Poll

What course would you most like to see first/participate in most?

Modeling and animation
35 (39.8%)
General Scripting
45 (51.1%)
Datablock specific information (state system, emitter/projectile/explosion properties, image limitations, bots, etc)
7 (8%)
Other/Not listed (make a post)
1 (1.1%)

Total Members Voted: 82

Author Topic: Add-on Making Academy (Google Classroom details in OP, new poll)  (Read 25807 times)

I get what you're saying, but once again it comes down the resources available (which is more than enough for anyone to start learning). Resources also being the ability to ask question on these forums, and if needed, sending private messages (questions) to people who have the knowledge. Lastly, they can even ask questions via steam (for those that use it). So if you're scared away from making add-ons because of 'lack of documentation', I have some bad news for you.

Of course there can and will be more and more resources available as time goes by.
i have a feeling you're suffering from the curse of knowledge. as one who vividly remembers trying to get into modding, the fact that things exist and the search function exist did not help at all in kickstarting my learning process, since i both didnt know what questions to ask (aka "can you tell me how to make mod/make mod for me") nor how to search up things. Reading existing mod code also felt unproductive as what i learned generally applied to only those mods and didn't teach concepts like creating objects and cleanup and such and when its necessary/unnecessary.

an example is when I wanted to do a mail mod to start off, where players could send each other mail that they could read later, and notify players of mail and allow them to read/delete/reply to mail they have. No existing mod really captures more than a portion of the problem; sure, i could have looked at chat loggers and related stuff, but that wouldnt give me an idea of how to approach handling it on a per player basis, let alone selectively choosing files since most chat loggers just save it into one massive file.

Having Alphadin hold my hand and help me write (read: wrote for me) the mod helped me understand how to approach not only creating the mod, but also how to test and bugfix it, and served as a comfortable place to start asking questions and experimenting with writing bl code.

its like telling medical students that documentation and videos and practice tools exist in large quantities - why cant you train yourself and do surgery without a mentor watching you/guiding you the first few times you do it for real? its intimidating to start alone and many end up feeling like they're making no progress (or in the case of surgery, bad progress)



tl;dr: just because resources exist doesnt mean good teachers are irrelevant. with your logic, elm, school and college would not need to exist. yes, there are exceptional people who dont need such guidance, but they are exceptions.
« Last Edit: May 02, 2017, 06:20:43 AM by Conan »

Some people just aren't that good at coding. I'm horrible at it and it took me like 6 years to even understand how simple functions work. I pretty much stopped learning at this point because none of the knowledge is helpful to me. I tend to abuse the same 5 functions all over the place.

For the most part, it's most practical to look through add-on scripts to find parameters for functions. Once you do that the rest is just trial and error and debugging.

First, they need to know what makes programming fun. Then their lust for finding resources will make everything go automatically.

I agree with this statement.



-sniparoo-

Yeah, you may be right sorta about the curse of knowledge. But like you, I didn't know squat about programming when I first started and guess where I actually learned to code first? Age of Time. There were several people who were 'mentors', in the game (I suspect badspot on an alt was one of them) that helped me when I had questions (and they also told me to just give up at times (jetz, lol)). What I'm trying to get at is, people who really want to learn, will find a way to learn by any means - it's that simple. Sure, pointing them in the right direction is a great thing and it looks like this thread and your class thing will do that.

Also, I never stated that good teachers are irrelevant, re-read that post you quoted, I'm actually saying the opposite.

Badspot hit the nail on the head though (probably not as much at the time he wrote this, but it's even more true in 2017 with all the resources/users available):

« Last Edit: May 02, 2017, 04:28:33 PM by elm »

Badspot hit the nail on the head though (probably not as much at the time he wrote this, but it's even more true in 2017 with all the resources/users available):



Still, if a customer comes to a shop and asks for advice for the thing he bought the other day, and the seller tells you that you should know this, it's irresponsible of the seller as he could at least redirect the customer to a nearby shop that is more helpful.

That is, Badspot could link to a topic on the forum where most of the resources are located. Of course, the user "should know this" as forums is generally a location for this kind of information, but then he's just moving around the responsibility.

Not everything Badspot says is the absolute truth and law. He couldn't even win Robo Games.

Like I said, there's multiple ways to learn things. Some people are significantly better learning with different methods than others.

This last week, I have actually been thinking a lot about creating a proper video series for Blockland scripting. I have done a good deal of tutoring/mentoring (namely computer science and mathematics) and video editting, so I know I could do it. Based on this forum thread, there seems to be a lot more interest in such a thing then I thought there would be.

I have been creating an outline for the series over the last days. I'm planning on each episode being about 10 minutes or shorter, with the lessons revolving around projects rather than just technical mumbo-jumbo (less intimidating and more engaging for beginners). If anyone wants to help me flesh out the series outline or offer their help in any other way, send me a PM. I really want to this to become a thing, and I want to do it right. So the more input, the better.

However, if you are planning on turning this into a video series, I might not bother. So I guess that's my question: will this be video series, or are you mentoring people directly?
« Last Edit: May 04, 2017, 10:18:57 PM by Platypi »

sorry i'm a bit late
I would like to learn how to make add-ons, sounds neat

ya i will probably do recordings of stuff, seems to be easiest for most. probably do something like video "lecture" followed by optional meetup ingame/forum topic to take questions and suggest "assignments"

i really want to run it like an open class ingame where you show up and do stuff, but its probably not going to work out time wise
« Last Edit: May 05, 2017, 12:01:17 AM by Conan »

ya i will probably do recordings of stuff, seems to be easiest for most. probably do something like video "lecture" followed by optional meetup ingame/forum topic to take questions and suggest "assignments"

i really want to run it like an open class ingame where you show up and do stuff, but its probably not going to work out time wise
Excited to see how it turns out. When do you think you might have the first video uploaded by?

ya i will probably do recordings of stuff, seems to be easiest for most. probably do something like video "lecture" followed by optional meetup ingame/forum topic to take questions and suggest "assignments"

i really want to run it like an open class ingame where you show up and do stuff, but its probably not going to work out time wise
can't you make a google classroom now without an edu account, if so you should do something like that

can't you make a google classroom now without an edu account, if so you should do something like that

i didnt even know that existed, this is an excellent idea. thanks for the suggestion, i've set up a classroom - if you want to join, the class code is fpk1yt.


Badspot hit the nail on the head though (probably not as much at the time he wrote this, but it's even more true in 2017 with all the resources/users available):


i really don't like this. it's telling someone who's trying to get into a skill that if they don't know how to do it, they're too stupid to ever be capable of knowing how. it's not constructive and it's not useful. if someone doesn't know anything about a subject, they aren't even going to know how to ask questions about it. you can never know what you don't know, and you can't even guess at what pieces you might be missing if you don't have any point of reference. resources mean nothing if you don't know how or when they're useful to you, and you won't know how to find them if you don't even know what you're looking for.

in blockland, we have a unique situation where a lot of veteran players naturally pick up some rudimentary coding knowledge along the way, just from tinkering around with console commands or editing mods, and that definitely helps us here, but most people doing these things have no idea how this stuff is put together. if you're starting from square one like that, you really need something or someone to point you in the right direction just so you can get your feet on the ground and learn, if nothing else, just enough to know how to poke and comb your way deeper

"If you can't figure this out" isn't the same as "If you don't know how."

"If you can't figure this out" isn't the same as "If you don't know how."
"figure [it] out on your own" is effectively the same as saying "i'm not helping you because you should be able to do it without help." regardless, the rest of my post still applies