Dark Bit Factory & Gravity
GENERAL => General chat => Topic started by: Shockwave on February 14, 2009
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It is about time that I got to programming the tutorial part of the website, the approach I have decided to take is that the tutorials should be downloadable in the same way as the resources and showcases.
With this in mind, each tutorial will be contained in it's own ZIP or RAR file, this has a lot of benefits.
It means that we will be able to take tutorials in whatever format they are provided, be that as a html page, a richtext file or pdf file.
If it is a HTML file, you will be able to include pictures as part of the page, and this is a typical format that the tutorial could be contained in the archive;
FOLDER
Tutorialname.html
source code(s)
pictures / screen shots
executable example(s)
Once I have at least 5 completed tutorials I will launch the tutorial part of the website.
Tutorials can be any file size you like up to 10mb each so please feel free to include as much into them as you like.
When I launch the tutorial part it won't be a half arsed job, there will be a download counter and as well as that, if the person is logged into the forum, they will be able to rate (not anonymously) and a special forum will be created for the discussion of the tutorials :)
Only one thing remains, please send any tutorials you have to;
nicksimpsonx [at] googlemail [dot] com
Thanks :)
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This is a very exciting step!
I will look forward to some well-written quality tutorials from the awesome coders here.
I suppose that no part of demo coding should be overlooked. After all, we have had some people new to coding join occasionally. For the new demo makers, it is nice to have a few simple effects that give a sense of pride when learned. I think it is important that all ability levels are covered.
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I will see if I can get hold of the tutorial I did on tilemaps for Blitz Coder way back then.
If it unaccessable, I will create some new ones.
I think you should start of by covering these kinds of things for beginners, then add stuff for more evolving concepts.
Different kinds of Variables.
For And while Loops.
If's And Select Case. ( this I will do )
Setting up and using TinyPtc / TinyPtc_Ext
Using Binary To .Bas file aka Bin2Bas
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I can create executable flash files, but these can be about 1MB larger than a plain .swf
I'll certainly convert my flash tutorials from .doc to .html as the .swfs can be embedded.
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You can include the SWF's as they are if you like CK, remember that everything is contained in one folder so a user can open it on the desktop with their favourite browser and look at it offline :)
I think that some SWF's would be really cool, don't be afraid of going up to 10mb, it really doesnt matter to most people these days.
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Exciting plan. Will follow the progress and if time permits
write a tutorial on my own!
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A tutorial on getting started in Actionscript would be particularly great if you manage to grab enough time ;)
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I have some really old tutorials somewhere. :*)
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It would be an absolute pleasure to host them Rel.
How's your php learning coming along?
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It would be an absolute pleasure to host them Rel.
How's your php learning coming along?
Zero growth. :*(
I was in the hospital (again) for more than a week and almost got back to the ER two nights ago.
My wife forbade anything computer related while we were in the hospital. I was reduced to playing my daughter's Pokemon game on her GBA. :*(
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When you are well enough mate I am still here :) Just let me know when you want to start again k?
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how many do you have?
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So far I have 0.
Which is a shame, but then again this place has been too quiet for too long anyway, there's maybe about 12 people who post regularly, it used to be better, I am deciding what to do about it at the moment to be honest with you Clyde.
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Ok no worries there dude, ive noticed it is very quiet of late; something must of happend at the start of the year.
I've made some enquiries at other sites to try and track down some old friends of ours, but all ive really got is links to other web forums; most of which have the trolls we all know.
I do have 2 tuts which just need a bit more adding; they wont go to waste as they can be posted in the relevant categories, depending on what ever the decision.
Looking forward to seeing what SMF 2.0 has in store; when real life lets you break free. I think that Tiny Portal got updated, or was that some of the themes.
You never know members, guests and the spiders reading these replies, might think, o bugger thats what I was going to do, and start sending them your way. Fingers crossed, as it would make a nice addition especially if you are new blood to programmmming.
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I discussed this with my friends who also run the forum, one of them said something that really made me think, and that was that this place is the most busy when there is a new language that everyone is converting thier stuff to.
I found that unsettling to read but it may be true.
So does it mean that unless we all find a new killer language that we all want to use that the place is destined to stagnate, or is it merely a case of people (generally) do not post what they are working on any more?
