Learning to Code - A Sprite Break

[Jennkryst]

@DarthSmegma said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

We should actively want games that have reached this level of terribleness to die. Because a year or two from now, people who haven’t read this thread will be looking for a Star Wars game, and will stumble upon this cesspool.

All the more reason to support my crazed attempt to make new game that is good and wholesome by giving me all the code I want teaching me how to make all of the things work, so that there is a solid alternative.

[Jennkryst]

@Darren said in Prospective Star Wars:

I would love to see a new Star Wars game!

I’ve been working on my own Star Wars game (based on Evennia, and incorporating a variant of HSpace 5 rewritten in Python) but have come to the realization that I simply do not have the time or energy to complete it. I’d absolutely be interested in helping out on someone else’s (preferably Evennia or Ares based) project, so I am curious to see where this goes!

SHOW ME WHAT YOU HAVE AND INJECT ALL YOUR CODE-KNOWLEDGE INTO MY BRAIN, I WILL FIND A WAY TO MAKE IT WORK

… uh, I mean… will DM to discuss ideas.

[DarthSmegma]

@Jennkryst Unfortunately, having an idea for a game is the really easy part. Building it takes a lot of time and effort, and most games don’t get past the ‘I have a great idea, who wants to code it!?’ phase.

I’ve got a folder on my laptop of game ideas I’ll never run, but I’d gladly pay a coder a grand to build one of them.

That probably wouldn’t be enough money, I don’t know.

[Jennkryst]

@DarthSmegma I will happily learn how to code, but as one of those annoying gifted kids who never learned how to study outside of class, I need someone on hand to answer all the questions I definitely could have learned by reading help documentation, but my brain refuses to retain it without like… a work-book with near-instant feedback, because I will forget what the question was if I have to wait too long to have it answered.

A discussion best held elsewhere, though!

[Tez]

@DarthSmegma said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

I’ve got a folder on my laptop of game ideas I’ll never run, but I’d gladly pay a coder a grand to build one of them.

That probably wouldn’t be enough money, I don’t know.

When I become a billionaire, I’m gonna pay so many coders to make games for me that I will never actually run. They’re gonna be great.

[shit-piss-love]

@DarthSmegma said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

I’ve got a folder on my laptop of game ideas I’ll never run, but I’d gladly pay a coder a grand to build one of them.

That probably wouldn’t be enough money, I don’t know.

I’ve got a bunch of game ideas and several github repos of Evennia projects and even a new MU* engine built from the ground up. I would love to have an actual game to work on but I know the circumstances under which I could remain engaged are narrow indeed.

[Wizz]

@Jennkryst

Not to pile on you and I don’t want you to feel discouraged or attacked, but repeatedly asking someone here either to code for you or teach you to code when it’s actually a much larger investment of time and effort than you seem to be treating it – especially in pandemic times – is not gonna win any hearts and minds.

There are tons of free resources online that explain the rudiments, and if you’re honestly someone (like me!) who struggles with self-paced stuff like that, a local community college class will put you out maybe $100-200 bucks but give you life skills as well as empower you to make the place yourself. Thanks for coming to my TED talk

[helvetica]

@Tez And I’ll make a thread about your tyranny.

[Roz]

@Wizz said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Jennkryst

Not to pile on you and I don’t want you to feel discouraged or attacked, but repeatedly asking someone here either to code for you or teach you to code when it’s actually a much larger investment of time and effort than you seem to be treating it – especially in pandemic times – is not gonna win any hearts and minds.

There are tons of free resources online that explain the rudiments, and if you’re honestly someone (like me!) who struggles with self-paced stuff like that, a local community college class will put you out maybe $100-200 bucks but give you life skills as well as empower you to make the place yourself. Thanks for coming to my TED talk

Yeah I was kind of typing this, but Wizz beat me. Asking for someone to basically teach you through the coding of a game is actually going to be more work for them than just having someone code a system yourself. You’d probably be able to find folks willing to answer questions when you get stuck – I know both Ares and Evennia have active Discords – but it’s gonna require you doing the heavy lifting yourself.

[KarmaBum]

@Tez said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

When I become a billionaire, I’m gonna pay so many coders to make games for me that I will never actually run.

I will be one of the many many people on the forum that say they’ll play!!! omg so excited!!! but actually I never will.

[Meg]

As someone who has tried to teach a number of people how to code, let me just say–

No, I will not be doing that anymore. There’s only, let’s be honest, a small handful of people who overlap on the Venn diagram of ‘good at code’ and ‘good at teaching’, because these are TWO VERY SEPARATE skills.

