Day 8: More book-learning.

Seriously, you guys.  I am thoroughly convinced that making a game takes forever and is impossible.

I got program vectors on the board, and I got NPC sprites on the board near the program vectors, but obviously they won't just go, I have to tell them to go and when to stop and blah blah blah.

I need to learn more programming, is what I'm saying.

So I looked up the section on vectors for more precise instructions, and it tells me to write things like "playerPath(variant handle, int flags, ...)" and "itemPath(variant handle, int flags, ...)" and expects me to know how to use RPGCode already (which borrows from programming languages I also don't know).  Fine.  I know when I'm in over my head, so I went to the RPGCode section to find something on "make sprite follow path vector."  This section is written by Occasionally_Correct, who you may remember from that useful tutorial I read on Day 4.  But the topic headings look like this:

• Language Features

• Basics
• Program Flow
• Creating Functions
• Scope
• Error Handling
• Reserved Variables and Constants

• Function Reference
• Object Oriented Coding

• Old vs. New
• Methods and Using
• Overloading Operators
• Copy Constructors
• Polymorphism

OK.  So.  None of those is on assigning an NPC to a path vector.  And in case you can't tell, this is not how I learn things.  I don't do well with things like "basics" and "principles" unless what I'm learning is something simple and limited, like playing cards, and I can immediately do a bunch of trial and error.  You get two through ten, then these three "face" cards (King beats Queen beats Jack beats Ten, and so on), and an Ace which can be high or low or both depending on the game.  That's it.  That I can learn with basics an' shit.  This is like nailing Jell-O to a wall:  you tell me something and I listen, but it's boring, and when I finally understand the second boring thing then I've already forgotten all about the first boring thing.  I can never learn exciting things this way, because I can't remember all those boring things all at once.  I need to start with an exciting thing, pre-formed and ready for dissection, and just use it first.  Then when whatever it does isn't good enough for me any more, I learn one boring piece of that exciting thing at a time, and tweak it into oblivion until I get what I want out of it (or at least have a more robust understanding of what I can/can't get out of it).  That way I can do something exciting, even if I'm doing it poorly, but I have practical knowledge straight out the gate and a way to branch out.  Then when I've amassed enough exciting things (or at least enough facets of the one exciting thing), that's when I'll grasp the basics in a broad-based way.

I want to be clear here that I'm not saying the guide is bad.  It's actually very good, but it doesn't fit me.  It's like a well-made tuxedo that's two sizes too small:  I can't fit it on and it looks like crap if I force it, even though it's evident that serious craftsmanship went into its design and manufacture.  What I'm saying is, this guide's start point is my end-point.  This guide wants to go backwards through my learning curve.  The cheek!


It's like I want the internet, but I have a textbook.  Yes, I can use the textbook; but the internet would work so much faster!  Whatever.  If this were easy, there's be zillions more shitty games out there.  There's nothing else really to do at this point, since I can't execute the other game features I want without learning everything about coding.  I guess I ought to keep working on the first game, then.  So fiiiiine, I'll reeeeead the tutooooorial, and probably like three others too.  Even though they put me to sleep because they start with things I don't care about and work up, rather than starting with things I do care about and working out.  Although I suppose it would be really hard to write a guide centered around "what I care about."

So that's what I've been doing today.  Found another good tutorial by this guy Marz, so hopefully that should mean "game updates" and not "learning updates" tomorrow.  I don't think you guys wanna hear about what variables and functions and arguments all are, anyway.