New Beginner PBE Lessons

[HanClinto]

Hey y'all!

I've been working on some new documentation for PushButton Engine, and am very interested in hearing some feedback about it.

We're taking a card out of the playbook from the excellent writers over at NeHe, and doing small lessons that isolate and teach a single simple concept about the engine.

Here are the lessons in their outline form -- very interested in knowing if anyone finds these useful, or what sorts of things they would like to see.

So far only two lessons are written (#2 and #3) -- if you have time, we'd appreciate you looking at them and giving us feedback.

• Lesson #1: Compiling in your environment (There will be a separate tutorial for each development platform -- not yet written)
• Lesson #2: Adding a Simple Shape
• Lesson #3: Adding Control with a Custom Component
• Lesson #4: Interacting with User Keyboard Input
• Lesson #5: Embedding Graphics (unwritten)

These lessons are built for people who familiar with programming, but who are new to PBE. We built these tutorials as bare-bones as possible. This means no XML level files (yet), no MXML (we want these usable in Flash CS4), and providing full starter base project source code packages, as well as completed final source code packages.

So... what do you think? Is this a good direction for us to be going? Basically, we're trying to evaluate how much more time we should spend fleshing out these lessons and going down this road.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

--clint

[Luma]

Hey clint,

The lessons were actually quite helpful in breaking into the code rather than being overwhelmed by xml stuff. It helped me connect the dots to a few things, rather than wondering where things match up. It was more of a quickstart (as i am still busy looking at the docs and features rather than starting to create something).

The one note is that the download to the packages is not working. Others might wanna download the samples if they are having trouble getting started.

FuzzY

[HanClinto]

Hey Luma, thanks so much for the feedback!

It was more of a quickstart (as i am still busy looking at the docs and features rather than starting to create something).

For a person in your situation / stage, is this sort of quickstart the kind of thing that would be helpful for you? I wasn't sure if it being a quickstart was a good thing or if it wasn't what you were looking for.

The one note is that the download to the packages is not working. Others might wanna download the samples if they are having trouble getting started.

Yeeek! Thanks for catching this -- it's now fixed. Much appreciated!


--clint

[phil]

Wow, these are great. I looked over them this afternoon and I think the only thing I would change would be the inline comments at the end of lines. They kept wrapping and made it harder to read.

I'm very pleased you refrained from an XML approach. Sticking with ActionScript will have a much wider appeal and offer a more comfortable transition for Flash developers who are new to PBE.

I'm going to code these out this week or by the weekend and get back with more.

Once again, well done Clint!

[sketchbookgames]

I'm looking forward to seeing:

-what advantages this engine has over normal flash development.
-how to use it with flash cs3 (i suppose your FlashIDE tutorial will be focused on cs4, probably wont be any major difference)
-and as much info as possible about providing components to the upcoming store.

[Luma]

For a person in your situation / stage, is this sort of quickstart the kind of thing that would be helpful for you? I wasn't sure if it being a quickstart was a good thing or if it wasn't what you were looking for.

It was definately helpful, the xml stuff wasnt difficult, but i had replicated an entity, its controllers and all sorts but i couldnt get it to render. Then i realised that the spatial stuff was wrong, and just glancing over this tutorial put things in a much easier to understand manner. Connecting the visual to the entities, etc.

I'm very pleased you refrained from an XML approach. Sticking with ActionScript will have a much wider appeal and offer a more comfortable transition for Flash developers who are new to PBE.

I agree, that the transition as a programmer, from programming - to xml nodes isnt difficult, its just a lot more convoluted to get started. I think the xml approach is awesome and its a great methodology, but the tutorials should cover both aspects in detail. Things like, xml based level files (like that other tutorial around here from enigmatic thought) where the xml is a data format, and the code drives the game.

The one aspect im curious about in PBE is the use of existing swf files. Such as designing a cool HUD in flash, making it all animated, with cool existing connectivity to a scoreboard etc (something i would have already created).. and leveraging it in PBE. In terms of newer users merging over from an existing background, they might be interested in seeing a tutorial of using their existing games, while still leveraging pieces of the pbengine as well.

Of course the above components can just be compiled and used as pbe itself is, but in the end users want information fast

Perhaps a long list of possible tutorials can be made, here or somewhere else (like a wishlist) and the community can start blocking in the pieces as well... Speeding up documentation creation for beginners.

[alex]

it's good!

[srivello]

Great lessons. I looked at #2 and #3 so far. I LOVE when I find a tutorial these days and it happens to be video. That's the most fun to learn from I think. However your steps are straightforward. With your completed lessons I'll have confidence to dig around and learn more with PBE. Thanks!

[bengarney]

As a quick note you will need to build the latest from SVN for these tutorials to work. You will get errors using r65. (For reference SVN is at r170 and counting. We need to do a release but have been focusing on getting our game shipped.)

[dev]

hi, just downloaded and tryout your tutorials but got hit with error, appreciate if you can help ...

Code: Select all

package
{
   import PBLabs.Engine.Core.*;
   import PBLabs.Engine.Entity.*;
   import PBLabs.Rendering2D.*;
   import PBLabs.Rendering2D.UI.*;
   import flash.display.Sprite;
   import flash.geom.Point;
   
   [SWF(width="400", height="300", frameRate="60")]
   public class testapp1 extends Sprite
   {
      public function testapp1()
      {
         Global.Startup(this);   // Start up PBE <<---error message***>>

         //CreateScene();                                                       // Set up a simple scene entity
         
         //CreateHero();                                                        // Create a simple avatar entity
     }


??? error message="col: 17 Error: Call to a possibly undefined method Startup through a reference with static type Class."

hope to hear from you guy soon, thank for your time and happy coding...