121 replies to this topic

[Alpha_ProgDes]

I have to agree with this. SFML has its own tutorials; it would be a complete waste of time trying to duplicate them.

 

By that logic, the web has tutorials on creating a game as well. IMO, there's nothing wrong with having a quick tutorial on the basics if it's (eventually) part of a larger tutorial.

Edited by Alpha_ProgDes, 07 March 2013 - 03:53 PM.

[noatom]

still...i don't know what could be that complicated in creating a window.

 

But as some guys said,we can all contribute to this.

[Alpha_ProgDes]

still...i don't know what could be that complicated in creating a window.

 

But as some guys said,we can all contribute to this.

 

We've seen people trip over things like classes and functions. Albeit, they're beginners. And that's who these types of tutorials would be for.

 

Crawl, walk, run. That's normally the rule for most things

[Servant of the Lord]

Two additional subjects:
- Basic Microsoft Excel (or OpenOffice ) spreadsheet tutorials, focused for game designers (spreadsheets can be useful).
- Good coding practices / habits.

We've seen people trip over things like classes and functions. Albeit, they're beginners. And that's who these types of tutorials would be for.
 
Crawl, walk, run. That's normally the rule for most things

Well, I'd like to see some 'run' tutorials as well. Tutorials for non-beginners on various subjects.

Edited by Servant of the Lord, 07 March 2013 - 07:55 PM.

[Alpha_ProgDes]

Well, I'd like to see some 'run' tutorials as well. Tutorials for non-beginners on various subjects.

 

Well obviously, no one is arguing against that!

Edited by Alpha_ProgDes, 07 March 2013 - 08:06 PM.

[Michael Tanczos]

The more I think about it, the more I'm liking the idea of having some articles that are part of an education track.. similar to how a textbook would work.   We'd just need to make sure that they build on each other.   I know as a teacher there isn't much "computer science" curriculum out there that uses game development to teach programming.   We could potentially come up with something high school students around the world could use if we can get teachers to use our site as well.

For the independent minded student they'd be able to follow the curriculum for free.   As a teacher though most curriculum that you can buy also includes challenge projects, questions, assignments, tests, etc.

[Michael Tanczos]

@Caleb how can you ask that on a game dev forum? Pretty much all of us here are programmers,and yes there are artists too.But it's kinda hard to ask how to write the script for your game,and to ask how to create music...that's close to impossible.

GameDev has long been made up of mostly programmers, but if you talk to the staff you'll see that that's something they'd like to change. The goal of GameDev is to encompass all of game development, from programming to graphics to art to music etc. One of the big pushes with these articles will be (I imagine) to write articles to attract non-programmers (artists and musicians particularly) to this site to help build a complete game development community.

 

>>And I don't see why we should have sdl/sfml tutorials like: setting up a window.The web is full of such tutorials.If someone really wants to help,creating a small game with those would be more useful.

I have to agree with this. SFML has its own tutorials; it would be a complete waste of time trying to duplicate them.

 

 

It's kind of funny in some ways.. it's like the programming nerds trying to convince girls to come to the party by putting together all the things we think are "cool" like.. text editors with syntax highlighting!   We don't have any artists or musicians on the staff so we haven't given it as much love as all the programming stuff.

Edited by Michael Tanczos, 08 March 2013 - 06:53 AM.

[jwezorek]

And I don't see why we should have sdl/sfml tutorials like: setting up a window.The web is full of such tutorials.

 

The web is full of tutorials that suck.

 

I think there would be value in offering quality tutorials on these sorts of subjects. I don't have numbers on this but as much as it pains us all to admit, this site's highest traffic forum is probably "For Beginners". If GameDev is serious about hosting the internet's best collection of game development articles it's very important to cover the introductory stuff solidly.

Edited by jwezorek, 08 March 2013 - 11:21 AM.

[Cornstalks]

And I don't see why we should have sdl/sfml tutorials like: setting up a window.The web is full of such tutorials.

 

The web is full of tutorials that suck.

I concur with this, but SFML has official tutorials that are pretty good.

 

Personally, if we do SFML tutorials, they should have something that differentiates them from the official SFML tutorials. Otherwise, it's just duplicated work. If, however, the SFML tutorials on GameDev are able to add something positive (and hopefully significant), then I'd say great. But I don't know what that is, and a simple, plain tutorial will provide nothing over the official SFML tutorials (and very well may lack some good details that the official tutorials provide).

[CRYP7IK]

I think this is a great idea, however I think the delivery of these articles does need to be discussed as well as ease of writing an article, how easy to find and accessible the articles are. What is the stance on Localisation? Are we going to bother with it?

 

First of all, should it be standard practice to include videos with the article (I think it should be, some people require visual and audio aids to learn)? Does GameDev have the bandwidth or do we host those videos with youtube and link to them? Are we even allowed to include videos in an article or is this supposed to be book-like only? Some serious thought should be put into this as we are using the web, why limit ourselves to being a book, why not a super-book! Obviously we would still have to make sure we have lo-fi versions(No automatically loaded video and make this easily accessible) to bring in those with limited bandwidth.

