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Newcomers DBPro Corner / Looking for the absolute best starter Tutorial

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michaeleo
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Posted: 23rd Aug 2007 00:06
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Hello!

I'm new to the community. I bought DB pro to get into designing games, and I'm very excited to get started. I'm looking for the best (albeit easiest) tutotial to teach fundamentals. I have considered buying the beginners guide from the book store, but was wondering if there were tutorials with simle, plain english walk throughs to get me familiar with the syntax?

I understand there is lists of newbie materials but they are very unspecific. The pro's know best I always say!

What I'm looking for:

A simple game design walk through, maybe like a basic child's game or something similar to start. Something just good enough to get me familiar with various functions and how the syntax works.

I tried reading the book that came with my distro, but pdf is very hard on the eyes, and my head is starting to hurt every 20 pages or so.

I'm not asking to develop a full blown RPG, or MMORPG (Not this year atleast =P) Just some simple little game with a walk through to get me familiar with the workings of DBP.

Also would it be better to buy the beginners book from barns and noble, or to follow a tutotial?

Thanks in advance for any links/info.
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Penfold
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Posted: 23rd Aug 2007 01:42
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Quote: "Also would it be better to buy the beginners book from barns and noble, or to follow a tutotial?"


Barnes and Naoble? Not sure I've seen that one. I have the Harbour Smith beginners guide to Dark Basic which covers quite a lot for a beginners book and is quite an easy read. Chanses are though by the time you finally get to the 3D section your head will no doubt be buzzing with extra questions.

If its about how about going about a specific group of tasks. Ie the best method to do a lump of code searching these forums would be the best thing to do.

If its information on a specific commands you'l probably want to end up buying the hands on books which have been released. These offer very specific examples on all of the most used commands.

Worst thing you could probably do is just post a question *how do I* without actually stating what you;ve already tried or an example of failing code, as you'll probably end up getting flamed for not searching hard enough in the forums.

There are however lots of tutorials online for simple games to start with. I'd advise looking for space invaders in 2D or somthing like that first. Mainly because there one of the easiest to program and there are lots of *different* coding examples out there.

I don't know if anyone else agree's but I thought I'd give a warm reply and welcome you to the forums.

'Ooh 'eck chief'...'crumbs'
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AndrewT
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Posted: 23rd Aug 2007 01:47
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You may have already seen this, but I'll post a link anyway:

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=105573&b=7

It has a lot of useful links for beginners.

--This is where my sig would be if I had the energy to make one...--
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michaeleo
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Posted: 23rd Aug 2007 02:12
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The books that came with the download of DBP were IMO meant for people on a grind quest. As has been my experience some tutorials and books can make learning a fun and exciting experience. But some can make it mundain, constantly feeding you information that's more like a study guide for a big test.

The thing I was looking for was more of a "Learn by Doing" type of thing. Kind of like SAM's Teach Yourself PHP, or "UI Fun With LUA" as some of my previous enjoyable learning experience examples.

Just figured instead of fogging my vision with discouragement and sifting through what is probably hundreds of "Do This" tutorials, I'd consult the expert's in the community.

I really am not worried about getting flamed, but seriously it would be unprofessional to do so and somewhat selfish. I beleive people who trialed things, and can in hind sight say "I should have used tutorial C, before I messed around with tutorial A and B" would possibly have the desire to share that information.

My perspective is perhaps there are people expeienced now who didn't grasp anything from tutorial A and B, but found C to be a better start point.

I'm just trying to make the most of my $70 investment by not wasting time, energy, or motivation only to find out I need to change my direction.
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BatVink
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Posted: 23rd Aug 2007 13:41 Edited at: 23rd Aug 2007 13:42
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The link above is created and maintained by the mods, so it only has worthwhile tutorials in it. Have a look through them and pick your skill level and interests.

Good luck, most forum dwellers here will be happy to help. Just make sure you use the search button first

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michaeleo
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Posted: 23rd Aug 2007 19:03
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Thanks everyone for the info.
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TDK
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Posted: 23rd Aug 2007 20:41 Edited at: 23rd Aug 2007 20:46
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There are many excellent tutorials on here, but a high percentage of them assume a certain level of existing knowledge which as a total newcomer to programming, you may not have.

As such, using those tutorials may teach you how to do a specific thing or write a game of a certain genre, however they leave out fundamental and vital aspects of programming.

For example, how many explain in a clear concise way what a variable is, what the difference is between an integer and a float, or what is the best layout for all your programs?

I set out to write a series of tutorials which assume no prior programming experience which could be used as 'primers' before reading the more advanced tutorials. Hopefully, after the primers, many of the other tutorials will make much more sense...

They can be found here:

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=99497&b=10

Tutorials 1 to 4 are an introduction to programming, but all the rest are also aimed at newcomers.

