Messages

1

General discussions / Re: What is wrong with my tutorials?

« on: July 12, 2014, 03:05:04 am »

@OutlawLee

I'm glad my tutorials were helpful to you

2

General discussions / Re: What is wrong with my tutorials?

« on: July 11, 2014, 10:28:05 am »

I used to watch a series of math videos which were considered very good ones, they aren't public and they aren't in English so I can't just paste them as example of 'video done right'. They did exactly these things you don't.

The person making them warned that some teachers might use slightly different notation or method of solving something and that other, harder, easier or worse ways exist
Every video listed all prerequisites to itself and stressed them and discouraged proceeding without them
Every video stressed that there IS a pdf attached to it, which contains problems, and that only good way to test skill is to learn by doing problems, not by eyeballing it and thinking you 'kinda get it'

Those are some good tips and I'll be sure to employ those methods in future tutorials series'

@Null Pointer

For what it's worth, my advice would be to keep your videos "symmetric" so to speak to what C++ / SFML standards are. I wouldn't consider myself the appropriate source to recommend how to make SFML tutorials; honestly, if I did they would probably downvoted. Maybe it would help if you specifically reference parts of the SFML API documentation so people feel like they have a static source of information that they can mentally link to your videos

Thanks some good advice

Also, I do really like one of your videos, the one where you talk about quitting college and the professors being trolls, because I'm a UNI student too and I know what it feels like to get trolled by the professors. One of them in my Intro to Programming Languages course is partly responsible for my addiction to #defines and global variables!

Lol that's unfortunate. I've had the pleasure of having some very good professors but the overall experience was just dull and a waste of time and money. There's so many places to get the knowledge you learn from Comp Sci for free on the internet and from books you just have to know where to look. I may head back in the future if the lack of credentials holds me back but for right now I'm doing alright .


@infinitebox

Bit off topic. I really don't understand why anyone ever expects to learn(master) a programming language in university. Here down under where at the university I'm attending. We don't have any units that are focused solely on learning a specific language. Most lectures focus on the theoretical stuff and project codes usually have poor coding practice. Doesn't help the lab computers always come with out of dated compilers. I've come to understand that learning a language should be done on your 'own' time and unis only provide guidelines and deadlines on the theoretical stuff that you should be learning at best.

That's true but that's a false misconception people get once they reach higher education. When somebody states that they want to be a programmer immediately someone mentions Computer Science. So in their minds they feel as though it's the place to learn programming and ultimately they get disappointed. In my mind however, it's the place to think like a programmer and to learn things that apply to any programming languages such as algorithms and data structures so that once you're faced with a problem you can solve it with the "tools" you have available to you.

3

General discussions / Re: What is wrong with my tutorials?

« on: July 10, 2014, 03:14:40 am »

@FRex my forum was getting spammed by bots and I didn't have the time to upgrade the website. By the time I had time the forum was flooded with spam and so now I'm scrapping the old one and putting up a new one.
As for my subscribers. I know what you're talking about, I've received plenty of "idiotic" questions in the past but how do you learn if you don't start from somewhere? To you it seems idiotic to ask how to set up a linker but in their minds it's a daunting task which is ok.

I now realize that my mistake was not setting a minimum standard for my tutorials and as a result we have people jumping into something much too large. My tutorials are dumbed down to the point where they're easy enough for beginners to understand hence the name "CodingMadeEasy", but I'm crippling them because in their minds they believe they're making progress when in reality they're copying and pasting mediocre code (which isn't the intention).

As for Xoax, I am in no way affiliated with them.

All in all, I apologize if my tutorials have stressed you guys out on the forums. Yes "stupid" questions are asked but I just see it as though we all start somewhere and I'm pretty sure when most of us started our programming journey, we had big dreams and ambitions until we realized that programming isn't an easy task.

Anyways just my two cents.

4

General discussions / Re: What is wrong with my tutorials?

« on: July 10, 2014, 02:28:44 am »

You should not feel intimidated by us being part of the SFML Team. If you got strong arguments, no one can say anything against them.

I wouldn't say intimidated. I would say more along the lines of respect. I respect your knowledge of SFML and of the programming field as well but nonetheless those are wise words .

Do you intend to bring up your website again, because it currently seems to be suspended. I don't have the time right now to go through your videos and extract the code bits from there.

Yes it should be back up sometime next week. I'll inform you once it's back up.

As for the rest of the post, I do understand what you're saying.

5

General discussions / Re: What is wrong with my tutorials?

« on: July 10, 2014, 01:54:21 am »

Thank you eXpl0it3r and Nexus although it's hard to swallow but I can't argue with 2 people on the development team for SFML. If you could give a few examples where I went wrong that would be awesome. I want to know what areas I need to brush up on because quite frankly I'm not too sure where I messed up SFML wise. As for coding style I understand that part now. I figured I was doing a good service by teaching the bare bones of SFML without putting a big emphasis on code style but I guess that not all good intentions have good results.

Also eXpl0it3r, I do get it when you say that people who watch videos are lazy and such but sometimes people need interactive learning to kind of kick things in gear. I remember when I first started learning C++; I had my book and I watched a few tutorials to see if I could get a different outlook on a certain area and for me it did make it easier to learn. Just reading a C++ book or any programming language book does nothing for you if you don't really know how to read it or how to digest it. Learning by tutorials may be crippling sometimes but I believe that they further help introduce ideas in a way that maybe a book can't. That's just my opinion on the matter though.

Anyways thanks for being so brutally honest. I want to improve and there's no better way to improve than to learn from your mistakes.

