[Graphics]

So have you made a tutorial or liked one recently? Please share feel free to share it here. It could be something simple like how to open a mod or complex like new mapping methods. It's all welcomed here. Even links to your posted tutorials from another EDuke Forum. I would like to learn and hoping anyone who visits this post. And thank you to anyone participating with this post and reading this.

Here's an example of a tutorial I made on ModDB making the music sound better.
https://www.moddb.co...tter-midi-music

PS: I do plan on posting links to other tutorials I made. But this is a good example.

[gibfrag]

I wrote these CON tutorials for people with no programming knowledge in 2020. It mostly goes over USER.CON. There's other CON tutorials out there that go in much further depth than I did, but I wrote those tutorials specifically for beginners who found other tutorials difficult to understand. I have considered bringing these tutorials to a different site with a better job at formatting the information as well as adding more to it, but don't have the time right now to do it.

[Graphics]

Thank you DNSKILL5. Anyway to make configuration editing easier is a great idea. I personally enjoy editing the con files. But I'll admit, I'm not good at it. I'm probably going to look over your post and see what I can learn. This is a very appreciated first post.

As for my own tutorials. I just edited the links to my mapping landscapes work. So this means my old post on Landscape Terrain Mapping on the EDuke forums is now out of date and won't work properly. So I'm also going to leave a link to that new tutorial here.

New Landscape Terrain Mapping Link
https://www.moddb.co...ding-landscapes

[Graphics]

My latest tutorial is now up. It's a very easy to understand lesson, on fixing a glitch related to over lapping sectors.
https://www.moddb.co...-vector-slicing

[Reaper_Man]

At some point soon-ish I was going to make a new thread with the texture remakes I've been doing, to collect them in a single place. As part of that I can write up a tutorial using the software and the general methodology. I don't think I could (or even should) cover the underlying concepts of using programs like Material Maker or Substance Designer, but rather the tutorial would be translating using that software for "retro" textures. So basically: I won't teach you how to use Material Maker, but I will teach you how to make "BUILD looking" textures with it.

Graphics, on 10 December 2022 - 03:38 PM, said:

I personally enjoy editing the con files. But I'll admit, I'm not good at it.

What sort of CON tutorials would you like to see then? This has been the major issue I've always had with trying to write CON tutorials or documentation, even all the way back to my old CON site; I don't know what sort of tutorials people want that isn't either A.) just teaching them core programming concepts, or B.) just giving them a final product of working code snippets. I disagree with the former because CON is not a great language to learn the basics of programming, and I disagree with the latter because having a library of code snippets that each work individually and putting them together is not the same as writing a cohesive project. Two separate pieces of code might work just fine independently, but putting them together in the same project may create problems and/or they may be more efficiently or intelligently written as a single piece of code. Effective code in a project is more than the sum of it's individual components. It also encourages people to save and paste together random code snippets like Lego bricks, without understanding what any of them are actually doing, and when doing that inevitably throws errors or causes other problems, they don't understand what's going wrong, much less why. They might find the error and band-aid a fix, but not actually solve the problem.

That being said, I would recommend opening up the CON files in AWOL and having a look. We tried to document things as clearly as possible, and code is broken up into individual files as much as logically could make sense. Where things aren't commented explicitly, the code itself should be self documenting simply by reading it. A lot of the code structures may seem weird, but explaining that weirdness is IMO the basis for effective CON tutorials - explaining WHY some things are done, rather than HOW to do them.

[Danukem]

I have exactly the same reservations about writing CON tutorials. The EDuke32 wiki does a passable job already of listing the commands and specifying the syntax. You've got the overview here which has various links in it that explain different facets. Then the entries on individual commands provide enough information to get the coder started using them, sometimes with examples (although some of the examples are arguably redundant or badly written).

I think there is some utility in tutorials that explore specific challenges, such as HUD coding on new weapons, or making new enemies from scratch, to name two big ones. But the number of people who would benefit from such tutorials is tiny, and it's never felt like it was a good use of my time to make them. It's also very difficult to know what level of detail to supply -- going into basic programming concepts or basic logic would be inappropriate and make the tutorials very bloated, but if you leave those things out then I feel like most of the people asking for the tutorials would be lost.

[Reaper_Man]

The other problem is that the answer to virtually every "How do I..." type question is "It depends." It depends on the larger scope of the project. It depends on how the thing could, would, or should interact with other systems. It depends on how the effect works in a gameplay setting and not just on paper.

A question like "How do I make new enemies?" is a great example. I'd love to write a tutorial on the concepts, like what is a state machine (in the context of CON) and how to apply that to writing enemy logic. But the way I'd write an enemy is not THE way to write an enemy, and some enemies don't need that level of complexity. So how do you make a new enemy? Well, it depends.

[Graphics]

Reaper_Man, on 11 December 2022 - 11:33 AM, said:

What sort of CON tutorials would you like to see then?

I do well with examples. But because my mods tend to be multiplayer. Probably tutorials on older code might help. Because multiplayer uses an older format to my understanding. Though that is a limited understanding. I guess I'm asking for anyone that helps me with my mod. So that would help them have a better understanding of what can be done in multiplayer. Not saying the help I'm getting doesn't understand this. But even they had to experiment to find the proper values. And it would have been easier if they had something explaining it. Because I don't want to waste their time and I'm thankful to anyone that helps me.

[Graphics]

PS: Thank you for posting on my page. You guys have given me a lot to read. But it's all worth learning. Thank you.

[Reaper_Man]

But examples of what exactly? Like what's something specific that you want an example of how to accomplish?

I don't 100% know the state of CON and what multiplayer engine branches people use. I believe Jordan is currently working on feature parity with NetDuke and the current CON language, although I don't follow the project that closely so I can't say for certain.

[Graphics]

Well someone once showed me the exact code to editing a weapons projectile. It was a simple example and it worked. I'm not great at code. But that helped a lot. Because I'm not great at compiling the code, just editing it slightly. And since then, I've gotten better at editing weapons. It's fun to learn.

It's okay if you're not 100% on the state multiplayer coding. It's not to help me. It's too help anyone that wants to work on my mod with me.

As for new tutorials. I just posted one on fixing a common rendering glitch with TROR. It's worth a learning, if you're mapping with TROR.
https://www.moddb.co...-vector-slicing