Create Tutorials For Inclusion In The GameCore Tutorials Menu

[Delerna]

This turned out to be much easier than I expected.
Here is the text for my first tutorial.
It is the contents of the file that contains text that appears in the instructions window.
Follow the instructions from the heading CREATING YOUR OWN TUTORIALS onwards

Code:

TUTORIAL

LoadProject Empty.gpr
LoadWorld media/worlds/empty.wld
TutorialName Tutorials - Creating Your Own Tutorial
TutorialText
CREATING YOUR OWN TUTORIALS

This tutorial will show you how to create and set up your own tutorials for inclusion into the game core startup tutorial menu.

Press the NEXT button below to continue.

[newpage]
CREATE AN EMPTY PROJECT

Step 1 is to create a project to hold all the files for your tutorial.
From what I can see, your tutorial must have the files that any other project needs.
So
   1) Open the Game Core Editor
   2) Select Create New Project
   3) Select Empty Project
   3) In destination directory navigate to the tutorials directory in the main Game Core directory
      It will probably be C:\Program Files\GameCore 2.0 Beta 1\editor\tutorials\
   4) Create a new folder there and give it the desired name for your tutorial
   5) Say OK.
   6) Don't forget to save the world file.

You now have a folder ready for the tutorial documentation and any other resources your tutorial will need.

Press the NEXT button below to continue.

[newpage]
CREATING THE TUTORIAL TEXT

Use windows explorer and navigate to the tutorials folder.
You will need to copy one of the .tut files from the other tutorials into your own tutorial folder
Alternatively you could write your own from scratch. Its just a text file so notepad will do.
The basic structure is
well open one and compare it with the tutorial. You will get the idea
Press the NEXT button below to continue.

[newpage]
EDIT THE gameeditor.cfg FILE
Again, its probably located at
C:\Program Files\GameCore 2.0 Beta 1\editor
and it also is a text file.
Add and entry to the tutorials list for your tutorial as they have.
You will understand when you see it
Actuall, this is not necessary as it works without it.
I don't understand why the entries are there, but I added it anyway.

voilla, if you now close and restart Gamecore you will find your tutorial and it works

[end]

You have probably beaten me in working it out but here it is anyway.

PS I forgot a crucial piece in the instructions
You need to alter the first 3 lines of the code above according to the file names of your tutorial
and the fourth line is the title that appears in the tutorials menu

[pixel_legolas]

and again i am glad to see people dive in already to contribute with nifty codes. Thanks

[Javier]

Thanks for this Great tutorial Delerna. 

User tutorials its a very very good idea.

Add and entry to the tutorials list for your tutorial as they have.
You will understand when you see it
Actuall, this is not necessary as it works without it.
I don't understand why the entries are there, but I added it anyway.

Ummm, Its seems to be a way to order the list of tutorials.
If you change the order of that lines, the order of the tutorial list will change.

[Delerna]

oh yea.....of course ....now why didn't I think of that
Thanks Javier Barbero

[gekido]

The tutorials window will automatically generate the list - the only reason you would need / want to add the tutorial to the config is if you wish to control the order in which the tutorial appears in the window. 

Stickied the topic ;}

[Delerna]

Attached is a simple tutorial for achieving levels of detail in Game Core.
I guess most users at the moment will allready know how to do this.

I didn't, as I haven't had much experience with BV. There will be others new to GameCore and I hope they find this useful

You need to unzip this into the tutorials folder where you installed GameCore.
Probably "C:\Program Files\GameCore 2.0 Beta 1\editor\tutorials".
You should finish up with a new folder in the above path called LOD

Now if you restart gamecore and click the tutorials button you should find a new tutorial in the list called "Levels Of Detail"

[Delerna]

In a trutorials text are there other tags besides [newpage]

Can the font size and colors be canged?
Can you have hyperlinks of some sort?
           Hyperlinks so you can describe a step in the tutorial
           for example
                Add a box without collisions
                     or
                Select 'edit physics' for the box
           with a hyperlink (or something) the new user could click on the word "add" to go to a more detailed description
           of those tasks if they don't know how, but the tutorial isn't cluttered with detail for
           the more advanced users, who do know how to do these common tasks.
Can you add images.

Those are just ideas that I don't know if they are possible because I only know one tag......[newpage]
Is that the only tag or are there others?

[grubert]

Thanks, Delerna! This is very nice!

[pixel_legolas]

great contribution!

[gekido]

Unfortunately the tags that are available in the tutorials currently is pretty limited (ie what you see in the current tutorials).  We have discussed having a basic html renderer that supports a small subset of tags (for a variety of things) - being able to use this in the tutorials window would be ideal.

[Delerna]

That would be great. I can wait, its pretty good as it is but being able to structure the tutorial would make it more readable.
Sometime in the not too distant future, perhaps

[pixel_legolas]

"A movie says more than 1 million words"

I am going to start screen recording soon. Just gotta rig it up first...and work on that voice

[Delerna]

Agreed, video tuts are great. Must have the voice though, seen a few video tuts without the audio and they are just not the same.
Having said that, I think having a start to a project with the instructions that says. Do this, now do this are great too. I learn most by doing
and I find these tutorials are great for that. I think there is plenty of scope for both and both have their place and both have their weaknesses.
Text tutorials can very easily become too wordy. Video tuts though are very easy to watch without doing and for me, no doing= no long term learning.

I Look forward to your videos 

[delevero]

Maybe the following tutorials.

1). How to change levels ( like completing one level and loading the next part of the game )
2). Maybe a tutorial on how to setup your world to be just one HUGE world were you can go anywere without changing level and loading new maps..
and a hint to how to only make gamecore "load" the game world for example 150m arround you to keep the game running smooth and to lower the detail level and raise the view distance when you increase you hight for exampel on a hill you can see further than in the forrest, im pretty sure BV/gamecore already have this
feature.. but a tutorial would be nice maybe part of the manual.

[hikmayan]

1) That's possible w/BV Engine V1.1 "Fully integrated World linking "
2) Not possible in BV 1.1/and GC Engine atm working on the possibilities of features that will allow HUG World without World linking process;As far as I know.