Game Development Community

Platformer Tutorial Intrest

by Glenn Prince · in Torque Game Builder · 09/03/2006 (2:39 pm) · 66 replies

I have been playing around with platformers in TGB for a little while now and was thinking about getting together all the stuff I have "learned". There seems to be a fair few people after basic platformer tutorials (I am not much of a programmer) and I was thinking of doing a tutorial up as a VTM (Video Tutorial) because what I usually write doesn't equal what I usually do ! I'd have to clean up some art and stuff if I did do it but would people want to use it ? Also I have a bit of an accent (Australian) so I'm not sure if that would put people off ? I am working on some art stuff this next week but if a few people post an intrest in this thread I may as well look at compiling something together.

Topic list initially would probably be:

VTM 1 -- Setup
- Starting a new porject
- Copying in your resources
- Loading the static tiles
- Creating a basic map
- Adding level physic's and collisions
- Setting up a player's animations

VTM 2 -- Player movement
- Creating the player object
- Setting up the controller
- Moving the player around
- Testing for collisions
- Updating a players animation

VTM 3 -- Enemies
- Loading the enemy graphics
- Creating a basic enemy AI
- Updating the enemy animations
- Testing for collisions
- Killing the player and the enemy

These three things I am fairly comfortable with and could do fairly quickly. The main reason I am posting this is I am a little nervous about posting / writing something that people will not find helpfull. I guess I'll do up the first part and see if people like it ? Any suggestions to the above and future ones would be much appreciated. Also any downsides / deterents to doing as a VTM ?
#21
09/09/2006 (8:57 pm)
Dl'ing it right now. will let you know asap...
#22
09/09/2006 (10:10 pm)
I loved the video, though I had a bit of a problem downloading, it kept timing out.

Can't wait to see the next one.
#23
09/10/2006 (8:15 am)
Wow man, this is excellent!
#24
09/10/2006 (2:58 pm)
I got audio but no picture on the video...
running macbookpro, tried mplayer, vlc, flip4mac and windows player for mac. all had audio no video...
#25
09/10/2006 (3:02 pm)
Hey All,

Firstly I have to move the file off my ISp's server( They got a bit upset apparently) so the "new" page for all the VTM's will be here:

VTM Project Files

Hopefully it will be also be a little faster. The other link will go dead soon.

Secondly, I did a run through on the second tutorial last night so you should see that up and running hopefully with 24/48 hours. Second tutorial deals with all the player functions, eg ActionMaps, Animations and updating the player.

Cheers !

EDIT -- Linked the Directory to make it easier.
#26
09/10/2006 (3:02 pm)
@Anthony, yeah same here -- but in Linux with mplayer -- I believe it's because he used WMV9+ with DRM (DRI?) which mplayer can't support.


I believe if this is a useful tutorial, perhaps it should be encoded in a more widely used format such as QuickTime or DivX/XViD (I'd prefer XViD, but quicktime is ok too) -- that or WMV7 so that Mac's and Linux with mplayer, vlc, etc can play it.
#27
09/10/2006 (3:04 pm)
I'll try and recode it as a XVid. I tried orginally but it come out crappy and couldn't be arsed to try again but I'll give it a go. It is encoded in WMV9.
#28
09/10/2006 (6:05 pm)
@Glenn, WMV7 without DRM should work fine for both the linux and the mac people -- there's something goofy with WMV9 that mplayer and vlc haven't gotten worked out yet ... as for the divx, I would probably suggest low-motion 1200+ bit rate with 96kbp MP3 audio ...
#29
09/10/2006 (6:52 pm)
Let us know when the recode is done...
#30
09/10/2006 (7:33 pm)
I'll do the recoding tonight, so in roughly four hours.
#31
09/11/2006 (12:02 am)
Glenn your first tutorial rocks! Thank you very much. Cant wait for the second part.
#32
09/11/2006 (5:12 am)
Couldn't dl the tut...is it done yet?
#33
09/11/2006 (5:23 am)
It's done but I'm having trouble getting onto savefile :-| Trying to upload to my ISP hosting for the moment.

Should be done in 10 mins. Will upload somewhere else when I can.
#34
09/11/2006 (5:41 am)
I can provide a mirror if you need one
#35
09/11/2006 (1:00 pm)
Putting them on File Front.

They should now be accessed from Here

Other Posts updated accordingly
#36
09/11/2006 (9:32 pm)
You won't believe this...now i get video and no audio.

what i managed to do was play the wmv (audio) through quicktime and play the avi (video) through vlc. there is a couple of seconds lag as i start both files but i can live with it. i'll let you know how i dig the tut...
#37
09/11/2006 (10:00 pm)
Audio is OGG encoded as I couldn't get the AC3 to work properly (too grainy) and MP3 encoding for me just left a huge crackling noise so you may need the ogg vorbis codec for audio.
#38
09/13/2006 (7:09 am)
When can we expect the next lesssion Glenn?
#39
09/13/2006 (2:32 pm)
Hopefully in the next day or two. VTM 2 is turning out to be LONG ! I keep adding stuff into it, so you may see this VTM split into two parts. I'm just making sure I am doing things "right" so I have been testing the way I have been writing things.

Just so you are aware, VTM 2 is all about the player and therefore touches on the following: Config Datablocks, Collision Handling, Animations, "State Machines", Action Maps and Update Scene Functions. Eg. A lot of important things and not only do I not want to screw them up, I also want to explain them properly! I have gone through what I am going to record on the VTM a few times already so I am almost ready to do the final "cut" per se.

Day job limits my hours as well :-P
#40
09/13/2006 (6:52 pm)
Hrm, I keep getting a 'your download failed, there were no available download servers' error from that filefront site.

Have you spoken with GG about possibly hosting these videos, from what I can tell, there worth the watch (though I can't say from experience, since I've not yet had the ability to watch it)