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Only have a min to run through it once but just wanted to quickly say, great job! You clearly have some experience with programming or game development in other languages, or you are some sort of genius. Either way it looks and plays great!

This looks cool, thanks for sharing!

Does this mean you can call native Android SDK stuff? Would it be possible this could be used to create libraries for say, in app-purchase, or advertisements?

I think I'll take notes on what to teach to my upcoming class..

Well, I certainly don't see how ints could be slower than floats, so I guess why not. That being said I bet there are other areas in your code which may be more meaningful to optimize.

[make it visual as fast as you can.]

I have one additional thought. While it will be good to start with the basic IF THEN and FOR stuff, make it visual as fast as you can. Moving a sprite with the arrow keys shouldn't be too hard to understand once the basics are in place, and it's incredibly rewarding.

Good call, that was one of the first things we did with my son and it was definitely a big hit. He was getting all into the groove of going into Tools->Keycodes to find the right code to use and everything I might try to do this towards the end of day 1.

Oh, and nice looking book Erico, too bad I don't speak spanish

That's an interesting idea to relate programming to emailing orders to a friend, maybe I'll try something like that I was definitely going to drive home the point that computers can only do exactly what you tell them to, so you have to think about exactly what it is you want them to do to make them work!

I'm now thinking of maybe trying to take the approach of having a lecture at the start with me going through some concepts on a projector or something, and then giving them some sort of simple program to code, and then just running around trying to give everyone a few minutes of time for 1 on 1 questions.

Hello everyone,

I have been offered the opportunity to put together a course on computer game programming for youth at a local community center. They'll probably be in the age range around 12-15, and I think the course will run once a week after school for about 90 mins for 8-10 weeks. I am looking to use GLBasic to teach them!  I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on what sorts of things I should include? I'll be covering of course the basics (variables/loops/functions), but I was wondering what might be a cool and realistic game project we could aim to work towards in say the last four or five classes. Maybe something like an old classic game like space invaders, or possibly a plants vs zombies clone?

Also, I am looking to get some feedback about the best way to approach such a class.. I have only taught programming to my son before, and it was obviously 1 on 1, so I could directly guide him through every statement. With an entire group (of say 10) kids, I won't be able to give the same attention to each individual. Should I maybe lead them through some code on a projector as a group, and then pose a problem for them to try to solve own their own? Also I was considering having them pair up and do "paired" programming, but maybe the kids might not appreciate that since they likely may not know each other before hand..

ah well just some ideas, let me know what you guys think!

Wb I haven't been around much lately, although not because I haven't been coding.. but because I've got too much coding to do that I don't have any time for my game anymore 

Oh well here's to more progress

Yeah I've been using Prototype for emulating 'event driven' code for my GUI stuffs as well. It's ok, although you can get some confusing errors sometimes when doing Prototype/Alias stuff.

Ah yes, I read about this article on Reddit's gamedev subreddit. The comment that was upvoted the most pointed out that his game just simply doesn't look that interesting to play. It basically is a throwback to a classic style game that most people pointed out they didn't actually enjoy back when they were around, so why would they play something like that now?

Frankly that he saw as much success as he did, speaks to his ability to market something that wasn't meant to succeed in the first place. Plus everyone thought his home-made trailer in his attic looked cheesy. I agree it didn't really do much to make *me* want to play it.

It's hard to say what's going on without seeing the rest of your code.. maybe it has something to do with your variable "i%"? Has it been defined as global? I like to give my global variables more meaningful names, and only use 1 letter variables for simple local variables that are only used in 1 place ever. This variable should be global because it should retain its state in between calls.

Also you don't have a check for going past the end of your array.

I shared the code I'm using in my game for looping music. It first loads in a playlist of mp3s from the media directory, then shuffles the array, then constantly checks to see if the music is playing and moves to the next track in the list if it isn't. You can see the code for yourself here.

Lua is a scripting language, so that means you can have compiled code that reads in other (non compiled) Lua code and execute it. So after your game is packaged and delivered it can still read in new code and do things with it.

Some people might use scripting languages for things like scripting events/sequences in RPG's, and others may find it useful for adding 'modding' support to their game/engine.

I suppose you'd have to have an established user base, so you can actually throw numbers around that speak to how much exposure you can guarantee they're getting. Otherwise they could just take whatever money you'd ask for and throw it at a PPC campaign and be guaranteed however many thousand impressions/clicks, etc.

hey so did you hear back from anyone?

If this somehow leads to getting access to the android soft keyboard, that'd be awesome