What kind of Video Tutorials would you like to see?

[WILL]

I'm not doing another poll here, because I want to hear what you actually have to say about this. I've posted a good few video I found for the Video Tutorials section of the site. I've also talked to Jim McKeeth about him doing a few videos on how to get started with Oxygene for Java and building and releasing your games for Android.

Lifepower and others haave demonstrated that they would like more videos on standalone Delphi stuff. What do you guys have in mind? Keeping in mind that we as game developers probably don't care too much for database stuff in our games unless we are planning a huge game with lots of data maybe? (But that's not for the beginning game programmer)

New programmers, what would you like to see more of?

Is novice guys, is there something in particular to do with game design or game mechanics that you would like to see in a video tutorial? Do you feel up to recording a video tutorial for the community that we could publish on YouTube?

Give me some ideas folks!

[cairnswm]

Honestly.... I never look at videos for Programming - I'd rather have a well written article with good smaple code.

[azrael11]

Honestly.... I never look at videos for Programming - I'd rather have a well written article with good sample code.

I agree ...
Categorized articles with samples of plenty source codes... no video is to boring

[SilverWarior]

I must also agree that having video tutorials for teaching of basic programing isn't good. The reason for that is mostly the fact that when you upload your video to Youtube it gets compresed. The result is usualy a bit lower quality of the video wich makes reading text (source code demonstrated in video) a bit dificult becouse this text becomes blurry.

I do think that video tutorials could come in handy explaining graphics aproaches. For instance:
1. Explaining how isometric engine works and how it is being drawn - step by step. This could help pepole to understand how isometric engine works easier.
2. Explaining how 3D engines works. How it is being drawn (from wireframe to applying latest effects)
3. Eplaining how special effects works (shading, how shadows are being drawn, LOS - line of sight, LOD - line of detail, etc.)

I belive that all these things can be much easier explained in video tutorial than in regular one.

[WILL]

Well pure code tutorials wouldn't make good video tutorials, no. However lets say we instead have a talking slide show with running demo examples? We could then talk about various things and talk about which coding techniques or structures we would use for them.

This can be useful for non-graphics related topics such as what systems or features are required to make a simple platform game. Then you break down into detail what parts of your game's "engine" or code you need to program and explain it not in code, but as if you were building something more tangible or with pictorials or with charts and diagrams. You could simply make a list of which you come back to again each step crossing off that item that you shown at the beginning.

Example: "This here is what you do to make this thing and this over here is how you want to do it."

A video tutorial is really a presentation by someone that show you a slide show with media (video, pictures, etc) that illustrates your point. And this format can be used for anything. You don't need to provide code, just the technique, if you know how to program basic Pascal then you can figure out how to code it if you know the technique. ie. pseudo code



SIDE NOTE: You should also know that while YouTube used to only be available at 320x240 and later 640x480 you can now show full HD video at 1080p which you will see code should you decide to lean heavily on that as a teaching mechanism. And now you can change the resolution and watch a video in full screen even embedded with that higher resolution without having to restart now. YouTube has actually come a long way since the last couple of years. Just so happens to be after the last time I posted a video on the PGD YouTube Channel. :)



My last little point here I think is important is that I don't want to teach you code. I want to teach you game design and development. You can learn to code here, but why not learn it at PP4S instead. That site/project is to teach you how to program. You should know how to program when you get here to this site. Here we learn to take you from having learned how to program to learning how to take that knowledge and apply it to making games with it. I don't want to make a Tutorial section, let alone a Video Tutorial section that has to start at day 1 programming in Pascal 101. That's not us. That's why I affiliated with PP4S so that we don't just tell you go learn Pascal out there. We have a nice friendly place to encourage the basic skills then you can come here and take step 2.

Saying that, I'd like to discuss things like AI techniques, maybe simple stuff like the main game loop or structure of your game code (the basics) and show visually how to start without any code. It gets young people fresh out of high school who learned this stuff to see and take interest and it's not boring if it's done right. It's why you write your game ideas on graph or lined paper before you start writing the code so you get a football play's view of the concept to learn before trying to write it.

This is what I'm looking for with the Video Tutorials, not how to write code you should already know when you get here. :)

That said, what do you think would fit with this kind of teaching style? Because it's a style really and it's not for everything, but some thing can be taught, and taught well like that. Your thoughts?

[code_glitch]

Although its true I very rarely use videos for tutorials, now I think about the format - it would be very useful if I was doing a tutorial, on say, setting up a compilation environment in linux and I was screen recording all the prompts etc with explanantion and what not...

[Ñuño Martínez]

I agree with you all. :)

Good articles about programming and good video tutorials about how things work, how to do graphics, how to use tools...

[sacros]

My last little point here I think is important is that I don't want to teach you code. I want to teach you game design and development. You can learn to code here, but why not learn it at PP4S instead. That site/project is to teach you how to program. You should know how to program when you get here to this site. Here we learn to take you from having learned how to program to learning how to take that knowledge and apply it to making games with it. I don't want to make a Tutorial section, let alone a Video Tutorial section that has to start at day 1 programming in Pascal 101. That's not us. That's why I affiliated with PP4S so that we don't just tell you go learn Pascal out there. We have a nice friendly place to encourage the basic skills then you can come here and take step 2.


HELL YHEA, i was taught how to code but never did anything that wasnt console applications, having some help building the basics from that point would be super awesome, like as in how should i go about doint it and what would i need

my questionable 2cents would be that since this is going to be basics tutorials procedural pascal should be used instead of OO since the latter is taught way after procedural in schools or sometimes not taught at all ( im talking highschools. At university system engineers get OO during second year )

[Super Vegeta]

Hmm... My laptop isn't really the most powerful beast (1.6GHz), so screencording might prove to be laggy, but I sure can try making a basic SDL tutorial when I come back home (in about two weeks) and be able to use the PC.

[czar]

3d programming - concepts etc would be useful.

Take a good engine and explain concepts of animation, collision etc