There is a phrase that will apply here.. A rising tide rises all ships.
Maybe what this place needs is simple for more people to be posting what they are working on.. Or perhaps it's just that people aren't working on anything at the moment.
As soon as I start working on something again I'll post it in the hope that it gets the ball rolling again, tbh it hurts my feelings to see this place so quiet, it's taken a long time (both mine and everyone elses) to get it as it is.
Let's hope that more busy times are around the corner.
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My few pennies worth and in no way being Mr Negative.
In all areas it's been almost like a ghost town past 2 weeks. Some folks must surely be working on releases, or are they going straight to pouet/net / scene org.
Where everyone's scone I havent a clue. Maybe their hooked on one of the social networks.
It just the usual groupies now, with the new members having a gander at the areas which is what your generally do when signing up before gaining the want for more knowledge.
I noted it went quieter when DBF the group announced it's retirement, so you must of had a cult following that you never knew you had.
I am also surprised that there arent more people from the official FreeBASIC site over here, especially some of the developers. The link i asked for is still up over there.
Onething this downtime will work in your favour, as you can make any upgrades / features you admins / mods see fit.
At the end of the day, its most probably a seasonal thing, with members back at schooling who might have strict parents that limit their internet usuage. Can't really compare with the ezboard site, as it had its own unique atmosphere - there were more general topics with more than a few sentences.
Not expecting a reply as I know your all busy with real life, just a few passing thoughts I wanted to get out.
Back to topic, if you need tutorials I have a couple.
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Thanks for your thoughts Clyde, I will reply to the post I am just considering some of the things you mentioned.
As for the tutorials, pleasesend them over to me at nicksimpsonx [at] googlemain [dot] com. cheers.
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A lot of people are probably already working on projects of their own, and writing tutorials takes a lot of time. So often answering specific questions seems easier than having to explain everything. It can also be difficult to make a decision on what subject to write a tutorial about. These are some of the reasons why I think not a lot of people make tutorials.
One possible community project could be that there were made a list of subjects which people felt tutorials were missing, and for which programming languages. Then people could commit to write specific tutorials for the language of their choice, and eventually it could lead to having a collection of useful tutorials with the same subject and for each of the languages agreed upon. I do not know if there would be support for such an idea, I am just throwing it outthere as yet another suggestion.
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Good points there Clyde mentioned. Still do not know what we can do to
make this place a bit more popular ::)
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I've had a good think about some of the things Clyde mentioned above, this topic has actually been discussed in the forum we use to discuss the running of the board too and a few interesting points were raised there too.
Including one that the main life of the forum comes from when the users migrate to a new language, all the stock effects are converted to that language and then the posts dry up.
That troubled me so much that I have even thought of making an online questionaire and sending it to all the members to see what people think but no matter what it comes back out as, the answer is much more simple I am afraid.
I suspect it's lack of posting activity, pure and simple.
People who just come here and read the posts and don't contribute anything don't harm the board but don't do it any favours either.
The lack of posts made a downward trend, despite the efforts of some of the members and some of the moderators, the trend has got worse.
So.
The situation is this, either the members of the board post about stuff that they are interested in or the board will stagnate. I am not going to prop it up with dozens of my own posts this time as I did in the past, this time it will live or die by it's own merit.
So if you want the forum active, please post more. If you are someone who just drops by to read it, please consider supporting it with some posts.
This is not meant to come accross as negative, it really does need to be sorted out but I need to have the help of everyone who cares because I just can't commit as much time as I used to.
I refuse to accept that the board dies because all the effects have been done in freebasic or c++ or fasm or whatever. There are loads of new productuons coming out all the time, there are meetings and parties to discuss and the scope of the forum should only be limited by the collective imagination of everyone here.
Finally I want to thank the active members of the admin team and the members of the forum who do post and answer questions and post their thoughts on general stuff.
The questionaire will probably be a reality soon, I am interested to know if we can revive the forum. If it does turn out to stagnate I will just keep it online so it would just exist as a reference library. It won't be closed, but it might be closed to new posts eventually if it carries on this way.
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Yeah, sorry I haven't been dropping by much, I'm still trying to get internet sorted at my place. Don't know what everyone else is waiting for though. It would be such a shame if this place just ground to a halt.
