Dumb Book

[Sabre]

Those of you who care about what I have been dong with my life (ie. me) will know that I have been busy learning to program so I can make magical games of groovy. To do so, I bought a book and it was going great up until 15 minutes ago.

See, the book stops explaining things and starts just saying what to do with no reason of why you are doing it, so when it breaks, I can't fix it. You may also recall that I had trouble with the engine side of things. Well, looking back over the book, it keeps saying it will be explained in later chapters, only for it to do a U turn and assume you know it by now. It makes me think there's a chapter missing.

At least I had something that worked before, and despite being rubbish, it was more then the brain deads that went to university ever did. I'm thinking of taking a break before going back at it and hoping I can suplement the gaps with stuff from the internet, as I can't aford another book atm.

I'll be 24 soon, and I don't want to be a complete waster like the idiots that kept me from the career that is rightfully mine. So, I'm open to alturnitives. Any ideas?

[Mr. Krystal]

Those of you who care about what I have been dong with my life (ie. me) will know that I have been busy learning to program so I can make magical games of groovy. To do so, I bought a book and it was going great up until 15 minutes ago.

See, the book stops explaining things and starts just saying what to do with no reason of why you are doing it, so when it breaks, I can't fix it. You may also recall that I had trouble with the engine side of things. Well, looking back over the book, it keeps saying it will be explained in later chapters, only for it to do a U turn and assume you know it by now. It makes me think there's a chapter missing.

At least I had something that worked before, and despite being rubbish, it was more then the brain deads that went to university ever did. I'm thinking of taking a break before going back at it and hoping I can suplement the gaps with stuff from the internet, as I can't aford another book atm.

Yeah, in the end, no book can explain something as complex as programming completely. It's a combination of experiencing problems, solving them, asking people questions, and reviewing other resources that both teaches and cements the knowledge. Use general problem solving here. Go back to your last known good point and work very carefully reading every detail. If they don't say enough anyway, try and deduce what they mean or fiddle with settings until you get something that works. Also look up your problem on the net with the keywords from the book title, others have probably had the same problem before. And also, as with many problems, and especially in programming, taking a break and then coming back to a difficult problem often does wonders.

I'll be 24 soon, and I don't want to be a complete waster like the idiots that kept me from the career that is rightfully mine. So, I'm open to alturnitives. Any ideas?

Career that is RIGHTFULLY yours? How can you have a fundamental right to a job? Jobs aren't like speech, where you can do as much as you want and it won't interfere with other's speech. They are a limited resource made scarcer by people trying to artificially create more.

[Sabre]

The problem is the lack of skills to problem solve with. It keeps saying "Do X" without saying what X is, and that it will be explained in later chapters. Next chapter, it basicly says "Since you know how X works, this should be ok." so when problem Y comes up with X, I can't fix it because I have no idea wth X is doing. That's of course, very simplyfied of course.

About the job. I was in the right place at the right time, I should have had it no problem going to university, but even when I met the infinatly moving goalposts they still wouldn't teach me programing of animation. They never said why, but th following is what I think

A- it was autism

B- I didn't have connections

C- I was a threat to them

D- any combination of the above

The fact people with fewer qualifications got in proves it wasn't any lagitamate reason. I could have forced my way in, but college proved that just leads to them working against you as much as possable.

Despite occationally running into the smug gits that got into various ones (All claiming there is the best in the world with evidence naturally) and talking up technical bollocks, none of them ever went anywhere. Instead spending thier course drunk, and now working in call centres and McBurger Fried Chicken. Had I been allowed in when I was 16, I would have 5 years of experience, at least a game out and maybe my own company by now.

[Mr. Krystal]

Had I been allowed in when I was 16, I would have 5 years of experience, at least a game out and maybe my own company by now.

I don't know if you can blame not getting into a course for all that. Nor do I think you can knowingly claim you would be as successful as that no matter what you did when you were 16. Making games and running a company are not easy at all.

Now, what's the name of the book, and what are the things they told you to do that you can't figure out?

[Sabre]

http://apress.com/book/view/9781430218173

Picked because unlike Reeds (the 'best' one) this one requires no previous knowlage whereas reeds XNA book required knowlage of C#

There are various small issues, but the main 2 that are causing me headaches atm are

1 is drawing sprites, or indeed pretty much anything

the second is more complecated. It's with definitions (I think) but Im not sure, because, as I said, I'm not sure how it works. I cba giving you the long version, but stuff refuse to take arguments or numbers that they should.

Let's say we have speed. Let's say we want speed to = 10. I kep getting errors along the lines of 'speed cannot take a number' which is lies because it can't take anything else. I'll work it out, but Im to annoied atm.

[Mr. Krystal]

When you assign a value to a variable and it is not allowed, you have to make sure the type is correct. Is speed a pointer? I doubt it because C# doesn't do pointers much (at all? I don't remember). But if it is a pointer, or a reference, you will have to dereference it in order to assign the value.

Or, you might be sending the wrong type of number. In computers, numbers are stored in many types of formats depending on if signed or unsigned values are allowed, how big the maximum allowed number can be, if it's floating-point or decimal, etc. Make sure it's EXACTLY the same type. Often, if you use a floating point variable and try to assign an integer (10), depending on the language and other factors, this may lead to an error.

Or, your speed could be assigned constant, which means that you aren't really allowed to change it (I doubt that's the case though). The value could be private, so you'd need an accessor method. Maybe the object is out of scope.

Post the exact error messages you get and I'll be able to tell better what's going on.

Also, if you didn't see this earlier, here's the link to the book's errors, quite a few of them:

http://apress.com/book/errata/1101

[Sabre]

Yeah. Most of those mistakes are of the copy paste varitiy. Missnamed stuff and the like.