Thanks for the enlightenment

6

General discussions / Re: What is wrong with my tutorials?

« on: July 10, 2014, 01:29:57 am »

@Strelok That is a very true statement and thank you. I do have a series just dedicated to C++ but I guess I need to make it clear of the requirements one should know before pursuing SFML or any other framework for that matter. Thanks so much

7

General discussions / Re: What is wrong with my tutorials?

« on: July 10, 2014, 12:59:45 am »

Thanks for the input but I always mention that my code style in my tutorials are not the best or the most efficient they're just for teaching the basics of a framework/api. I guess the people criticizing don't know enough about what my channel is about I guess.

8

General discussions / What is wrong with my tutorials?

« on: July 10, 2014, 12:47:45 am »

I did a search of my youtube channel name "CodingMadeEasy" and a couple of people have been saying not to follow my tutorials. They say I have no knowledge of C++ or Sfml and that people should avoid my tutorials at all cost.

My tutorials aren't designed to be the most optimized and use the newest code style that comes with c++ 11 and c++ 14 as well as using advanced algorithms to make things happen. They're there to show the basic code to get something on the screen, and enough knowledge to create a simple game. In no instance did I mention that my tutorials were to be watched over the docs. I even praise the docs in my tutorials and advise my subscribers to check it out for more in-depth knowledge of SFML.

Anyways what I want to know is what am I doing that is so crippling to the programming community. All I've seen people say is "Don't watch his tutorials" but no one explains why. I'm not looking for bashing or arguments just constructive criticism that's all.

Thanks for your time.

9

General discussions / Re: SFML 2.0 Tutorials?

« on: March 02, 2013, 03:43:04 am »

I do understand your point and I do teach different programming practices with other tutorial series' This series is just to teach syntax. Later on I'll be showing them how to implement the code to create a platformer. While designing the platformer they will be learning quality methods in order to use their code but thanks for the suggestions. I'm always open to suggestions

10

General discussions / Re: SFML 2.0 Tutorials?

« on: March 01, 2013, 09:33:34 pm »

The purpose of my tutorials is not to show you the most optimized way to handle code because in different situations you may have to use different optimization techniques. The purpose of my tutorial series is to show the syntax and how to use it then in turn you decide how to implement it into your own code. 

11

General / Re: sf::View / sf::Shape Glitch

« on: February 28, 2013, 08:38:13 am »

Hmmm. Maybe it's just my computer :/

12

General / Re: sf::View / sf::Shape Glitch

« on: February 28, 2013, 04:18:52 am »

I'm not to sure as to why it's jittery when the view is not centered to the player :/. The view and the players position are bother determined as floats. And what I mean by jittering is that the player movement isn't smooth. It'll move in one direction and then slightly move back in the opposite direction. It's like it's staggering if that makes any sense.

13

General / Re: sf::View / sf::Shape Glitch

« on: February 27, 2013, 10:34:41 pm »

bump

14

General / Re: Can´t load Font files under Linux

« on: February 27, 2013, 09:43:47 am »

Why not try one forward slash instead of 2?

15

General / sf::View / sf::Shape Glitch

« on: February 27, 2013, 09:34:15 am »

When the view's center is set to the players position each frame, the player movement is fine but when the view is not centered to the players position, the rectangle jitters back and forth when receiving input commands.

Here's my code

#include<SFML/Graphics.hpp>
#include<string>
#include<iostream>

int main()
{
        sf::Vector2i screenDimensions(800, 600);

        sf::RenderWindow Window;
        Window.create(sf::VideoMode(screenDimensions.x, screenDimensions.y), "My First Sfml Game");

        //Window.setKeyRepeatEnabled(false);

        Window.setVerticalSyncEnabled(true);

        sf::Texture bTexture;
        sf::Sprite bImage;

        if(!bTexture.loadFromFile("Background.png"))
                std::cout << "Could not load backgorund image" << std::endl;

        bImage.setTexture(bTexture);

        sf::RectangleShape rect(sf::Vector2f(20, 20));
        rect.setFillColor(sf::Color::Red);

        sf::Clock clock;

        float moveSpeed = 2000.0f;

        sf::View view;
        view.reset(sf::FloatRect(0, 0, screenDimensions.x, screenDimensions.y));
        view.setViewport(sf::FloatRect(0, 0, 1.0, 1.0));

        sf::Vector2f position(screenDimensions.x / 2, screenDimensions.y / 2);
        view.setCenter(position);

        while(Window.isOpen())
        {
                clock.restart();
                sf::Event Event;
                while(Window.pollEvent(Event))
                {
                        switch(Event.type)
                        {
                        case sf::Event::Closed:
                                Window.close();
                                break;
                        case sf::Event::KeyPressed:
                                if(Event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::Escape)
                                        Window.close();
                                break;
                        }
                }
       
                if(sf::Keyboard::isKeyPressed(sf::Keyboard::Right))
                        rect.move(moveSpeed * clock.getElapsedTime().asSeconds(), 0);
                else if(sf::Keyboard::isKeyPressed(sf::Keyboard::Left))
                        rect.move(-moveSpeed * clock.getElapsedTime().asSeconds(), 0);

                if(rect.getPosition().x + 10 > screenDimensions.x / 2)
                        position.x = rect.getPosition().x + 10;
                if(rect.getPosition().y + 10 > screenDimensions.y / 2)
                        position.y = rect.getPosition().y + 10;

                view.setCenter(position);
                Window.setView(view);

                Window.draw(bImage);
                Window.draw(rect);
                Window.display();
                Window.clear();
        }
}