In-depth documentation

[Josh]

5 hours ago, Thirsty Panther said:

My suggestions;

• Medkit
• Ammo box
• Simple crafting
• Turret
• Teleport
• Hi score table

Good suggestions, but these are specific features. What are the underlying mechanics? How does one object become aware of another in a script?

• A teleport would probably be an example of using collision to detect interaction, and then an entity defined in the script as the target to reposition the player.
• A medkit and ammo box are another example of collision or raycasting being used to create a link between objects. If you understand that, then it is easy to define what property the item gives you more of.
• A turret would be an example of sensing the presence of a target, plus spawning bullets and maintaining a list of active bullets.

I don't think a hi score table or crafting system fit into this series. The hi score table is a few Steam commands, plus a system to display results. Crafting has to be part of an inventory system you program. These are a lot of code, but there's no "ah-ha!" learning moment for a concept, it's just code you iterate on until it works.

By focusing intensely on the actual mechanics and how they can be applied, we will avoid "tutorial hell" where people just watch a tutorial and don't come away with any reusable knowledge, because it's just an explanation of the code that was written.

[Josh]

I could also see a series on just using the built-in stock components. Simply setting up a navmesh and adding a monster makes a pretty compelling lesson. Maybe this series should come first, before the dive into programming.