I'm currently reading the Blue Book, and at first I didn't know where to put this topic but I've decided since it's a question about how to progress, and not a question about actual coding that'd it be best to go here.
I'm currently reading the BYOND : Blue Book, and I just noticed that it was made to keep you updated until 2.0, and BYOND seems to have progressed far beyond that. However, I've decided to continue reading it as it will better help me understand the foundations of coding. When I'm done though, where would be a logical place to go to get up to date with BYOND? Do they have any newer guide's such as the blue book? Thanks in advance for the replies, I'm sorry if I put this in the wrong Forum category by the way.
ID:181912
 Jun 15 2009, 6:19 pm
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Jun 15 2009, 6:30 pm
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Stephen001
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The guide isn't too outdated as far as basic concepts go. At that point you probably want to try a few things that interest you, and maybe search Dream Makers for articles that show off neat tricks. They make a good source of inspiration, provided you know roughly what you want to do.
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Omgdudewtf wrote:
[...] I've decided since it's a question about how to progress, and not a question about actual coding that'd it be best to go here. Yeah, you chose a pretty good place for it, unlike those people that like to dump everything in Developer How-To even if it doesn't ask How-To accomplish something. So good job on that. I'm currently reading the BYOND : Blue Book, and I just noticed that it was made to keep you updated until 2.0, and BYOND seems to have progressed far beyond that. I don't know the exact differences between the Blue Book and the DM Guide, but it may be still helpful as an addition to it, and I'm guessing the Blue Book doesn't come with all of the Appendixes (and the Glossary) the DM Guide comes with (one of these is "Addendum for BYOND 3.0"). However, I've decided to continue reading it as it will better help me understand the foundations of coding. You are very correct. While we're there, I'll point out the correct term is programming; "coding" really refers to stuff like encrypting something in code, not writing source code. =P When I'm done though, where would be a logical place to go to get up to date with BYOND? There is the DM Reference, which is not a guide, but is kept updated regularly as new features are added to the language. I do recommend reading through all of it at least once because that will give you a very good idea about what's built-in in DM and what you can do with it; should be a good way to become more up-to-date too. As Stephen also pointed out, there are many good programming articles and tutorials in the Dream Makers guild, some of which are for beginners, some of which are for the advanced (it'll do you good to read anything that you can understand by Lummox JR - in case you didn't know, this guy is part of the BYOND Staff that's working on BYOND and is a guru). Lastly, BYOND 4.0 introduces the new concept of interfaces - that allows every developer to essentially customize their game's User Interface completely (by controlling what Dream Seeker's windows look like instead of it being hardcoded). You can get a nice run-down of that by looking up the interface-related procs (winset(),winget(),winclone()), reading Lummox' skin tutorial articles, and reading the Skin Refernce which is a reference of what you can do with the skin (this is another word for interface - DMF file) and what vars (parameters) every interface control has. | |