As I go along my quest of learning new languages and trying new things in life, I stumbled upon the idea of actually taking up Unknown Person's advice and looking into PHP frameworks (and the idea of frameworks overall). Now, I began using CodeIgniter and it has made life significantly better, and the reason why is because I don't need to focus my attention towards developing a login system that will take me a day to make, when I can make one in about 10-20 minutes with a framework and actually begin developing on the portions of the site that will actually incorporate the login system. I can focus on the actual site, and not worry about my back-end so much.
What am I trying to say overall? Use the resources given to you. Time and time again I see people commenting about how we absolutely need Pixel Movement, and while I think the notion is good enough to where it should be up for discussion, colossal amounts of BYOND users fail to remember that Forum_account created a Pixel Movement library. It has a tutorial and everything! It works pretty well, and instead of having to worry about pixel movement implementation, you can use his system and then actually develop your game.
I'm not only commending his library, that was just the most commonly (and annoying) "wanted" feature and it was easy to implement into this blogpost. The same goes for other libraries, and not only in BYOND - this goes for all languages. I used to be very against the idea of incorporating libraries because I thought it meant I was less intelligent, and that I didn't have the capacity to develop the system myself. What this ended up doing was dragging me down, slowing my production down, and while I completed my challenges, I was burnt out in the process. Instead of recreating the wheel, I should have been searching for tools that have not yet been released - making something new. And on BYOND, simply making a good game is pretty original, because I can only name 5-6 games I would deem good.
My only warning to you is don't get lazy. Still challenge yourself, but with new things. Since Forum_account already gave us pixel movement, why don't YOU focus on a game that makes an awesome battle system with his library supporting the movement? Be innovative, be creative, and have fun.
Programming is never fun if you only do the boring stuff. If it's taken care of, find something new. It's what BYOND needs. ;)
Jul 18 2011, 9:35 am
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DivineTraveller
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I couldn't've said it better.
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Well said
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I wanna hear the names of those 5-6 games :D
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Look to the right of my page, there are 5.
I'll also throw in NESTalgia (though not a huge fan, I'll admit it's a good game), Castle (good gameplay, horrible graphics), and for it's run, Ultimatum. There once was a really awesome Dragon Warrior game I used to play all the time as well (real-time combat, not turn-based), but it's long gone. Overall it's about 9 games, but of them that are actually alive, it's only 5. | |
CauTi0N wrote:
There once was a really awesome Dragon Warrior game I used to play all the time as well (real-time combat, not turn-based), DWM? :O | |
I think he's talking about DWL. A while ago I made a basic engine for a game that improves upon the DWL formula, but I haven't touched it in ages, it's technically playable right now, but it lacks actual content, even though all of the framework is there.
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The peoples republic of china wrote:
I think he's talking about DWL. A while ago I made a basic engine for a game that improves upon the DWL formula, but I haven't touched it in ages, it's technically playable right now, but it lacks actual content, even though all of the framework is there. Oh. The only real-time DW game that is "long gone" that I knew of was DWM. That game was so addicting it was ridiculous. I'd rather play it than any Dragon Quest games I've played on BYOND and even on my PS2 console. | |
Thanks for the mention!
I used to be very against the idea of incorporating libraries because I thought it meant I was less intelligent, and that I didn't have the capacity to develop the system myself. I've tried to figure out why people don't use libraries. I think the reason you give is one that's often used, but I'm not sure its the single biggest reason. BYOND does a lot of work for you, so any DM developer can't be the kind of person who wants to do everything from scratch. Here's my best guess: Being able to code the feature yourself doesn't mean you'd know how to use a library that provides that same feature, you have to figure out how to use it. Even if its easy to figure out, using a library means you have to acknowledge that there's something you don't know. As soon as people start trying to learn DM they're dying for the moment they can say "there, I'm done learning, I'm a DM expert now". To these people (of which there are many), using a library makes a newbie out of them again and they're not comfortable with that. Also, when people don't have a game idea they can feel productive by working on basic stuff like this. If you say "there's a library to handle that, just use it and get to making the gameplay already" it'll often just make people realize that they don't have a game idea. I think the reason you mentioned is sometimes true, but more often I think its just the excuse they use. Very few people would admit "I'd use a library to streamline development of my game, but I actually have no clue how the gameplay should work so I'm going to waste time working on these basic features then three months later say 'my pixel artist quit' and scrap the project before anyone can realize that I had no clue what I was doing." | |
I think it could be laziness. I took a peek at your sidescroller library and I had the same reaction I did when I looked at the DM Guide: "I ain't readin' all this."
I even tried to test it out and it made my map go black or something. I don't know, I'm just not enthused enough to fix the problem. If it's not an extremely simple solution, like 5 or 6 lines of code, then I don't want it. I despise programming and didn't feel like wrecking my brain trying to fix issues that I could simply avoid by just sticking to the default perspective and movement. | |
I don't mind using libraries. I'm just the kind of person who likes to learn how to put systems together. I actually have thought about using other people's libraries in the near future.
I'm actually working on a library still to this day that works with another DM program I'm still producing. That of course is the "DM External Library Communicator Support Library". If that and the actual communicator ever get finished, I'll make sure to release both at the same time. Currently though, they need to be fixed (due to some bugs found during testing). That is all I have to say at present. | |
