Pascal Gamer Magazine Issue 4 Needs Content: Want to write an article?

[code_glitch]

Its now official - I now have a square head... Android compilation worked once, I got one APK out and then poof. Niet, yada zip, zilch, null, zero, nil... And now its GCSE time so I'm swimming in that pool. Nonetheless, its solution time: lets hit the forums up on this one I would hate to have the rest of the article go to waste...

[WILL]

So how are those Pascal Gamer articles coming along? I only received about 4 so far.

[paul_nicholls]

So how are those Pascal Gamer articles coming along? I only received about 4 so far.

4 articles isn't very much!

[Super Vegeta]

You should have already received two from me; I will send another one in a day or two.

[SilverWarior]

I'm still working ony mine as much as my free time permits me. I also have a few other ideas for articles (Handling Savegames, Making GUI components, Making proper code structure for games - using gamestates).
If anyone is interested in any of theese ideas go ahed. I only reserve an article about svegames for myself since I plan it to be somehow conected with my current article and since thisone won't be so buig I expect to finish it quite quickly.

Anywhay I think that it would be verry nice if we have all these articles writen before the next PGD chalange since they might all come verry handy for some newbie game developers.

[WILL]

You know what. A simple article about making a save game and best practices would do it. It doesn't have to be some complicated over-bloated article with huge technical words/terms like methodology or some other fancy new programming technique. We have to appeal to new programmers or beginners to attract a whole new community. So do small and simple.

• How to make your own Save Game system. (just cover basics and how to structure the data so that it's easily readable upon reloading save games)
• How to make a simple RPG combat system. (just cover HP and basic stats (think Dragon Quest 1) and action list and do it as a text/terminal program)
• The basic Code structure for games. (cover basics, main game loop, separating things like graphics into procedures, initializing, deinitializing, reseting game state, etc)

as an example of 3.

[Dan]

is anyone still making an article about the fpc cross compilation for android?

[SilverWarior]

You know what. A simple article about making a save game and best practices would do it. It doesn't have to be some complicated over-bloated article with huge technical words/terms like methodology or some other fancy new programming technique. We have to appeal to new programmers or beginners to attract a whole new community. So do small and simple.

• How to make your own Save Game system. (just cover basics and how to structure the data so that it's easily readable upon reloading save games)
• How to make a simple RPG combat system. (just cover HP and basic stats (think Dragon Quest 1) and action list and do it as a text/terminal program)
• The basic Code structure for games. (cover basics, main game loop, separating things like graphics into procedures, initializing, deinitializing, reseting game state, etc)

In my article about RPG battle system I do have already more complicated battle system. But I do start from smal and simple and explain how to make it more comlex etc. And since my battle system calculates values based on certain item a character wears (wepons, armors, ect., I also explain of how to make an inventory system. Also part of that article taks a litle about optimization. When doing all this I try to make it all writen in a way to be understandable even by those who have litle programing expirience. That's why I do some programing teachings also.
For my article about savegames I intend to show how to save data from some object do file and later retrive it. I also imntend to tell about wich data should go into savegame and wich doesn't need to (just teoretics). Then I also intend to talk a little about creating backup copies of previous savegames. Recently I hapened to se a game wich has been doung backup copies by literaly making hard copie of a savegame file by FileCopy routine. This aproach takes more time and is prone to data damage incase of power outage at the time. Simply renaming curent file and then saving savegame into new file is much faster and much safer.