A
Alessio
Guest
Hello all. Few may remember me as someone who used to post here a little over a year ago so i'm not really new here. I wanted to learn GML but had temporarily abandoned the objective to pursuing something that, sadly, i failed miserably. Closing these parentheses, i decided to pick learning GML again, this time with GM:S2. I tried to make a game in the first place, but i ultimately realized that i need to read the manual, which is something i'm currently doing, but that's not the main issue.
You see, when i don't know how to do something, i usually look for tutorials, but i have to stick with videos because written ones are truly rare nowadays unless i go in the tutorial section of this forum. For example, i was very interested in collisions, and that's where i want to vent one frustration i have. Most of you can recognize this collision code, which is object-based:
Yeah, that's the one that was made by Spalding but i'm not a fan of it because of the object's bounding box not being correctly aligned with walls when velocity is set to a non-integer. In brief, it's not really accurate.
The problem, though, is that this code is literally spammed everywhere!!! To be honest, that's not Spalding's fault but if you don't believe me, search "game maker collision" on Youtube or even on your preferred search engine, and see! I would expect 20+ or 30+ youtubers to use different approaches from each other, not everyone of them using the same damned code directly copied from Spalding! Even Heartbeast does that, to not mention his handling of physics not even a beginner like me could find barely acceptable.
When i checked out few written tutorials or few ready-made engines (like Hello's or Martin Piecyk's, the latter being used for Spelunky), i could find a different way to handle collisions every time, but whenever i check video-tutorials (which, to my knowledge, outnumber written ones), it's always the same damned code copied and pasted from Spalding's tutorials!!!
I mean, am i the only one who finds this frustrating??? If i want to learn something, not only should i be driven to get knowledge and to use my brain, but also able to see multiple approaches to the same problem, but the majority of tutorials fail to do that.
In fact, it's almost like they do tutorials only to make an impression! Spalding has already made that collision code, why don't you write your own code instead of copying and pasting from Spalding? Is Spalding's codes the only thing you know? I would feel ashamed if i made a tutorial showing the same code written by someone else again and again.
Sorry for the long read and for sounding somewhat like a jerkwad right after waking my dormant account up, but this is something that has been haunting me for a while, and i think this negative phenomenon (or trend?) needs to be called out whenever possible. I also know the topic about bad learning resources has already been open various times but this time i want it be exposed from a beginner's perspective. That's because i can't be the only novice user who is frustrated by uninformative tutorials.
You see, when i don't know how to do something, i usually look for tutorials, but i have to stick with videos because written ones are truly rare nowadays unless i go in the tutorial section of this forum. For example, i was very interested in collisions, and that's where i want to vent one frustration i have. Most of you can recognize this collision code, which is object-based:
Code:
if place_meeting(x+hspd, y, obj_wall)
{
while !place_meeting(x+sign(hspd), y, obj_wall)
x += sign(hspd);
hspd = 0;
}
The problem, though, is that this code is literally spammed everywhere!!! To be honest, that's not Spalding's fault but if you don't believe me, search "game maker collision" on Youtube or even on your preferred search engine, and see! I would expect 20+ or 30+ youtubers to use different approaches from each other, not everyone of them using the same damned code directly copied from Spalding! Even Heartbeast does that, to not mention his handling of physics not even a beginner like me could find barely acceptable.
When i checked out few written tutorials or few ready-made engines (like Hello's or Martin Piecyk's, the latter being used for Spelunky), i could find a different way to handle collisions every time, but whenever i check video-tutorials (which, to my knowledge, outnumber written ones), it's always the same damned code copied and pasted from Spalding's tutorials!!!
I mean, am i the only one who finds this frustrating??? If i want to learn something, not only should i be driven to get knowledge and to use my brain, but also able to see multiple approaches to the same problem, but the majority of tutorials fail to do that.
In fact, it's almost like they do tutorials only to make an impression! Spalding has already made that collision code, why don't you write your own code instead of copying and pasting from Spalding? Is Spalding's codes the only thing you know? I would feel ashamed if i made a tutorial showing the same code written by someone else again and again.
Sorry for the long read and for sounding somewhat like a jerkwad right after waking my dormant account up, but this is something that has been haunting me for a while, and i think this negative phenomenon (or trend?) needs to be called out whenever possible. I also know the topic about bad learning resources has already been open various times but this time i want it be exposed from a beginner's perspective. That's because i can't be the only novice user who is frustrated by uninformative tutorials.