Hi, Thom. Its not just that, it's the fact that courses over here are impossible to find (good ones that don't involve physics and other theory that is unrelated in relevance to learning the language), and not just that. Its because people don't know our languages (like bgt) which would make it easier for us to learn if they could train us. I now I don't make sense in this message like I normally do, but I agree with your point as well as adding the above additions.
-----Original Message----- From: gamers-boun...@audyssey.org [mailto:gamers-boun...@audyssey.org] On Behalf Of Thomas Ward Sent: 28 March 2012 21:26 To: Gamers Discussion list; Gamers Discussion list Subject: Re: [Audyssey] A Proposal for Game Developers Well, Ken. I think you hit the nail on the head. Its less a matter of blind gamers being able to come up with decent game ideas, but more a matter of converting those ideas into code. I think the reason for this is the lack of professional training. A lot of amateur developers download free instructional material from the web, perhaps look at some sample games, but they aren't getting step by step training in programming. For example, most programmers when they take college level courses start out with a class on pseudo code. The purpose of that class is to teach new programming students how to logically construct programs, to design an outline for his/her program, and to get an idea of how a program works. Once a new programmer learns the basic logic taught in those classes that programmer is ready to move onto the simpler languages like Python. Unfortunately, I think what happens is this essential step of learning the logic behind programming gets lost and some blind game developers try learning a language without fully understanding how it works. Therefore they aren't able to convert ideas into code. For example, you said you aren't sure how to create map files. So let's look at this step by step together and see if we can break it down into some very logical steps. Then, convert those steps into actual code. To begin with let's ask the question, "what is a map?" Well, a map is a flat 2 dimmentional image of the game world. You can think of it as a game board broken up into rows and colums of squares that need to be filled in with data. Basically, its just a table containing the location of rivers, mountains, walls, and whatever else you want to add to your map. So how do we create a 2d table in programming? Well, easy. We use a 2d array of course. Then, we fill that 2d array with specific information of where castles, maps, rivers, bridges, and everything else is by saving that information to the x and y location in the array. For example, if we have a 2d array called map and we want to add a castle to (5, 5) on that map in Python we could do something like map[5][5] = "castle" which just added castle to the center of our map. Now we want to add mountains to the north end of our map like this while i < 10: map[i][9] = "mountains" i++ which would add several mountins to the top of our map. Once we have created that map we need to save it to a file. In most programming languages we would convert that array to binary, something called serialization, and then save it to a dat file. If we ever need to reload that map we deserialize it, convert binary data back into a string array like above, and then can use it for loading and saving different map files. This is essentially how all the level map files work in my game engine. It just deserializes an array of walls, doors, traps, whatever and I check the array to figure out where this or that is in relation to the player. its a very simple concept in practice, but unless someone has been taught to think of arrays in that way they might not ever think of using them for 2d maps. Of course, there is a more professional way of handling maps and that is by using collision detection. You create an object, asign it an x/y location, and then calculate the distance and direction to that object. If they intersect a collision occurs. However, as bounded boxes is beyond the scope of this message let's just say there are multiple ways to handle map files. Anyway, I think that is the problem most audio game developers have. They don't know the logic behind how this or that works so aren't able to convert ideas into working code. They might not even know the language as well as they think which would compound the issue. The key to being a good programmer is knowing the language very well and understanding how each and everything works in it. As to the issue of Fraze Madness. Unfortunately, that is another side effect of being an audio game developer. Some games do fairly well and others don't do well at all. Since we are dealing with a very small market the games that don't do well end up with only a handful of sales making it barely worth the effort of developing the game. You aren't the first person who tried to sell an audio game only to find it wasn't a commercial success. Cheers! On 3/27/2012 11:03 PM, Ken wrote: > I know that for me, it's not the lack of ideas, but rather the lack of > the mastery of programming. I really wish I could get a look at a > game like swamp and learn, for exmple, how to have the game > incorporate map files and so on. Another problem I am having is with > AI. I understand fuzzy logic and was using it way before I even knew > about it, but programming AI isn't as simple as just thinking how it > should behave and writing it down, you've got to code in such a way > that it does what it's supposed to. > Finally, my last barrier is that no one buys my games. I thought > Phrase Madness would be a big success, yet it's only seen five buyers. > To me, the ability not only to make new and funny phrases, but also to > be able to comment on them and upload those comments made the game > unique, as well as the fact that it could be played on a windows > mobile device, but nobody was all that interested. Oh well, maybe > I'll have better luck with Space Attack--if I ever getting around to > finishing it lol. --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org. ----- No virus found in this message. Checked by AVG - www.avg.com Version: 2012.0.1913 / Virus Database: 2114/4899 - Release Date: 03/28/12 --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://mail.audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. 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