In-depth documentation

[Josh]

As discussed in yesterday's meeting, I am very interested in authoring tutorials that are meant to go beyond just learning the documentation for specific commands and answer the question of "how do I make a game"?

I think the challenge here is to devise an overall structure for the articles, so they are a sequence of lessons and not just answers to random questions.

So I am putting the question to you, how do you think this should be structured? What are the titles of the actual articles that should be written, and what order should they be listed in? I'm looking for something like this:

1. XXXXXXXXXX
   1. XXXXXXXXXX
   2. XXXXXXXXXX
   3. XXXXXXXXXX
2. XXXXXXXXXX
   1. XXXXXXXXXX
   2. XXXXXXXXXX
   3. XXXXXXXXXX
   4. XXXXXXXXXX
   5. XXXXXXXXXX
3. XXXXXXXXXX
   1. XXXXXXXXXX
   2. XXXXXXXXXX
4. XXXXXXXXXX
   1. XXXXXXXXXX
   2. XXXXXXXXXX
   3. XXXXXXXXXX

Let's discuss ideas.

[Thirsty Panther]

I think your structure is good.

Here is an example from GameDev.tv structure which mirrors what you have in mind.

[Josh]

Good, but we need a full series. What should it look like? Thoughts, everyone?

[Josh]

@WazMeister, I need your opinion! Now is your time to tell me what you need.

[Josh]

Something like this:

1. Tutorials
   1. Editor Interface
      1. Textures
      2. Materials
         1. PBR
         2. Tessellation and displacement
      3. Models
      4. Shaders
   2. Level Design
      1. Models
         1. Translate tool
         2. Rotate tool
         3. scale tool
      2. Brushes
         1. Creation
         2. Edit faces
            1. Tessellation and displacement
            2. Material painting
         3. Edit vertices
      3. Environment settings
   3. Gameplay
      1. Components
      2. Component properties
      3. Flowgraph
      4. Exposing component properties from code to the editor

[Thirsty Panther]

1. Tutorials
   1. Editor Interface
      1. Textures
      2. Materials
         1. PBR
         2. Tessellation and displacement
      3. Models - How import, How convert to Mdl, Apply a texture, Load animations, Remesh, collision mesh, LOD
      4. Shaders
      5. Particles
      6. Probes
      7. Decals
      8. Project tab navigation  and uses of.
      9. Scene tab navigation and uses of.
      10. How to add a component to a model.
      11. How to run your game (Lua).
      12. Project Manager- How creat a project, update a project, use a template.
      13. Terrain- How to create, How to sculpt, paint, smooth, add foliage, rocks etc 
      14. World settings- How to modify ambient light, How to add a skybox, How to add fog, How to add effects.
      15. Asset Library- how to add models, textures and sounds from the asset library.
      16. Options menu- How to set general settings, video, veiwport, projects, material and project settings.
      17. Publish- How to finalize your game.
   2. Level Design
      1. Models
         1. Translate tool
         2. Rotate tool
         3. scale tool
         4. Carve tool
         5. Hollow tool
      2. Brushes
         1. Creation
         2. Edit faces
            1. Tessellation and displacement
            2. Material painting
         3. Edit vertices
      3. Environment settings
      4. Global ilumination
      5. How to build a navmesh
   3. Gameplay
      1. Components
      2. Component properties
      3. Flowgraph
      4. Exposing component properties from code to the editor
      5. Moving platforms, sliding doors.
      6. Push button/ switches to open/close a door, switch a light on and off.
      7. "E" to grab/ hold objects.
      8. HUD for gun sights, health, ammo and score
      9. Health kit - health regeneration
      10. Ammo box - ammo replenishment
      11. Raycast for guns
      12. projectiles
      13. High score table
      14. How to change maps
      15. Simple quest system eg kill 10 rats
      16. Simple Inventory system
      17. Simple crafting system
      18. Teleport system
      19. Security camera (camera to texture)
      20. Enemy spawning
      21. Different sounds (footsteps) on different surfaces.
      22. Gravity gun
      23. Jetpack on player.
      24. Hand gernade with damage and physics effect.
      25. Ladder climbing.
      26. Weather effects, Rain/snow.
      27. Picking up a new weapon.
      28. NPC dialog system.
      29. Basic skill tree.
      30. Swimming when in  water.
      31. Checkpoints.
      32. A simple turret that shoots at the player.

[Josh]

@Thirsty PantherThank you for your detailed response. That is extremely helpful.

[Thirsty Panther]

I cant take all the credit for the gameplay ideas. I trawled thru an old Leadwerks topic where everyone was requesting what they wanted a tutorial on.

I didn't ask for any 2D tutorials as I think Ultra Engine's strenght is in 3D.

 

[khotan]

Thanks and it is very good idea !

I am for somewhat as snippet of codes for showing to "how i do make a game" on level from basic to advanced

Because of beginners need all that to start something with Ultra Engine.... Hope that will make this one !

Good luck and I am looking forward to this

Happy coding !

[Josh]

Okay, so should these tutorials be programming tutorials, or should they use a component that has been added into the default components, and explain what all the properties do? Are they "how to code" or are they no-code tutorials that show how to set up these situations?

[Thirsty Panther]

I think most of them lend themselves to being components. Things like health kits and ammo boxes for example. The advantage of this approach is that if the user is not that interested in learning "programming" then they can just add the component and move on. For others who do want to expand their programming knowledge a fuller explanation of how you developed the component would be helpful. They could then alter or modify them for other purposes. 

There are others that I think would benefit from a fuller explanation. Inventory and crafting systems, I think, would be hard to do as a single component and would require a "how to code" approach.

[khotan]

Yes for quickly to learn with purpose is training video because of a lot with codes as it is a fuller explanation. And shorter explanation as basic tool in text with images on how to do my game. Maybe a suggestion is to create a section for tutorial to community where others programmers share their tutorials as well, what do you think of that ? Because you can't do it all tutorial, right ?

[Dreikblack]

12 minutes ago, khotan said:

Maybe a suggestion is to create a section for tutorial to community where others programmers share their tutorials as well,

For now i just post my tutorials in blogs, but more dedicated section would be better 

 

[Josh]

I am thinking the tutorials should be divided up into separate games, rather than trying to make one game with every feature.

The first tutorials should be code-centric and just involve programming the main.lua or main.cpp file. All assets used will be loaded from a github repository, with URLs in the code, so there is nothing to download:

• Pong3D
• Flappy3D
• Asteroids3D

More advanced games will use the entity component system. At this point, each game will have an official template included in the available project templates you can create. These templates will contain unique components for each game, because I don't think I can make every game in one set of components. The artwork will be mostly filler / abstract with a few models from Sketchfab.

• Simple FPS game
• Simple RPG game

etc.

Each game will be divided into about eight different tutorials that focus on a different feature.