And of those people, a lot of them have been burned by people posing ‘teach me how to code’ as basically asking for ‘do all the coding for me, but while explaining every step and why you’re doing it that way, so it makes it 10x slower’.

[Jennkryst]

@Wizz said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Jennkryst

Not to pile on you and I don’t want you to feel discouraged or attacked

I am attacked, halp

but repeatedly asking someone here either to code for you or teach you to code when it’s actually a much larger investment of time and effort than you seem to be treating it – especially in pandemic times – is not gonna win any hearts and minds.

@Roz said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

Yeah I was kind of typing this, but Wizz beat me. Asking for someone to basically teach you through the coding of a game is actually going to be more work for them than just having someone code a system yourself.

You have both seen through my clever ruse of ‘this would be easier to just do myself instead of trying to teach her anything’!

(I mean, that wasn’t the original intent, but it’s funnier to me if I pretend it was)

You’d probably be able to find folks willing to answer questions when you get stuck – I know both Ares and Evennia have active Discords – but it’s gonna require you doing the heavy lifting yourself.

Nobody wants to answer questions like ‘wait… I need linux to make this thing work?’ and ‘what do you mean, put a virtual machine on my normal laptop?’ Which is totally fair on them for not wanting to deal with basic-ass questions.

… but it took me like two weeks to figure them out, back in 2011, after the first time AoA died and I wanted to make a replacement.

@Meg said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

As someone who has tried to teach a number of people how to code, let me just say–

No, I will not be doing that anymore. There’s only, let’s be honest, a small handful of people who overlap on the Venn diagram of ‘good at code’ and ‘good at teaching’, because these are TWO VERY SEPARATE skills.

And of those people, a lot of them have been burned by people posing ‘teach me how to code’ as basically asking for ‘do all the coding for me, but while explaining every step and why you’re doing it that way, so it makes it 10x slower’.

Would you consider ‘here is what I wrote, plz tell me why it is dumb’ and then you point out where I put ,. Instead of ., and that caused the world to implode?

Good ol’ Robert’); DROP TABLE students;–

(Also take all your upvotes in exchange for dealing with me whining, because this is the equivalent of spritzing me with a water bottle and calling me out, and it is actually a decent way to keep me on-track to figuring shit out on my own (my brain, why))

Now back to how Cujo and Hadrix are the worst.

[Tat]

@Jennkryst said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

Nobody wants to answer questions like ‘wait… I need linux to make this thing work?’ and ‘what do you mean, put a virtual machine on my normal laptop?’ Which is totally fair on them for not wanting to deal with basic-ass questions.

This simply isn’t true. I have both asked questions this basic of the Ares discord, and answered them myself now that I know what I’m doing more thoroughly.

People are very willing to help - but in the sense of someone who is coming in having done what they can on their own, who’s willing to dig in, read the tutorials, try some things, ask questions as needed, try to figure it out on their own, ask questions as needed, repeat.

Sometimes ‘what they can do on their own’ really is ‘almost nothing’ and we can give them a boost to get to ‘something’. But a boost is still real different from asking someone to teach you to code, or to code it themselves.

The real forward motion still has to come from you.

[Meg]

@Jennkryst said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

Would you consider ‘here is what I wrote, plz tell me why it is dumb’ and then you point out where I put ,. Instead of ., and that caused the world to implode?

Yeah, if I were asked to just review code that was written? Or try to help find a problem that exists in the code you wrote and figure out why it’s not doing what you want?

That is so much funner and less stressful than walking someone through the process of writing the entire thing. For me, personally.

[Pax]

respectfully what is happening

[Tat]

@Pax Fair - maybe a mod could split this out into a ‘learning to code’ thread or something?

[Jennkryst]

@Pax Just another sprite break, while AoA makes another problematic decision and/or votes for the next victim representative to send over and sacrificed try to defend staff choices.

[Jennkryst]

@Meg

[SpaceKhomeini]

This post is deleted!

[Faraday]

@Jennkryst said in Learning to Code - A Sprite Break:

I am attacked, halp

To echo what @Tat said - it’s not true. I have a mountain of tutorials on Ares to teach people how to code, and am more than happy to answer even basic questions on the discord.

Unfortunately, Ares is not really well-suited for the type of game/code you’re looking for But I just wanted to provide a counterpoint that people willing to teach others how to code (within reason - I can’t do it FOR you) do, in fact, exist.

That said - online resources are better than ever and then you don’t have to rely on anyone’s good graces.