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Thread: Increasing traffic on PGD...

  1. #31
    Co-Founder / PGD Elder WILL's Avatar
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    Well lets not get too off-topic fellas.

    Mind you we could open a new thread called "Eric and Yuriy debating about degrees and programming education that I'll never receive at this point in my life." (I'm joking of course... not about the education part though... )

    Basically what I want PGD to provide for tutorials is something above what you'd be taught in high school for basic Computer Science which teaches you everything from good ole printf all the way up to the blisteringly daunting lessons of function() vs. procedure() and the like. We don't need to teach programming it's self, but I would like to teach how to program things that can be used to make fun and creative games. To do this from a basic level and go up to a novice and then an advanced game developer's level.

    So far we have only novice and advanced. There is a disconnect from the beginners to the people that have been here a while and it shows when those beginners go away and don't return. So it's important to bridge that gap and get more beginner tutorials out there. A part of that problem is that some of the older more advanced guys forget how to think small and simple. Or that it's just plain boring for them and don't want to bother.

    (WARNING: This is where I start to get ranty...)

    The trick to this however is not to simply teach Delphi or Free Pascal or any specific APIs, but to actually teach game programming. I don't think there has been a single new "game programming" article on PGD in years. (That was a challenge tutorial writers, yes! ) Programming ideology, project management, API/library specific features or how to setup ____ dev tool maybe, but not one single game programming tutorial about game programming.

    In fact the last game programming tutorial I read beyond my own Artillery game tutorial (which I never did finish I hate to,but have to admit) was the one about creating a platform game by Alexander Rosendal (our very own Traveler), but that was done years ago and I don't think they are up anywhere anymore and definitely not updated to today's current libraries or dev tools.

    We need tutorial writers that write about making games, not making software theory or talking about how to implement some wacky new software language concepts just added to Delphi. Not necessarily to make specific genres, but often just to explain a concept such as faked physics in games or using tile maps, object detection or path finding. These can be applied to ANY game genre and don't need silly advanced programming methods like generics, ducking or object model

    ...and they get a beginner INTERESTED in programming games not giving up on all the weird stuff we're talking about in the forums.

    The advanced stuff is great, really, but not when we don't have anything for newcomers to grow off of to get to that level. I just don't want to entertain much advanced stuff anymore for a while. Not until we have some good solid tutorials that will bring in and KEEP those new Pascal programmers that want something out of PGD. We've failed them and we need to fix it.

    Flipcode was pretty cool, but at least we still have NeHe!
    Jason McMillen
    Pascal Game Development
    Co-Founder





  2. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by WILL View Post
    Flipcode was pretty cool, but at least we still have NeHe!
    NeHe doesn't seem to be active in the way it was (tutorials, rendering techniques) and seem more about news these days.

    What I really liked in flipcode was the mix between articles illustrating various techniques, from rendering to AI to physics to using some new API, coupled with the IOTD "Image Of The Day", which was a great way to see what people were doing or start discussions about this or that aspect. It also drew in people that were seeking "technical" exposure for their work, game or engine.

    An IOTD might be too much given the (still limited) contributing crowd in PGD, but an IOTW (Image of The Week) or VOTW (Video of The Week) should be possible?

  3. #33
    Quote Originally Posted by Eric View Post
    An IOTD might be too much given the (still limited) contributing crowd in PGD, but an IOTW (Image of The Week) or VOTW (Video of The Week) should be possible?
    I think this would be cool
    Also I can make some free time to write tutorial about game programming (I'm open to suggestions, because I really don't have a clue what is the best topic to start)

  4. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by Eric View Post
    Seems like they provide Windows Phone SDK separately. I stand corrected.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eric View Post
    Well, I've met enough "professionally certified" personnel to take those with a truckload of salt, especially when they're from a pure academic background, and I've met quite few. ;-)
    Not everyone can teach and those who can teach may not necessarily be good professionals to work for industry. Teaching is not as easy as you may think and there are even professional degrees (e.g. Bachelor/Master/Doctor of Education), which are required in many cases to give classes to children, for instance. The same applies to scientific works as the scientific approach might be different than a purely mechanical work, which is very common when working in companies (ranging from software engineering to top management positions). Perhaps you can't understand it because you have not done any scientific work and/or teaching yourself, but I'm just guessing.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eric View Post
    I guess you skipped the part on me saying I already have quite a high degree, and got it, hmmm, almost 15 years ago. So what I'm referring to is mostly what I get from new hires & interns.
    No, I saw it but you are moving conversation to a personal level. What you have mentioned is an equivalent of baechelor/undergraduate degree (roughly 4/5-year university education), which is a minimal degree required by most institutions. You should note that you are not allowed to give classes with this degree, nor do any scientific work in "traditional" universities/research centers, which sort of proves my point above. If you wish to pursue this conversation further, I'd like to point out the classical Unskilled and unaware of it article, which you should read first. Please note that I'm not trying to be disrespectful, I believe that degree itself is not everything: education, experience and even personality/attitude are very important factors as well.

