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I have been around DBP For quite a while but never really learned the language. I have bounced around a lot. I know most of the basics, variables, loops, branching, conditions etc... I have books but books get me bored pretty quick. So does anyone have any good inventive, fun ways that they used to learn how to program DBP?

I may just start writing code and making it up as I go along to try commands but I would like to know how some of you learned this.

I found an example that was similar to what I wanted to make. There are free flight examples, and matrix examples etc. Then I just edited parts of it, changed a flight sim into a car sim, and learned enough in a day to start a project. I made simple projects at first. A firework display, a Poker Game, then a space game. In-between that you practice modelling, and Photoshop, or Gimp.

I learned slowly. I've only been using DBPro for about two years but I've had DBC for about ten and was using QBasic for a couple of years before that. I just made a lot of little arcade style mini games or demos. A lot of the time I don't bother with external media. I quite like making things for the 20 line challenge, which you can go and have a look at if you need some inspiration. I even made a mini FPS game entirely in DBC code (you can find it on the DBC board. I included an exe if you want to play it).

I'm a very visual person so I've not made any text based games and I generally do 3d stuff. I'm mainly interested in player controls, general game play elements, physics and AI, so I play around with those a lot. I like to see things move around the screen and interact with them and this is generally what you'll see in my 20 line challenges.

If you know the basics then all you can really do is throw yourself into it. Find something you're interested in and start to experiment. I suggest coming up with a simple game idea and just seeing what you can do. If you need to, break it down into individual chunks and concentrate on one bit at a time. This is what I do. So if I have an idea for enemy AI, I make a demo of just the AI. If I want to try out some FPS collision code, that's what I concentrate on.

I've also found that helping people out on the forums is a good way of learning as I tend to come across things that I've never done before and may never come across doing my own thing.

Set yourself an objective, something you're interested in and work towards that goal.