Sorry this won't be the most well-ordered. I'm trying to cram a lot of info into this post before going *poof* for about a day.
Thank you,
@FrostyCat, for raising this issue in the first place. I remember we've talked before how you
quite seriously want to help people to learn and achieve their goals and beyond -- but the lack of concern on the "students'" parts can just
wear at a person. $:^ \
Here are my 3 main rules for asking in the Q&A that I propose.
1. If you can't find it in the manual, ask the community.
2. If the advice you're looking for can't be found anywhere else, ask the community.
3. If your question hasn't been answered by any YouTube tutorials, forum post, or by person, ask the community
While it is good to do research first, setting rules is a bad idea.
A couple different things come to mind upon reading this.
First and foremost, if a person won't do
the most basic research before posting, why would any of us expect the person to read forum guidelines? $:^ [
And to be clear,
most basic, I'm talking about clicking the big "Help" button on the IDE's main menu and finding the
manual from there (if the person doesn't realize F1 is the decades-old convention). Years ago, I recommended all the time, read the
entire manual, even the parts you don't get yet, then read it a
second time, and
then start doing anything; okay, Studio's manual is a wee bit bigger; I'm trying to find balance, and lately I've been wanting to start telling people,
at least read "Using GameMaker" (from the Contents tab) in its
entirety before starting, then probably read/skim "Advanced Use," too, for general concepts at least. You probably want to do that twice. Meanwhile, do you wonder about
any particular feature? Use the Index tab! (From what I can tell, two of our favorite Marks had to add
every Index keyword by
hand, by
conscious choice, over the last
decade and a half, so hey, don't let their work go to waste! $E^ b Of course, the same could be said about the writing and tree structure, but I'm just saying, the Index tab is amazing.) Oh, you didn't find your target in the Index tab, or you want to see
every mention throughout the manual just to make sure you grok it as much as possible? Use the Search tab!
TL;DR - most basic research -> F1; Contents (Using GameMaker, maybe Advanced Use while you're there); Index; Search
Back to springboarding from Pingo and jam (that sounds like some 90's era platformer..heh..), there's already a sticky on the Programming forum, and dare I say it gets skipped
a lot. Nevertheless, I should point out, when the GMC first reopened (yay!), the fact that there was only
one sticky note in that forum (the mentors thread didn't exist yet)
and there were so few Q&A threads submitted, "It's Nice to Be Nice..." probably got a lot more traffic; at
this point, I wouldn't be surprised if someone reads that title, thinks "got it, title's a summary of a long list of ways to not get troll-banned, no need to read," and just moves on. I can't help but wonder if the cute title needs to change to grab the attention more -- like the how-to-get-your-game-noticed/played thread title elsewhere. Maybe something like, "Want Great Answers? Read How to Ask Questions" -- or maybe something cringingly click-baity (which I guess works, especially for the demographics we want reading, right?) like, "7 Quick Tips How to Get Great Answers for YOUR Question" .. yeah, I like that (despite my own cringing) .. and of course behavioral guidelines can be in that post, too.
Really, though, those "quick tips" can serve as insinuated guidelines without even
being guidelines
per se. In fact, lemme reformat this paragraph as an ordered list just to see how it looks. (Obviously, some of my wording isn't intended for a final copy. Heh. Meh heh.)
- Use the manual -- Index and Search exist.
- Try it yourself, wow try it yourself.
- Take the beginning tutorials that come with GM -- they cover a bunch of different concepts in solid, applicable ways, and they're fun!
- Search the forum for keywords in your question.*
- Explain the gist of your problem, what you did/tried, what you have now, the expected outcome, what's right about the outcome, and what's wrong about the outcome. Please, please copy/paste any error GM spits out at you.
* Wow, I
seriously just then realized something. Google "guesses" the meaning behind your query so well, I wonder if people even know
how to search in a simple engine anymore...
I'm sure "and be nice" can be thrown in there somewhere. $;^ b
EDIT: almost forgot
build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a night; set a man on fire and he'll keep warm for the rest of his life
Gtg, regards,
Bob