We need to have some kind of event, something to get people back in. Competitions seem to have become too much of a regular fair, we need something similar, but different. Something really innovative.
I suggest a brain-storming topic.
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I think this forum is going through hard time at the moment as it abit like football league where you go up and down! I am sure it will go back up again over time.
Keep going and Keep posting ;D
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Community Projects / Community Tutorials. might be a nice thing I just thought up whilst waiting for the plumber.
And these source codes can be used for people to get an idea of a/ what the effect is and the obvious b/ how it can be made.
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Might be worth a try. I post some mega-mini tutorials for Actionscript
on my blog. I am happy to cross post them here, too. Although they
are not really demoscene related.
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Thanks guys.
Benny, the boundaries do cross over into other genres sometimes here so anything you think is related will help.
The forum lives or dies by the amount of posts it gets though, pure and simple, the more that everyone who is here posts, the more beneficial it is to the whole community, any forum needs posts to survive, as we are a niche community anyway it needs to be remembered that without new posts, the forum will definately grind to a halt.
It is nice that people do care and some effort is being made, it is appreciated.
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Just spend some time to look through my kind of tutorials I could pack
to send to you. What comes to my mind though is - do you already know
how to put them online ? I mean in which way ? Do you plan to code a
separate forum section for them ?
Personally I think it might be cool if ppl who read the tutorial are somehow
able respond to them, like: rating, comment, ask questions, add own
experiences etc.. So, maybe a tutorial could be an interesting start of
a discussion ???
In addition, we might think (if the tutorial section is growing) to tag or cate-
gorize the tutorials. So something like, general coding, some language specific,
sound, graphics specific.
Just thinking ... I see what I can collect and send you.
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I don't know what your views are, but I think that perhaps broadening the forum to include a few sections for old-school style games might also be worth thinking about. I mean, we already have more than a few discussions for them anyway, and for me it's not really a different "scene" anyway; I've always considered homebrew gaming and demoscening to be part of the same idea. Even from a historical point of view, cracktros (one of the main beginings for the scene) were by their nature packaged with game roms, and most people (myself included) stumble onto the scene through homebrew.
So, if we want to get more people in the door, and more people interested in the scene, the gaming side would be the way to do it.
I think a 'text game comp' would be an excellent way of kick-starting it. Text routines are how we all started, whether it was with a "hello world" routine or something more juvenile ("You see a man, do you kick him in the balls? y/n") and as our recent postings in Hanger 18 showed, we all still remember them. I remember the yabasic forums hosting one a few years ago, and I think it went down rather well.
It's also the most inclusive contest I can think of, it can be done in any language, and by even the most novice of coders: you could teach somebody how to do it in a matter of hours. There'd be no boundries on technical knowledge or experience, just imagination. And when you think about it, that's what coding should be all about.
Anyway, I've ranted on enough. Thoughts?
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Personally I think it might be cool if ppl who read the tutorial are somehow able respond to them
I think this would be a good idea, because it would provide the author with feedback for improvements on the tutorial itself, and enable the author a chance to repond to questions within the right context.
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The tutorials are going to be added to the portal as zip files which means that they can be in any format that the author wants and contain all the needed files to be able to use them.
This will make it possible to use html, pdf, plain text, whatever you like.
I will add some fields for people to post comments about the tutorials into the portal, this is not going to happen until I have a few tutorials and it will take a little time for me to program the exra section to the site.
This will be really cool when it's done, the forum does so definately need more posts though, tutorials won't save it on thier own.
About increasing the spectrum of the forum to cover some games topics, I think we do this already, if you have any opinions on them please post them, the main focus here has always been demoscene and visual effects and will remain to be so but that doesn't stop you discussing other stuff that interests you :)
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@Zawran:
Exactely. I think so, too. Personally I would appreciate any feedback on
my tutorials. Nobody is perfect - so I think every author of little tutorials
can make mistake or post something which might can be improved. Thats
actually the main reason why I write small tutorials on my blog. On the
one hand, I write them for myself just as an exercise to summarize a
certain topic - and on the other hand I hope on some constructive feed-
back to improve certain things.
@slinks:
Personally I am totally open to have more game-related topics here. Although
I know that we had discussions before and I can fully undertstand if the
majority here wants this place to be a democode forum in the first place.
