Moussiffer wrote:

Well if that's the case then perhaps instead of tutoring, a few of the better developers should get together and make a series of tutorials and guides to programming. And by this, I don't mean what we have now were every here and there someone makes a tutorial on something they did or a little library on something they found interesting, and you have to search through a ton of useless crap to find it. There should be a section of BYOND devoted to this where the top developers (Or certain developers) can come together once a week or a couple of times a week even and make a series of tutorials and libraries for those interested in learning to follow.

I do believe this is quite similar to what I suggested some time ago, apparently there is a lack of interest in actually doing it. I suggested that a forum be made specifically for the purpose of teaching potential developers the entire process of making a game, not just how to program in DM. I also offered to produce both video and text tutorials, but the only person who showed any signs of interest or wanting to help was ExPixel.

If I could get ACWraith to give it a shout out on B&W and one or two experienced designers/programmers on board, I wouldn't have a problem handling most of the work. What I'm concerned with in doing it by myself is that, put simply, I'm an intermediate level programmer.

I feel comfortable teaching beginning and low-intermediate skills and techniques, but anything beyond that I would need help from someone more skilled with the language to make sure I'm not teaching something stupid. People to run the lessons/tutorials by for quality checking and correcting anything stupid that I might do, again to prevent me teaching something incorrectly.

To this end, there are relatively few who fit the bill, and even fewer who care enough to be bothered. I can more or less annoy DivineTraveller into helping with things, but having someone like Forum_Account willing to help would be quite nice.

Another thing I discussed was getting together some people from the Art Society and Audiophiles to possibly teach their trades as well. I would much rather have a place for people to learn all the skills and jobs that go into a game's creation, rather than just programming.

We already know why the developer forum isn't sufficient. It's not a good learning environment. Sure, you have decent developers lurking about, but they can only answer questions that people ask. Unfortunately, most potential developers don't ask the right questions, they ask "How do I make these overlays work?", and they get a code snippet and a quick explanation about overlays and are shooed along to deal with the 200 other issues they have but don't post.

In my opinion, the developer forums are just that, a place for developers to get together and discuss their issues and philosophies and whatnot, and to that end, they work wonderfully. They are not, however, a place to learn the language, or the skills needed to create a game, and I doubt they were ever truly intended to be.

On the topic of guides and tutorials, I'm aware that you can't write a book about variables and expect people to read it. The tutorials couldn't just be walls of text explaining things, they would need to be short explanations with different aspects of the topic being introduced as they become pertinent. If I do write tutorials, they will likely include the information important only at that time, possibly with links to more in-depth coverage of the topic, and examples/exercises that makes them actually USE the skills in a few different ways to make them think about what they can do, rather than just telling them about it.

Along with that comes the video tutorials, possibly podcasts/audio based explanations of more in-depth details about different things. In a video, over the course of 3 minutes, they can watch you do something, listen to you explain it, then try it on their own, instead of reading a 2 page tutorial about it. What can be explained in a paragraph of text and an example situation in a DM tag could be explained just as well/better in a short 1 minute video demonstration of the concept.

Kidpaddle45 wrote:

Yut Put wrote:

EmpirezTeam wrote:

I'm pretty sure Iruka's Class is going to solve all the problems.

stop making me hysterically laugh damnit

Thats whats wrong with the BYOND Community...People laugh even at those who tries to help.

I hate to say this, but he actually has a point. The people who CAN help won't, and the people who WILL help aren't qualified. He may not be the best teacher, but he's at least TRYING(however misguided his attempts may be) to do something about the situation. Instead of mocking him, why not try actually explaining why his idea isn't so great, or, if you insist on being a jerk, why not do something better to remedy the situation.

And Yut, it isn't our job to do what we can to better our community and help the people who have come here in hopes of creating something for others to enjoy? I'd say it IS our job to help new developers on their way, and if you're not going to help, the least you could do is not be a nuisance to the people who are at least TRYING to.

BYOND has to figure out how to guide beginners with no experience at all in a more user friendly and systematic way than one or two easy tutorials and a resource dump.

I'm pretty sure this is exactly what we've been discussing here. Ways of providing a better system to guide new developers and assist them in their efforts to learn.

I agree that not everyone is going to succeed. Though, I believe that a place with structured tutorials/lessons and a supportive environment to help and encourage potential developers, while not perfect, could at least increase the success rate of people who want to learn.

I'm not a miracle worker and I don't expect this to be an end all solution to the issue at hand. What I do expect of it is to provide a place for people to go where they can be guided through the process of designing, creating, marketing, and maintaining a game on BYOND. If we get 5 people in a given year to succeed when they would have failed elsewhere, we'll have added a significant amount of successful developers to the BYOND community who otherwise would have given up.

I need someone to teach me the next step after basics... Like datums and atoms. Any help will be appreciated and will result in a days worth of hosting provided by Jacob's Epic Hosting!