Locked: A note for new users (please read) in BYOND Discussion

ID:259288
 
Feb 12 2001, 5:36 pm

Point #1: Forum posts


I have noticed a lot of posts in the wrong forums. While this isn't a big deal, it does make our lives a bit more difficult because we have to wade through all of the forums to find potential BYOND problems or feature requests. In a nutshell, the 'General' and 'Bug Report' forums are for such things, while all of the other forums are for discussion about specific code problems or games. I realize that the descriptions may not be all that clear and sometimes there is overlap, but please do your best in posting to the correct place. For instance, if you are a newbie and your post has 'newbie' in the header, it should probably be posted in the 'Newbie' forum. Ironically (or hypocritically?) I am posting this in the 'General' forum, so as you can see confusion reigns throughout.

At some point I will add in facillites to move the posts and then we can all live in peace and harmony.

Point #2: Getting started


Please, please click on the DM Overview link of the Start Here! page if you decide to make that leap into the world of DM programming. It contains links to a few helpful tutorials and also a pretty comprehensive Online Programming Guide that it seems many of you are overlooking. If you have problems understanding this guide, then please tell us because that will give us ideas as to which tutorials would be useful for the future. In fact, the same goes for all of the documentation, including the Printed Guide, which is absolutely essential if you are seriously going to get involved with the language.

We have been reworking this website for the last month or so, and will continue to do so until finding the information you need is simple and easy. It looks like we are finally out of our coding funk, so you can expect some of the new upgrades (a better InfoCenter, more tutorials, and so on) very soon.

Thanks for your cooperation!
#1 Feb 12 2001, 6:08 pm
Sorry Tom, All the newbie posts were by me. I assure you that it wont happen again.
Sorry all.

Omegared
#2 Feb 12 2001, 6:30 pm
In response to OmegaRed (#1)
Sorry all.

No sweat! We've all been new to BYOND at one time. And those of us who have been around for a while are happy to help out people who are new to the system. Tom's note was just intended to help keep things running smoothly--don't take it personally.

(Just wait until you post something to Bug Report that isn't a bug! I used to do that weekly. :)
#3 Feb 12 2001, 6:33 pm
In response to Guy T. (#2)
Well in that case !!!

hehe, acually I was just gonna say PLZ CHECK THE NEWBIE FORUM OFTEN. I have noticed that no one really pays 2 much attention to it :).

BTW. Is this program hard to understand or am I just stupid? lol

OmegaRed
#4 Feb 12 2001, 6:38 pm
In response to OmegaRed (#3)
On 2/12/01 6:33 pm OmegaRed wrote:
Well in that case !!!

hehe, acually I was just gonna say PLZ CHECK THE NEWBIE FORUM OFTEN. I have noticed that no one really pays 2 much attention to it :).

Not intentionally...but it's easy for a message to get overlooked given the number of people trying out BYOND these days.



BTW. Is this program hard to understand or am I just stupid? lol

Well if you are new to programming, any system will take a while to learn. At least 6 months to get any good. However, this is an excellent system to learn with, as it is much easier than any other to use than I have found in the last 15 years.
#5 Feb 12 2001, 6:49 pm
In response to Deadron (#4)
Not intentionally...but it's easy for a message to get overlooked given the number of people trying out BYOND these days.

Yep... Deadron and I, and a few other folks on the forums, are used to new users trickling in slowly. Now, thanks to some popular BYOND games, there have probably been as many new users in the past couple months as there have been in the whole previous history of the system!

Well if you are new to programming, any system will take a while to learn. At least 6 months to get any good. However, this is an excellent system to learn with, as it is much easier than any other to use than I have found in the last 15 years.

Again, yep. Deadron and I are both programmers for a living, and we both love BYOND because it's much simpler than "business-style" programming languages like C and Java. But DM is a serious programming language nonetheless (well, some purists would call it a "scripting language", but it's a moot point)--and because it's serious, it means that if you're new to programming, you'll have to adopt some new thinking habits. The good news is *it can be done*, and there are plenty of BYOND ex-newbies who are living testimony to that fact. In fact, BYOND has even made me a much better programmer at work!
#6 Feb 12 2001, 8:56 pm
On 2/12/01 5:36 pm Tom H. wrote:
We have been reworking this website for the last month or so, and will continue to do so until finding the information you need is simple and easy.

One minor note for your "reworking" task: the links on the left side of the DM Guide don't work in IE (curiously, they do work in Netscape - one of the few things Netscape is actually still better at??). They are written like this:

&nbsp;<a href="info.html#1"><li></a> DM basics

But you may want to consider writing them like this for better compatibility:

&nbsp;<li><a href="info.html#1">DM basics</a>

No biggie, but something to put on the list.
#7 Feb 12 2001, 9:43 pm
In response to Air Mapster (#6)
On 2/12/01 8:56 pm Air Mapster wrote:
One minor note for your "reworking" task: the links on the left side of the DM Guide don't work in IE
No biggie, but something to put on the list.

Actually somewhat of a biggie...been annoying me for ages...
#8 Feb 12 2001, 9:43 pm
In response to Deadron (#7)
On 2/12/01 9:43 pm Deadron wrote:
On 2/12/01 8:56 pm Air Mapster wrote:
One minor note for your "reworking" task: the links on the left side of the DM Guide don't work in IE
No biggie, but something to put on the list.

Actually somewhat of a biggie...been annoying me for ages...

Don't blame me; Air Mapster's the first to have mentioned it! As he noted, it works in Netscape and that's what I use.

It's fixed now.
#9 Feb 13 2001, 6:50 am
In response to OmegaRed (#3)
On 2/12/01 6:33 pm OmegaRed wrote:
Well in that case !!!

hehe, acually I was just gonna say PLZ CHECK THE NEWBIE FORUM OFTEN. I have noticed that no one really pays 2 much attention to it :).

In my case, I read the newbie forum often, but I frequently have no answers for whoever needs help. And rather than posting to say, "I have no clue!" I just move on.

Z