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TGB 1.5.1 Tutorial Pack In Development

Name:	James Ford
Date Posted:	Sep 07, 2007
Rating:	4.0 out of 5
Public:	YES
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TGB is a powerful engine which, once learned, can be used to create near-anything. The catch is, the learning curve remains steep, and many a would-be developer gives up in frustration. The tutorials that ship with TGB are excellent, but do not provide as complete an education as newcomers often hope for.

I hope to change this for every TGB-noob.

The TGB tutorial pack will consist of 5 complete and working classic games, made with the latest version of TGB 1.5.1, making heavy use of behaviors, and using script only. These games may be taken for educational value only or used as a framework for your own classic-style game. The whole pack will be available for purchase at a very reasonable price.

Games Included:
Pong, Asteroids, Tetris, Pacman, Bomberman.

Although its hard to outline the specific topics covered in each tutorial everyone already knows these games, and each one has its own challenges, most with more than one solution. In these cases I will try to outline my first approach and if I decided to change it, why.

Specific Topics:
Behaviors: these are used for controlling the player, AI objects, defining oncollision results, and pretty much everying.
Tilemaps: These are used in Tetris, Pacman, and Bomberman (and every 2D game) over and over.
Physics and Collision: When to use it, and when not to.

Current Progress:
Pong: 90% ... An optional amount of fine tuning and writting the tutorial.
Asteroids: 50% ... Rigidbody collisions working, adding bullets and particle effects.
Tetris: 50% ... Decided to change method of representing pieces so a bit of rework to do.
Pacman: 70% ... Player and ghost movement working + powerups and ghost respawing.
Bomberman: 50% Working with 1.3 but needs "behaviorization" and cleaning of spagetti code.

Expect screenshots soon.

I expect a couple months of work before its ready, but I'll keep you posted!

Recent Blog Posts

List:	09/28/08 - Behavior Trees in TGB Experiment 07/28/08 - My Programming Cheatsheet 05/24/08 - Be the Dinosaur - AI Postmortem 09/07/07 - TGB 1.5.1 Tutorial Pack In Development

Submit your own resources!

Drew -Gaiiden- Sikora (Sep 07, 2007 at 00:39 GMT)

Learning the ins and outs of any engine is difficult and TGB is certainly no exception. I'm sure this'll help many people - including myself. I spend probably more than half of my development time experimenting with things in the engine to discover exactly how they work based on what it says in the documentation. if I had laid out examples things would go much quicker. A lot of the tutorials succeed in this already, but many just clarify the documentation better to a point where I understand how to implement something properly, but still don't understand exactly how/where/when to use it!

Looking forward to it

Matthew Langley (Sep 07, 2007 at 01:22 GMT)

Very awesome James :)

Steven S (Sep 07, 2007 at 03:11 GMT)

I think that's a great idea. Each game covers something different, and overall, should make for some good tutorials.

Matt Grosse (Sep 07, 2007 at 04:10 GMT)

excellent idea, glad to see its coming along well. i'm looking forward to reading over these

Kevin McLaughlin (Sep 07, 2007 at 04:31 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Very cool. This should help a lot of folks out. I will probably want to take a peek myself. :)

CDK (Sep 07, 2007 at 05:57 GMT)

Yeah, this will be great indeed.

Tank Dork (Sep 07, 2007 at 07:16 GMT)

Can't wait.

Another possible game type you might consider that I have seen three developers try and get frustrated using TGB (myself included) is a card game style. Something with turns using hotseat style play.

Christian Rademan (Sep 07, 2007 at 12:18 GMT)

Yes now we have to purchase something to learn something we have already purchased?
I am finding the lack of documentation in TGB disheartening to say the least.
I purchased the software to get to the documentation. And lo and behold. No documentation.
So I believe that what you are doing has great merit.
I am busy making a pacman clone and have come across many obstacles. Maybe I should have started with pong. Nontheless I intend to finish what I have started. Though It is slow going and I think there are much better ways of doing it.
What would be great if I could submit my pacman to you and you could give me pointers on how I should have done it.
If I knew enough about torque I'd even help you with this tutorial pack.
I think that the learning curve is very steep and that they should rename the engine GOT.
Gnashing of the teeth!

Russell Fincher (Sep 07, 2007 at 13:00 GMT)

I should mention here that James is the newest member of Sickhead Games and he's been knee-deep in TGB since he signed on as an intern late spring. He's a sharp guy with great attention to detail. Though he's doing this pack on his own and I have no inside perspective on it, I would expect this to be an extremely handy resource for anyone getting started with the engine. It's certainly a great idea.

Matthew Langley (Sep 07, 2007 at 15:10 GMT)

Again think what you doing is great James.

@Christian:

"I purchased the software to get to the documentation. And lo and behold. No documentation."

Do you really feel that way. I mean I can understand wanting more documentation then there currently is, I for one always want more documentation in a product I use no matter how much there is. Though I still feel TGB provides far from "No documentation", 3-4 basic game/demo tutorials, multiple feature tutorials, a handfull of references (Action Maps, Particle Engine, Image Maps) and a fairly robust (even if not fully described) reference at least listing every script accessible funciton in the engine while having descriptions for a moderate amount.

For further assistance you can always post questions on the forums. If you ever do want to give us feedback on the documentation and how you found it lacking feel free to e-mail me at mattl@garagegames.com, though I still don't beleive "No documentation".