    (edit) By the way, for comparison, here in Mexico to be *paid* to do research, you need 12 years of university education (5 bachelor + 2 master + 5 doctorate) plus 2 years of professional practice (e.g. postdoctoral stay, which must be done at least in a different state where you have got doctoral degree). To be able to teach lower degrees, you need Master's degree and 1 year of practice. This is somewhat similar to U.S., Canada and EU.

    Edit 2:
    Quote Originally Posted by Eric View Post
    I guess we have a major incomprehension here, I'm not a student, and many PGD visitors aren't and won't be. They won't be going back to university full-time, and even part-time university can be quite problematic when you have a full-time job already and children.
    You are wrong. As I've said before, in M.Sc. and D.Sc. degrees that I took most people had families with children and were working either full or part time. Actually, in my own case (similar to some of my classmates), I got paid to do research in my D.Sc. degree both by institution and by Mexican's council of sciences and technology and the payment was pretty good! In fact, the payment may be even higher than what you receive while working in a company! These degrees give you more labor opportunities and sometimes change your way of thinking, which you may not acquire in your entire life with experience only. This is why I recommend for everyone who want to push farther in their career and life to take one of more advanced degrees and it is never too late to do so.

    Yes, it really depends on the institution and indeed some may excel in some things, while other institutions may excel in other stuff, but you can choose even on international scale and pick what you want.

    P.S. Jason, sorry for this sort of hijacking, but after all it's a discussion about programming skills taught in institutions as opposed to teaching them here on PGD, so it's somewhat related to topic.
    Last edited by LP; 24-02-2012 at 02:11 PM.

  5. #35
    Quote Originally Posted by Lifepower View Post
    You should note that you are not allowed to give classes with this degree, nor do any scientific work in "traditional" universities/research centers
    Actually, I am. :-) Though I've checked "Bachelor", that's two years less than I have, and a university degree. In France we have a system of "Grandes Ecoles" which runs in parallel to universities degrees aren't directly comparable to university degrees (it's another french historical oddity).

    Anyway that's besides the point.

    To get back on topic, I agree with the suggestions you made earlier.

    Quote Originally Posted by Lifepower View Post
    1) 64-bit development and performance (I've opened the thread about it: no interest).
    2) DirectX: nobody cares here because OpenGL is the only way to go for Unix/Mac OS guys, who are the majority here.
    3) Mac OS specifics: there was some discussion in Delphi XE 2 news thread with Czar and me, but that's all.
    4) iOS specifics: how to use sensors, compass, magnetometer, etc. There are random threads on Embarcadero forums, but I would like to see this material *here*.
    5) Databases, networking, multiplayer in Delphi.
    6) Publishing of Delphi made iOS apps and publishing in general.
    7) Performance optimizations in 64-bit inline assembly in Delphi.
    Math materials (libraries, code snippets, etc.)
    To me 2, 3 and 4 are specs/docs material subjects, 1 and 7 are about programming in general (choosing the appropriate algorithm, profiling), 5 and 8 is what academic material is about (except multi-player), 6 is what WILL already does.

    So all in all, they mostly fall into teaching programming from a gaming POV, and that's IMHO a good angle for PGD. What I disagreed with was

    Quote Originally Posted by Lifepower View Post
    Actually I think teaching programming by itself is not a very useful tactic here because newbies have many options to choose from: C# and XNA, C/C++, Perl, Python, Lua, Java and so on.
    When someone needs to do something, he'll use the tool for which material specific to his needs is available.
    If all the material assumes you're already a Pascal pro, then you certainly won't be attracting any Pascal newcomers.

  6. #36
    Quote Originally Posted by Eric View Post
    Actually, I am. :-) Though I've checked "Bachelor", that's two years less than I have, and a university degree. In France we have a system of "Grandes Ecoles" which runs in parallel to universities degrees aren't directly comparable to university degrees (it's another french historical oddity).
    Yes, but in France you have also additional degrees such as "Professor", which require even more time to get. However, translating these degrees to other countries is difficult and you may still need to take additional degrees to be able to give courses. This was the case of my brother as Doctoral degree in Ukraine is higher than Ph.D. yet he still had to do 2 postdoctoral stays (4 years total) before being able to do the research.

