Question - Moving from tutorials to my own game

#1 @Martyn - This is a refreshing question, and I thank you for that. This is where game development with Torque gets hard: making YOUR game.

This is when you leave the caring arms of my documentation and learn to fly. Occasionally, you will come back to the docs for reference, but it's now up to you to make the game.

My suggestion is to try and prototype your game using the existing behaviors we've provided you with. Go ahead and copy all of the behaviors from Behavior Playground and Behavior Shooter.

Dump all of those into a new project, then try and make some simple games on your own. You will find yourself getting better and better, eventually reaching the point where you start modifying existing TS and writing your own from scratch.

#2 Actually, I think your first sentence may give a hint at why programming is proving to be a challenge for you. Most of the programmers I know (me included) don't memorize very much at all. Instead, I focus on understanding concepts - I can always look up the nitty-gritty details in The Fine Manual if I need to.

Take the fish tutorial for instance. Since you've done that, you're aware that you can flip an image horizontally, i.e. like you did to make the fish swim back and forth. There's no need to memorize what method does that - you can always look that up. If you end up using it often enough, it will "stick" on its own.

(This is actually a major gripe I have with public schools in the US. They teach kids to memorize and recite, with little emphasis placed on real understanding. That's good for passing Monday's test, but no so good for learning to apply a complicated skill in the real world...)

#3 Hi Thank you both for your answers;

@ Michael Perry

I will take your suggestions and apply them, I have gotten fairly used to the actual level builder as I have with all the tutorials I have done (except the WhackAMole) used my own graphics. So from the next step I will select a fairly simple game and try and apply what I have learnt using already created scripts from the tutorials to build something - Thank You :)

@ Sherman Pendley

Yes it did always confuse me on how people seem to memorize script, I will have to remember that I do not have to and I just have to work on how I would put coding in practice and how it would work and flow and then look the actual script up via a reference. :)

Thanks again to both of you :)

#4 @Sherman - Amen! Standardized testing should be abolished, for those very reasons (plus the irrational stress placed on the shoulders of a child).

Great advice as well, thanks =)

#5 Sherman: I totally agree with you about testing. I'm a teacher and it wastes a lot of learning time. Standardized tests should be abolished, unfortunately they have become an industry.

#6 @Martyn

I want to place a little more stress on the size and scopes of your games you are first building. Remember to keep them as small as possible. Clone pong or something like that. Because nothing feels better than seeing a finish project that YOU built. Keep Torque'n

#7 @Donald

Hi, Thanks for your suggestion, I understand completely.

My plan is to develop the simple shooter game based from the tutorial and build into a more indepth game.

Thanks :)