Justin Schwartzenberger (Sep 07, 2007 at 17:16 GMT)

One element that is difficult to find tutorials on for TGB (or any game engine in general) is the development of the workflow for the game as a whole. Something that takes you through building game states and transitioning between loading, main menu, options, and levels...the actual framework to a game. Almost every tutorial out there deals with specific components within a game and even the ones that ship with TGB that show you how to create a side scroller or a fish game only show you how to build a level and not the complete package. If you dedicated a portion of your tutorial kit to explaining the process of workflow development for TGB I think it would be a big hit.

Matthew Langley (Sep 07, 2007 at 17:46 GMT)

@Justin:

Now that is solid feedback coupled with a good suggestion. Another thing I've always wanted to do and include in TGB docs is optimization, including using the profiler. Though time is one of the most valuable resources. Any feedback and suggestions like this can be posted in the suggestions forums.

I have a lot of respect for people who contribute to the documentation (thats what I did before coming to work at GG). In the end thats what TDN is all about, though unfortunately has slowed down quite a bit. We also have no problem compensating people for quality documentation.

James Ford (Sep 07, 2007 at 17:50 GMT)

Wow thank you everyone for your comments.

@Russel: Thanks!

@Tank: I agree, a card game is simple enough that it makes an excellent learning project for early users, and I would like to make one myself. Maybe for the TGB tutorial pack #2. '-)

@Justin: I agree completely that this is an important topic that needs to be covered, and that is why these tutorials will really be complete games, including a splashscreen, mainmenu screen, options screen, highscores screen, and of course a playscreen. What I plan on doing is setting up an empty project that contains a framework (like the splash gui, options gui,..), so it can easily be reused as a starting point for each tutorial. Behaviors also provide some easy opportunities to reuse code between projects, which I am excited about.

@Christian: I know exactly how you feel, because I was you a year or two ago. And making my own Tetris / Bomberman clones from scratch was extremely frustrating. There is quite a bit of documentation (although not nearly enough), and one thing I will cover is how to make use of it and find answers to things you can't figure out (like keeping the TGB Reference open, and looking at the editor code). You can email me any Pacman related questions if you can't wait for the release.

Conor O Kane (Sep 08, 2007 at 13:31 GMT)

This sounds very useful. If it's reasonably priced I'll probably pick it up because 1.5.1 is sorely lacking tutorials.

Tank Dork (Sep 27, 2007 at 02:31 GMT)

Any updates on this project?

Quest Johnny (Oct 04, 2007 at 06:28 GMT)

That's be awesome.

In the meantime, for those of us who just downloaded TGB 1.5 and are trying to follow the tutorials, is there a place I can pick up the files from the older tutorial/installation so I can sort of follow along?

Deozaan (Oct 14, 2007 at 19:46 GMT)

Request: Something with networking--that works! I never could get the Checkers tutorial to work in 1.3, so I really have no idea how to do interactive networking. Sure I can start a server and if I'm lucky I can get someone (even myself) to find it and join it, but updating graphics, sending info back and forth from clients to servers. I really have no lead on how to accomplish this.

Pesto126 (Oct 23, 2007 at 11:50 GMT)

Can I just... thx. I too would love to see a bunch other game subjects covered by tutorials.... a card game with networking like Gin, and my biggest wish.. a board game ala Monopoly. Why there isn't a really good game program/kit/SDK/wrapper for board games is beyond me. I thought TGB would lend itself perfectly for a good top down board game.. but alas.. no resources to help. That would just be perfect to see......

Tank Dork (Nov 12, 2007 at 10:48 GMT)

Quote:
card game with networking like Gin, and my biggest wish..

High on my wish list as well. :)

Anyone heard of any updates on this project, is it still alive?

James Ford (Nov 13, 2007 at 18:15 GMT)

Its still alive! I haven't been feeling real great the last month but I expect my productivity to rise significantly in the next weeks. Thanks to all of you for posting, its great for my motivation.

Recent work:
I have created most of the common gui's that will be shared between the games.
I made improvements to the asteroids gameplay. Rather than the basic 1 hit and you explode I decided to give the ship a shield and pickups.

Next steps:
Completely finish the asteroids and packman code and then write the documentation. I need to write it before I forget some of the mistakes I made early on!

Tank Dork (Feb 02, 2008 at 05:50 GMT)

How is this project coming along?

Deozaan (Feb 02, 2008 at 08:06 GMT)

And will it be compatible with TGB 1.71?

Kevin James (Mar 01, 2008 at 04:40 GMT)

Wow! 5 projects at 50% or more and no screenshots or demos? I feel dejected!

Tank Dork (Mar 14, 2008 at 06:39 GMT)

Project update.. please please don't stop this one.

Chris Kissel (Aug 03, 2008 at 21:34 GMT)

Hi, I just wanted to say I'm completely new to TGB. I will be purchasing an indie license next week - my PRIMARY reason for wanting to buy is to recreate my own versions of these classic games (namely Pacman, and eventually I'd like to create a game similar to Zelda). I know these games have been done over and over, but they are the games I like! :) So, when you're finished with your tutorial I will ABSOLUTELY buy a copy (maybe two! lol).

Quest Johnny (Aug 04, 2008 at 15:21 GMT)

@Chris - a man after my own heart! I love to update my favorite old games

Awesome on the Tutorial, can't wait! Another guaranteed sale here =)

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