March 17, 2020
On 3/16/20 11:19 PM, aberba wrote:
> On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 at 03:13:02 UTC, aberba wrote:
>> On Sunday, 15 March 2020 at 17:58:58 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>>> I want to try and learn how to write 2d games. I'd prefer to do it with D.
>>>
>>> I've found a ton of tutorials on learning 2d gaming with other languages. Is there a place to look that uses D for learning? Should I just start with another language and then migrate to D later? Anyone recommend any specific tutorial/book?
>>
>> https://github.com/DerelictOrg/DerelictSFML2 is the most up to date D binding to SFML library. Now that the maintainer is saying bindbc is better, I'm not sure the way to go.
>>
>> Will we ever get a bindbc-sfml?
>>
>>
>> By the way, the maintainer of DSFML went very far by creating a great website with docs and tutorials at http://www.dsfml.com/
> 
> You can still use DSFML with an older compiler by installing and using with something like DVM (https://code.dlang.org/packages/dvm)

Thanks for all your tips!

It looks like the dsfml author is still active as of June last year.

It sounds like it's possible to have it updated to work with the latest compilers (I can probably help with that), and hopefully he is not totally inactive.

Seems like SFML is a really common way to get started. I think I have enough info in this thread to at least get something to play with. It's not something I'm intending to create professionally, really the impetus is my son wanting to do more significant game coding.

-Steve
March 17, 2020
On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 at 15:38:55 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> It's not something I'm intending to create professionally, really the impetus is my son wanting to do more significant game coding.
>
> -Steve

How old is he?

I find something simple like gamemaker works well with 12-16 olds.
March 17, 2020
On 3/17/20 2:22 PM, Sebastiaan Koppe wrote:
> On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 at 15:38:55 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> It's not something I'm intending to create professionally, really the impetus is my son wanting to do more significant game coding.
>>
> 
> How old is he?
> 
> I find something simple like gamemaker works well with 12-16 olds.

He's done a lot of stuff in Scratch. I taught him and a whole group of other homeschoolers a class on javascript and this year (up until this whole virus thing) we were working in Roblox (lua). So far I try to make the lessons not so much about the language or the environment, but the code concepts.

I don't really love the scratch methodology of dumbing down everything, I feel like it limits too much and doesn't help you enough to learn necessarily the parts of programming that transfer to all other programming languages. Yes, it has loops, yes it has data (though it's really convoluted), but it's not going to transfer to real-world coding. It looks like gamemaker is along the same lines "write games without ever having to code" seems like it defeats the purpose of what I'm trying to do ;)

Essentially I want to turn his drive to "make a game" into giving him a good background in programming.

And of course I want to use D here! Why start them on a lesser language.

-Steve
March 17, 2020
On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 at 18:55:08 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> He's done a lot of stuff in Scratch. I taught him and a whole group of other homeschoolers a class on javascript and this year (up until this whole virus thing) we were working in Roblox (lua). So far I try to make the lessons not so much about the language or the environment, but the code concepts.
>
> I don't really love the scratch methodology of dumbing down everything, I feel like it limits too much and doesn't help you enough to learn necessarily the parts of programming that transfer to all other programming languages. Yes, it has loops, yes it has data (though it's really convoluted), but it's not going to transfer to real-world coding. It looks like gamemaker is along the same lines "write games without ever having to code" seems like it defeats the purpose of what I'm trying to do ;)
>

Dont trust that marketing, there is actually decent scripting in gamemaker, which you'll need if you get creative.

Plus plenty of good example games that are also quite playable.

March 17, 2020
On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 at 22:47:43 UTC, Sebastiaan Koppe wrote:
> Dont trust that marketing, there is actually decent scripting in gamemaker, which you'll need if you get creative.

Second that. GameMaker is how I got into programming at age 12, and look where I ended up ;)
March 18, 2020
On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 at 23:09:32 UTC, Dennis wrote:
> On Tuesday, 17 March 2020 at 22:47:43 UTC, Sebastiaan Koppe wrote:
>> Dont trust that marketing, there is actually decent scripting in gamemaker, which you'll need if you get creative.
>
> Second that. GameMaker is how I got into programming at age 12, and look where I ended up ;)

Similar for me but not GameMaker but RPG Maker.
March 18, 2020
On Sunday, 15 March 2020 at 17:58:58 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> I want to try and learn how to write 2d games. I'd prefer to do it with D.
>
> I've found a ton of tutorials on learning 2d gaming with other languages. Is there a place to look that uses D for learning? Should I just start with another language and then migrate to D later? Anyone recommend any specific tutorial/book?
>
> -Steve

Writing own framework - is the best !

March 19, 2020
On Sunday, 15 March 2020 at 17:58:58 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
> I want to try and learn how to write 2d games. I'd prefer to do it with D.
>
> I've found a ton of tutorials on learning 2d gaming with other languages. Is there a place to look that uses D for learning? Should I just start with another language and then migrate to D later? Anyone recommend any specific tutorial/book?
>
> -Steve

there's a youtube channel teaching 2D game dev. using dlang:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK3fxU3_7tzBhZZ_6rljAQA/videos
March 19, 2020
My two cents doing some 2D stuff for a while (a cards game).

1. stick to SDL2 if you want to have something that will work in many places. SFML AFAIK is not so compatible.

From there, maybe I would start by mixing SDL2* libraries and using D with extern(C) interfaces if needed unless there is a well-maintained wrapper.

The rest of the alternatives just brought trouble to me when trying to run in many systems.
March 19, 2020
On 3/19/20 2:22 AM, dangbinghoo wrote:
> On Sunday, 15 March 2020 at 17:58:58 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer wrote:
>> I want to try and learn how to write 2d games. I'd prefer to do it with D.
>>
>> I've found a ton of tutorials on learning 2d gaming with other languages. Is there a place to look that uses D for learning? Should I just start with another language and then migrate to D later? Anyone recommend any specific tutorial/book?
>>
> 
> there's a youtube channel teaching 2D game dev. using dlang:
> 
> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCK3fxU3_7tzBhZZ_6rljAQA/videos

Oh wow, that is awesome! I'll take a look. Thanks.

-Steve