I really like the ppl here and since I spend more time producing games in
the last years than producing demos, I of course would appreciate it.
But do not get me wrong - I like the fact that this place is in first place a
democode related forum. I like it because ppl come here with the same
interest/background.
@Shocky:
Basically I like the idea of being very open with formats in which you accept
tutorials. On the other hand I would somehow think it would be cool have the
possibility to read the tutorials online. If tutorials are supplied as HTML or
PDF - are there any tools around which convert those formats into BB code ?
Just thinking ...
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Its been quite a while since I wrote any kind of tutorials, but I wouldn't mind giving it a go, but I just haven't got any good ideas about where to start. What kind of tutorials are people looking for? What would be good subjects for tutorials? Perhaps we could have a thread where people request tutorials and in the first post a list gets changed as more ideas comes in. Then people can pick from the list and make a tutorial of the subject in a programming language of their choice?
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@Shocky:
Basically I like the idea of being very open with formats in which you accept
tutorials. On the other hand I would somehow think it would be cool have the
possibility to read the tutorials online. If tutorials are supplied as HTML or
PDF - are there any tools around which convert those formats into BB code ?
I am pretty much decided on the choice of zip archives to contain the tutorials purely because any author can choose what format that they write the tutorial in, they can include exe's, C++ projects, gfx, dlls, they could even make a nice web page and include it in the zip.
As tempting as it is to make them all online I am certain that zips will be the best way to cater for everyone and cast our net as wide as possible, I am not saying you have made a bad suggestion Benny, I just want to cater for the lowest possible denominator and zip or rar allows virtually any format. It has the added plus of being easy to administer as well. I am undecide about whether to allow commenting and voting directly in the showcase or instead to link to a topic in the forums. What do you guys think?
Its been quite a while since I wrote any kind of tutorials, but I wouldn't mind giving it a go, but I just haven't got any good ideas about where to start. What kind of tutorials are people looking for? What would be good subjects for tutorials? Perhaps we could have a thread where people request tutorials and in the first post a list gets changed as more ideas comes in. Then people can pick from the list and make a tutorial of the subject in a programming language of their choice?
A good subject for a tutorial would be anything you care about or maybe something that you had to work quite intensley on to understand it and you want to share what you learned with everyone.
If anything came to mind when you read that then I guess that's the one to go for!
As for a topic for tutorial requests, thats a good idea too. We can do that.
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I am thinking that a link to a forum thread about the tutorial would be ok.
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@Shockwave:
Ok, fair enough. I would definately go with a permanent link to a forum
post for each tutorial. This way we directly give ppl the chance and
motivate hopefully to post comments, questions and stuff to the certain
tutorial.
I will try to find some time to convert my mini tutorials into another format
(maybe PDF) and send them to you.
@zawran:
About tutorial suggestions. I second what Shocky says. Personally I write
down some notes (which will end up in a tutorial) if I have a personal interest
in a certain technique or topic. I think it is good for your own motivation if
you write tutorials about topics you personally are interested in.
But this is of course just my point of you.
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I will try to find some time to convert my mini tutorials into another format
(maybe PDF) and send them to you.
There is no need to convert to any format :) Just to put all the needed files into one zip file.
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I think for the first batch of tutorials, you should concentrate LOTS on stuff for beginners.
Including the things that come natural from experience, ie the simplist of things ( variables, program loops, what a sub / Function is, whats a demo any way?, blah blah blah )
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Well, notepad++ is ready and waiting, mysql is running on my machine, I am ready to start coding them into the portal, I'm just waiting for them to start being sent over :)
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Write, I'll have a little fun and simple tutorial for FreeBASIC very soon. Tomorrow lunch time infact ( fingers cross x ).
Im having to redo it as it got wiped when I had my PC trouble couple of weeks back. And by all means if you need or want to add anything to it please feel free to do so.
Im really looking forward to seeing and learning more from the tutorials section.
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I have had one so far from Benny and that's all so please do send it over when it is ready mate.
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There is now a tutorials forum, Stormbringer will be guiding you through every aspect of retro-demo coding to allow you to learn how to code all the classic demo effects, and hopefully make your own remakes and other demos as a result!
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awesome!
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awesome!
Definately!