Falacy's tutorials. They are really simple demos that he makes more complex than they need to be by writing long blocks of text. A lot of the comments he makes are simple concepts that he repeats in each tutorial. Instead of repeating what he said, he probably should just use reference. He should integrate his demo with the reference by pointing people to the reference when he mentions a specific proc instead of redefining it. | |
It's less object-oriented programming and more a lack of good learning material on BYOND. I think the best thing in your case would be to read a beginner's tutorial for a different language - say Java or C# - and learn object-oriented programming from there. We have no real guide 'introducing' OO in BYOND, so people who don't intuitively grasp it have a hard time (and, indeed, we don't have a shortage of confused coders).
(By the way, I don't recommend Falacy's tutorials, their quality is not very good and - no offence intended - Falacy isn't exactly a top-notch programmer.) | |
Well... what sort of game or genre are you interested in making?
Having a direction is key because learning to just learn is significantly more challenging when you're not applying what your learning. ts | |
I've started reading Falacy's tutorials, and he dives into a number of concepts fairly early that he doesn't really explain fairly well. It worried me that he may do that later on in trying to explain content I don't understand already, so I quit reading it and started looking for other things.
I've also downloaded Step BYOND and Your First World, I look at them for help from time to time, but they don't cover some of the more advanced points. I've also looked over Zilal's tutorials, was slightly frustrated because I had spent hours prior to that and barely skimmed it before closing it, and promptly forgetting about it. I'll make sure to go back and give it another look over, thank you. As far as the forums go, I've skimmed topics pertaining to certain things I've been stuck on, and looked at the other posts as examples, but often I can only see them as examples of how to do certain things, not explanations on what some of the basic concepts within those examples mean. I do actually have a goal in mind with learning this language, I've had multiple goals in mind, but I think it may be best for me to step back at this point, and work on something simple, and go from there. I do admit I'm guilty of trying to make a massive project with little knowledge of the language, so dialing it back some for now may be better to help me learn this language. | |
Here's a book which explains all those concepts and alot of other various thing beautifully. I just got it recently from the libary haven't finished it but its explanations on the history,whys, reasons and what structured/spagetti/event-driven/object orientated programming do is great and it hold alot more information on a heck load of things and goes indepth not to far in and my understanding of what im doing logically has vastly improved , its a great book and im sure will help you and it explains everything you need before moving on.. you could get the pdf online or something if you like reading on the pc. Just trying to help.
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http://www.dummies.com/store/product/ Beginning-Programming-All-In-One-Desk-Reference-For-Dummies. productCd-0470108541,navId-322468,descCd-tableOfContents.htm l
Here's a book which explains all those concepts and alot of other various thing beautifully. I just got it recently from the libary haven't too far in yet, but its explanations on the history,whys, reasons,how and what structured/spagetti/event-driven/object orientated programming do is great and theres still futher sections on those topics i haven't got to yet. It holds alot more information on a heck load of things(certain sections can be used as a quick reference on particular languages and their concepts) and goes indepth but not useless babble, my understanding of what im doing logically has vastly improved. Its a great book with the aim of teaching you how programming works as opposed to just a specific language, and im sure will help you and it explains everything you need before moving on. You could get the pdf online or something if you like reading on the pc. Just trying to help since its taking me a while to find a good book that explain the concepts of programming for a beginner to understand, through i realise your not a beginner it goes into depth about the details. | |