Plaformer

#1 Community projects rarely work. I advise you to look at the simple platformer game and try to understand what is going on. You should also look at various other tutorials out there to try to smush them together to create the features that you want.

Realistically, you're not going to be able to create anything brilliant on your first attempt, so you should really try to learn as much as you can at this stage. One really really good method of learning, is by doing it yourself. I am not trying to sound like an ass, but if you just copy and paste code from someone else's work, I doubt that you will understand what is going on fully, which will inhibit you modifying it to the form that you want.

I hope you take my advice as a positive. You're only young, but you can learn so much if you start now. Best of luck to you John.

#2 I agree with philip, because if you can't tackle yourself on the Plateformer gameplay with your own style, then I can't imagine how you can resolve the hundred way more difficult things that awaits you next, which are not forcefully documented.

Experiment, try to change the code to your own flavor.
Never copy/paste a tutorial, instead redo them your own way.
Becoming capable of making the things you want from start to finish all by yourself is what's important.


If it becomes really really too overwhelming, then it means you tried to use TGB too early and I may suggest you to try instead a simpler engine first (game maker is great for that matter, I debuted with a "maker" engine too), which will give you more immediate good results.

Sorry to sound a little harsh, but you must know that TGB is indeed hard to learn.

#3 Could I learn how to monkey around in the code with the book or should I just find out by experimenting? I'm no the kind of guy to back down from a challenge (which is to say I'm the arrogant kind of guy that bites off more than I can chew), but maybe this is too tough I might jump to game factory or mulitmedia fusion. For now though I paid my 100 bucks on TGB and I'll keep on working.

#4 First off, use TGB 1.1.3 instead of TGB 1.5, the documentation of 1.1.3 is excellent while the 1.5 one is unfinished (don't worry, there's not too big changes between the two version of TGB, your game and scripts are totaly compatible between versions).
In 1.1.3 documentation (in TGB: Help > Documentation), follow the Tutorials you feel like following (the shooter one is a very good one but they're all useful), while following it, never copy past anything: rewrite.

Once you followed any number of official tuto to get confident enough, start your own game and start digging into TDN if you need: don't use the ninja tuto, use the outdated platformer genre tutorial, but use it only as a vague example, because you'd have to bypass or remake your own way several outdated things.
The other very important thing to use, is the TGB reference (in 1.1.3 documentation: TGB Reference) it contain almost every useful function, with very good descriptions. This reference is still opened almost 24/24 in my navigator.
This was enough to get me started (knowing I had previous game making experience), maybe it could be good enough for you. But don't feel ashamed if you can't right now, you're still young and I know a lot of talented people, older than me, who are still using RPG Maker to make good games.

The rest is up to you.

#5 Alright cool thanks I'll try 1.1.3

#6 Yeah when I first started with Torque 2D when I was . . . 14 . . . I made two semi-decent tech demoesque type projects.

You can find them here:

The original Glatte

Shellcore

Just have some fun with whatever you decide to do. Your first game isn't going to be anything grand, take it from me and from other, much more experienced game devs. The best thing to do would be to think of some kind of gameplay that is totally innovative, that's when you make it big. But start small.

Huzzah!