Beginner's Community Project?

I was thinking about starting a beginners' community project. It would be an awesome idea, and a really good way to get all the newbies to learn lots and lots of stuff. This is why we should start it:

- So the beginner's can actually work on something
- To help the beginnners learn more about Blitz
- To get the community more involved

If you are already working on another project, that's OK - this project was meant for beginners. I am open to any suggestions.

I could help you. Let all the newer and aspiring
coders to this site learn types and everything. We
just gotta make sure that if its to help beginners
learn more, a lot of the coding has to be done by
them. And we can help them along the way.

Yeah. I just thought it would be really cool if the beginners had a shot at a group project - as things such as Operation 600, Alien Breed, and PersistantWorld3D are WAY over their heads.

But what should the game be? A 3rd person shooter? A second person shooter? :P

Let them decide!

Of course!

So...any beginners interested?

Hey,... you beat me to this post!

I was actually planning on posting almost the exact thing on Monday! I wanted to wait so I could put some graphics up on my work website.

Anyways, here is my idea,... A community project of minigames. Think wario ware, or the mini games that come with Mario 64 DS if you have seen them.

The project would involve many little games brought around a common interface. I would be willing to contribute graphics to the project, and have actually already started on this a bit (over the last 2 days)

thoughts?

Opto,

I'm sorry you felt PW3D was way over your head. Complexity was something I truly wanted to avoid. All in all its just a progam manipulate mesh data, saves the data, and can reloads it.

One way or another you will find yourself in need or writing an Editor of some sort for your game no matter the genre, no matter if its 2D or 3D, no matter how simple or complex.

You have my support and you know where to find me.

Here's a start for you. I wrote this to help out some people so it's heavily commented.

I would suggest with this a JetPac game could be written as this would be a good basis for it.

; Thrust type example by Rob Farley (http://www.mentalillusion.co.uk)
; Use the cursor keys to move it block around the screen

Graphics 640,480,16 ; set graphics mode
SetBuffer BackBuffer() ; set back buffer to enable screen flipping
Cls


; set up some varibles all of the ones below have a #
; this means they are floating point numbers ie they have a decimal place
x#=320 ;x position
y#=200 ;y position
xspeed#=0 ; xspeed
yspeed#=0 ; yspeed

; these are the keys for control Const sets them up as constant varibles
; this means they can't be changed but it makes everything a bit faster
Const k_left=203, k_right=205, k_up=200 , k_down=208


; start the main loop
Repeat ; note the loop is indented for easy to read code


	Cls ;clear the screen

	Color 0,255,0
	Line 0,470,639,470 ;draw a green line at the bottom of the screen

	If KeyDown(k_left) Then xspeed#=xspeed#-.1 ;this adds acceleration in the correct direction
	If KeyDown(k_right) Then xspeed#=xspeed#+.1
	If KeyDown(k_up) Then yspeed#=yspeed#-.1

	x#=x#+xspeed# ;this adds the acceleration to the current x,y position
	y#=y#+yspeed#

	xspeed#=xspeed#*.99 ;this makes the xspeed 99% of what is was ie adds friction and slows you down
	yspeed#=yspeed#+.05 ; here we are adding gravity acceleration to the y direction so you're always being pulled down


	If y#>460 Then y#=460:yspeed#=-yspeed#/2 ; this is hitting the bottom of the screen and bouncing you up at half the speed you hit it
	If y#<0 Then y#=0:yspeed#=0 ; stopping you at the top of the screen
	If x#>650 Then x#=-10 ; wrapping you from right to left
	If x#<-10 Then x#=650 ; wrapping you from left to right

	Color 255,255,0
	Rect x#-10,y#-10,20,20 ; draw a yellow rectangle at your position

	Flip ; flip the back buffer to the front so you can see what's been drawn

Until KeyHit(1) ; back to the beginning of the main loop until ESC is hit

End ; End the program

Yeah - a bunch of minigames would be cool.

Simple minigames, of course.

And thanks for your contribution, Rob.

...

...

Greetings Puppies,

He He He! I had the same idea too and posted on the 3d programming forum before reading here.

Personally, as I said in the other post, I think perhaps there should be a set of games, perhaps in their own forum, where people can join in as they want. Not so much a community project, more 'community development guidance'.

I like the idea of reusable code and structures, but instead of the usual(?) way of discarding code when an improvement is made keep the previous code and give an explanation as to why the alternative has been used.

I think, maybe, that a few simple games should be chosen - Space Invaders, Frogger and, oh yeah, Jetpac. Perhaps even have different projects for different levels of competency so have the ones above for beginners, then perhaps a platform and a racing game, then a basic trading and a dungeon game, then a networked game, FPS, etc, so that everyone can get involved at some level.

Also, it might be good as a showcase for peoples tools(fnaar, fnaar) so that we could have a dungeon game and sswift might say "Hey check it out with my shadow system" - the tools shouldn't necessarily be an integral part of the game but just an aside as seeing them work in practice might persuade people to buy those tools (or take advantage of sswift generosity ;0) )

Anyway, those are my two cents worth.

Peace,

Jes

That was what I was trying to get across. :)

If I still got it somewhere, Il dig out the source for Fluxxians. It's space invaders, but contains different player ships, difficulty levels, a high-score table and extra-life bonuses.