    Quote Originally Posted by Eric View Post
    When someone needs to do something, he'll use the tool for which material specific to his needs is available.
    If all the material assumes you're already a Pascal pro, then you certainly won't be attracting any Pascal newcomers.
    You are repeating the mocking fallacy. I've never said to assume on PGD that visitors are Pascal "pro"s as you have put it. I suggested to assume some basic knowledge and as you have quoted my first posts, I've actually suggested some educational material with some specifics that not everyone may be aware of.

    For instance, I agree that FlipCode had some very interesting stuff and in fact I've implemented some of it in Asphyre. Specifically, I think it will be very cool to have a specialized section here on PGD, which deals with issues such as: 1) calculating square root using pure integer math, 2) search algorithms (this is a general category, path-finding is a special case), 3) fixed-point math (not everyone is yet aware of its usefulness), etc.

    Edit: I think Multi-threading Tutorial on PGD by Athena is an interesting topic, but instead of long discussion I would put some rudimentary code to illustrate how threads can be created and used, instead of arguing why they are useful.
    Last edited by LP; 24-02-2012 at 02:47 PM. Reason: added top quote

  7. #37
    Quote Originally Posted by WILL View Post
    Yeah Delphi About is a glorified blog, not a community by design. I do appreciate Mr. Žarko Gajić's efforts to talk about and discuss Delphi/Object Pascal related things, a lot of the information posted there is a little dated and misinforming these days. I'm not sure if there is much posted that is really new, is there? I don't follow it because there is nothing really that PGD can draw from as current or new information.
    Yes most of the articles on Delphi About are a bit outdatet. The reason for this is that most pepole who folows Delphi About still use Delphi 7 or even older versions. And even till recenty (about 2 years ago) Žarko was also still using Delphi 7 for programing. Žarko did publish some articles about the new fetures of newer versions of Delphi but unfortunatly there wasn't much interest in those from the comunity.

    Anywhay I contacted Žarko yesterday asking hiim if he might be kind enough to advertize our site a litle (write and article about us) so that we might get some of the members from his comunity wich are interested in game development to join us. Till now I still haven't got any reply back from him.

  8. #38
    > 1) calculating square root using pure integer math

    Also introducing approaches where sqrt becomes unnecessary, the fastest sqrt is the one you don't do!

    > 2) search algorithms (this is a general category, path-finding is a special case)

    That is a good subject indeed, mostly when dealing with pathfinding in something else than a grid.

    > 3) fixed-point math (not everyone is yet aware of its usefulness), etc.

    More of a micro-optimization issue, was relevant in the days of software graphics, though still occasionally useful in shaders.

    On the same subject, articles on usage of floating point in situations where finite or exact precision is required would be quite relevant these days.

    On AI aspects, there are two subjects I rarely see mentioned, but often (mis)used, usually by people who don't know they're using them:
    - PID controllers, and the way to "fuzzy" them to make them look like natural behavior
    - introduction of delays and phase tricks in algorithms to simulate natural behavior
    - decision and action trees, or how to get interesting behavior in complex simulated words where direct approaches are not practical
    which could make good articles I guess (the theory behind them is light, they're more about applying simple concepts from a different perspective)

  9. #39
    Co-Founder / PGD Elder WILL's Avatar
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    I have just posted a new suggestion about adding PGD's News & CMS to DelphiFeeds.com. Vote on it here http://delphifeeds.uservoice.com/for...-news-cms-feed (You'll have to create an account.)
    Jason McMillen
    Pascal Game Development
    Co-Founder





  10. #40
    Co-Founder / PGD Elder WILL's Avatar
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    IOTW is a cool idea, but I can see if falling apart if each week we don't have a new image to post. The other issue is the software. I can think of a way to add it to the front page and have a sub-site that uses the PGD database to add new images so that it's fairly seamless. I'll think on this more and if I think it stands a chance of success I'll put it up to a vote. Get enough interest and I'll consider putting one up.

    Right now however I want to focus on beginners tutorials. Who is interested in writing? I'll give assignments to each person that contacts me at contact@pascalgamer.com.
    Jason McMillen
    Pascal Game Development
    Co-Founder





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