Quote: "thx im glad someone likes it, but apparently according to MR TDK my tutorial needs work because its got bad programming habbits so i may remove it until i can fix it."
I'm just trying to raise the quality of tutorials. If this happens, everyone will benefit.
I'm not being nasty to people who post 'not so good' tutorials am I? Nowhere do I say "that tutorial is crap". Instead I'm giving constructive criticism and pointing out where they can easily be improved.
BTW: You can't remove it until it's fixed on here - you can only edit.
Badly written tutorials simply look like they have been written by noobs for noobs! If the author gets things wrong, the reader doesn't know any better.
I could outline every single problem in every bad tutorial on the forum, but that would simply antagonise the authors. I'd rather politely point them in the right direction.
But since you still appear to think that I am wrong, I will present my evidence here. If you correct the issues, I will gladly return and remove this post!
A tutorial to get started
The title suggests that it's for someone who's never programmed before and as a total noob to DB, I'm expecting it to hold my hand and 'get me started'.
You then provide a lengthy code snippet which won't even run!
This is because of:
1. A missing label (no colon at the end of heightcap2)
2. Your made-up commands. What exactly is 'Create object cube' in the function SpawnAlpha()??
To be honest it looks like it was written by someone with little programming experience - who didn't even run it before posting it.
* There are two main program Do..Loops
* You jump to a function and never return
* You exit a function with a Goto!
* You use float variables when they should be integers
* You use integers as parameters that the help files state should be floats
* Use of Goto makes it difficult to trace through
* Use of over-complicated sections of code - for example, why use:
rotation# = rotation# + 0.01
rotate object 4,0,rotation#,0
If rotation# > 359.9999999999
rotation# = 0
Endif
when you could put:
Yrotate Object 4,WrapValue(Object Angle Y(4)+0.01)
OK, it's more complicated, but the idea of a tutorial is to explain things like that in a simple way - provided you have the programming experience to know yourself...
Also, why manually calculate the camera position when you have the Set Camera To Follow command?
Reading it as a total noob, my comments would be...
Quote: "we use the command "Load image [Filepath,Image number]""
Where do the [ and ] brackets come into it?
Quote: "xsin# = xsin# + 1
ysin# = 15 * sin (xsin#)
position object 4,0,ysin#,0
"
Eh? What does this do?
So, as I said, it's not a very bad tutorial - it's just not a good one because it shows newcomers how to do the wrong things.
Just a little more work to fix the problems and you're well on the way to having a good tutorial.
TDK_Man
