Another Tutorial. Trying very hard!!!!!

Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Tutorials/Another Tutorial. Trying very hard!!!!!

Captain Wicker (crazy hillbilly)(Posted 2011) [#1]
Here is yet another blitz tutorial made by me for the second time. I am trying very hard to make a good tutorial so please don't leave any rude comments please! I'm just trying to help out!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a7CG4JwJkY&feature=g-upl&context=G2dd968aAUAAAAAAAAAA

I would hope this would be helpful to someone. :)


GfK(Posted 2011) [#2]
It's still not very good. You aren't explaining anything properly. You set up three Globals without defining the variable type and did not explain that doing this will assume them to be Integers, nor did you explain what a global actually is. You said that SetBuffer BackBuffer draws graphics more quickly, which is flat out wrong. You also said that stuff won't appear on screen if you don't use PositionEntity. Again, wrong. I didn't bother watching it any further.

You really need to learn to use Blitz3D properly before attempting to 'help others'. Because by calling this a tutorial you're just going to mess people up.

I don't consider this to be rude, just helpful advice.

Last edited 2011


Captain Wicker (crazy hillbilly)(Posted 2011) [#3]
It probably would be better if I gave a direct explanation from the documentation then wouldn't it?

EDIT: Oops! I didn't mean to make light or camera a global! Maybe perhaps more explaining would do better and maybe I should read straight from the docs? My next video will be better! Sorry guys. :(

Last edited 2011


Yasha(Posted 2011) [#4]
I watched this all the way through and have comments.

First off, I'm glad you made the switch to voiceover. Much better. Trying to follow subtitles only was really irritating in the old video.

Unfortunately, the content still isn't much better. There are some flaws of understanding, and there are also some outright errors:

-- The backbuffer doesn't draw things more quickly, as GfK points out. It;s also set automatically by Graphics3D, so mentioning it is mainly useful if you're going to explain double-buffering (or copying to other buffers), which you didn't do.

-- You didn't explain what a global is or why you might want to use one. Double negative points here because there was no need whatsoever to use globals in that program, and overuse of globals is considered extremely poor programming practice (on a par with Goto!).

-- Camera_x, camera_y and camera_z are not Blitz3D commands, nor did you declare them as variables. The main reason I strongly recommended IDEal to you was to make use of the Strict mode option that would have highlighted this error for you.

-- PointEntity has no (useful) effect when the object being pointed and the target are directly on top of one another.

-- You still obviously have no idea what UpdateWorld does, as it is irrelevant to this program and everything you said about it was wrong. Please at least look up commands before talking about them.

-- You don't say what a loop or a conditional statement is, so the If and Repeat sections will likely only be understood by people who already know what they are. Doubly so because of the odd order and indentation with which you wrote the statements, which will make it really hard for a beginner to know what is part of what.

-- I'm guessing from the presentation that you still haven't learned what functions are or how to use them properly. While your presentation of the function wasn't strictly wrong, this is mainly because you didn't say enough at all to be wrong about. Which also raises the tutorial-level issue of why you introduced functions without explaining anything about them or why they are relevant. (Protips: the return type is meaningless on a function that doesn't return a value; you don't need brackets for functions that aren't returning a value; and mutating a global instead of passing it in as a parameter is extremely poor design).


Overall... it's better, but not by much. While I'm glad you are making the effort to improve, please address the issues that are still outstanding from last time (i.e. please learn how to use all the commands you mention, explain why code structures are relevant and how the help the program, learn what things do before spouting inaccuracies, etc.).


Captain Wicker (crazy hillbilly)(Posted 2011) [#5]
All I can say is I will try and do better next time. Thank you for your opinions and comments. :(


Ross C(Posted 2011) [#6]
No offence, but you shouldn't be doing tutorials, if you don't know what your talking about. It doesn't help anyone. People who are new to blitz could read these and be even more confused.

Can I ask why you are doing tutorials in the first place?


Zethrax(Posted 2011) [#7]
At this point you should be learning from tutorials, rather than creating them.

I'd suggest you concentrate on making some small and simple games and apps instead. Making tutorials and ridiculously simple code archive code when you obviously don't even have a basic grasp of the language is just cluttering up the site and making you look like a complete muppet.


BBUser48(Posted 2016) [#8]
The link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9a7CG4JwJkY&feature=g-upl&context=G2dd968aAUAAAAAAAAAA video removed, please do correct!