 

We should also think about the writing process of the articles, if you want more people writing articles you should make it easier to write them, so I have thought up of a few ideas to help in that regard, here is one. Make articles more of a collaboration rather than one author does one topic. You would probably have to limit collaborators to a few people, or have something like a 'pull request' on articles. This would alleviate the problem of  an Author feeling overwhelmed with writing (Well, if someone actually contributes).

 

Some topics I think should be covered include waterfall all the way to all the agile project management techniques and what free sites \ programs are available to use to handle projets (Trello, smartsheet etc).

 

Sidenote: Until I saw the board this was posted in and the title I saw development libraries and thought a GameDev.net engine! Then got super excited until 1 second later when I actually started reading things.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[kd7tck]

Article ideas:

 

*Natural language processing

*Build systems

*Swig usage cases for generating wrappers

*Multi platform coding practices, how to set up environments on different target machines that act the same

*Coding exercises, with programs that test the output and gives a grade

[MrJoshL]

What format should these contributions be in? Tutorial, research paper, slideshow, video, HTML page?

[MrJoshL]

Also, I think that database compiling and scene graph editing and processing should get their own two categories, respectively.

Edited by MrJoshL, 09 March 2013 - 12:28 PM.

[noatom]

Creating a game editor is a must,at least for 2d.

[noatom]

PhysX and Havok implementation is a must.I'm not talking about throwing some damn balls to the ground,because that's all they teach you,i'm talking about some basic to advanced tutorials,with examples,screenshots and all that stuff.

[Alpha_ProgDes]

Article ideas:

*Natural language processing
*Build systems
*Swig usage cases for generating wrappers
*Multi platform coding practices, how to set up environments on different target machines that act the same
*Coding exercises, with programs that test the output and gives a grade

As far as coding exercises that spit out results, that asking for a whole another site isn't?

[Alpha_ProgDes]

The more I think about it, the more I'm liking the idea of having some articles that are part of an education track.. similar to how a textbook would work. We'd just need to make sure that they build on each other. I know as a teacher there isn't much "computer science" curriculum out there that uses game development to teach programming. We could potentially come up with something high school students around the world could use if we can get teachers to use our site as well.

For the independent minded student they'd be able to follow the curriculum for free. As a teacher though most curriculum that you can buy also includes challenge projects, questions, assignments, tests, etc.

Are we really having paid game dev workshops (aka classes) ?

[illgamer]

In the writing section, I believe there should be articles about: 

- Story writing and narration

- How to develop background stories for games.

 

In general how about:

- How to work with teams remotely for game projects.

- How to improve your communication skills for developers and designers.

- Project management for games, Agile, PMP, etc...

[Michael Tanczos]

What format should these contributions be in? Tutorial, research paper, slideshow, video, HTML page?

 

We have an article editor that was created for this purpose.   We're currently testing it with volunteer authors now (pm me if you want to start writing a tutorial) and will open it up for everyone after the GDC.

[Michael Tanczos]

The more I think about it, the more I'm liking the idea of having some articles that are part of an education track.. similar to how a textbook would work. We'd just need to make sure that they build on each other. I know as a teacher there isn't much "computer science" curriculum out there that uses game development to teach programming. We could potentially come up with something high school students around the world could use if we can get teachers to use our site as well.

For the independent minded student they'd be able to follow the curriculum for free. As a teacher though most curriculum that you can buy also includes challenge projects, questions, assignments, tests, etc.

Are we really having paid game dev workshops (aka classes) ?

 

Anything that we make that could be used for curriculum purposes would have to be free.   Granted, we do have to raise funds to support the operation of this site but I'm taking more of an ideological stance on this once and saying that this information needs to be free.   It would be free for teachers to include in their own classes as well.   We wouldn't charge schools for it.   As far as having workshops here, I think I'd prefer not to have something highly formalized where there is an instructor.. but instead allow members to work at their own discretion.

 

For something that would be actually used in schools you'd want to see something more sophisticated in terms of packaging.  Tutorials never have a feedback loop to test whether you actually got the concepts addressed.   If this was something actual schools could use you'd want to make sure that each article does the following:

 

• Clearly identify the objectives of the article - what should the reader be able to do after completing the article/tutorial
• Make sure that the article actually meets the objectives that are set forth in the beginning of the article
• Provide a sample of some sort demonstrating the concept
• Provide some type of independent project (ie. "Now it's your turn! Try doing this and share your results..") for people to complete on their own

 

Schools would want to group the tutorials into related units, with some form of end-of-unit assessment which could include challenge problems, debugging exercises, independent projects for the unit, etc.

Edited by Michael Tanczos, 11 March 2013 - 08:49 AM.