Although written for DB Classic, at the level they are aimed at, they also apply equally to DBPro.

TDK_Man

* TDK's Game Programming Forums - Open To All - DB & Team Request Boards *

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Code Dragon
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Posted: 23rd Aug 2007 22:04 Edited at: 23rd Aug 2007 22:08
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The easiest tutorial for just starting out with is the Newcomer's Guide to First Person Shooters: http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=56770&b=7 Very simple and basic stuff. But ignore what Ruccus says about the concepts and methods being wrong, this tutorial still helped me and a whole lot of other people.

BatVink's tutorials on asset management in particular were a big help. Writing a fairly complex game is almost impossible if you have some sort of approach like this.

http://www.thegamecreators.com/data/newsletter/newsletter_issue_28.html#9
http://www.thegamecreators.com/data/newsletter/newsletter_issue_29.html#9

I wrote a tutorial myself once, find it here: http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=93103&b=1 It does require experience in using sprites, arrays, and functions though, that's why it's more of an intermediate than beginner tutorial. Although I have to admit like the FPS guide I've discovered some methods are wrong, but it definitely can't hurt.

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michaeleo
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Posted: 23rd Aug 2007 22:05
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Thanks TDK, that will be very helpful.

Pretty much exactly what I was looking for. Tutorials explaining what everything is, so that I can actually follow the ones that tell me how to go about the actual making of the game.

I found it hard to follow as I started reading

"How to make an FPS"
"How to make an RPG"

The basic is what I need and your delivered, thanks again!
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Xenocythe
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Posted: 24th Aug 2007 06:43
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Once again, TDK PWNS my RPG tutorial with his mod-liness.


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TDK
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Posted: 24th Aug 2007 09:02
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Xenocythe behave!!

It doesn't at all. My tutorials are simply aimed at a different audience.

There are lots of great tutorials out there like yours which are aimed at beginners who know a little bit about programming.

My starter tutorials are aimed at beginners who know absolutely nothing about programming who find many tutorials for beginners totally baffling.

I send them to my tutorials because they give them the 'little bit' they need to go on and read other tutorials and not get completely lost in the first five minutes.

How many tutorials for beginners have you seen that have a line like:

CamPosX# = 1000.0

...and don't explain that CamPosX# is a float variable or even what variables actually are? Or that after that line, everything to the right of the = sign is placed in the variable on the left of the = sign?

We all take things like that for granted, but for someone who's never written a program before, reading that without an explanation can be very confusing.

I'm not saying that all beginners tutorials should go that basic, I'm just letting newcomers know that my intro tutorials do...

So, I don't suggest they read mine instead of any other tutorials, but rather before reading the others - especially if they've never done any programming before.

TDK_Man

* TDK's Game Programming Forums - Open To All - DB & Team Request Boards *

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Don Malone
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Posted: 24th Aug 2007 14:42 Edited at: 24th Aug 2007 14:42
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well said. TDK has a very good way of explaining the basics to someone who needs that first step in programming. Almost every book on the market for beginning programmers has a section like this.
I like to go back and read them as refreshers sometimes when I don't use DBP for a while. The other (application / window based) Basic I use has a different syntax and I get the syntax's slightly confused sometimes.

Making nothing for the forth straight year.

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Xenocythe
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Posted: 24th Aug 2007 23:17
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Yeah, your right TDK. Sorry, I'll behave


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culmor30
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Posted: 25th Aug 2007 01:03
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Quote: "Xenocythe behave!! "


You sound like my mother.

But yeah, I hated reading some tutorials on the internet about anything without an explanation of what things did. So... yeah. Good job TDK.
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Zaibatsu
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Posted: 25th Aug 2007 04:08
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Quote: "Barnes and Naoble? Not sure I've seen that one"


It's not a book, It's a book store.

"I admire its purity, a survivor, unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality"

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michaeleo
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Posted: 25th Aug 2007 05:39
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Hehe, actually I do have some programming and scripting language.

Spent some time on an emulation development project before.

But reverse engineering something that already exists is pretty far away from the "real programmers" who actually make things. I have no real sense of program stucture for games, or certain functionality, that's never been required.


Thus while some of the tutorials are probably very good future reference for me. I know nothing about dark basic, so TDK wins the golden kupy doll today.

The reason I chose to try DBP is because it seemed like a launguage based on basic and using a limited but powerful systax would allow for more rapid development once you learn the "ins and outs" so to day. I have no desire to learn to code endless amounts of crap in c++ =P

Plus the darkbasic syntax looks sexy and all.
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culmor30
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Posted: 25th Aug 2007 20:00
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Quote: "Plus the darkbasic syntax looks sexy and all."


Turned me on so much I just HAD to buy it.
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