Irrlicht needs video tutorials, and lots of them

[Asimov]

Hi all,

I have been struggling over the last few weeks. I am slowly getting there though, very slowly.
I think it would be nice if irrlicht had more video tutorials, like Unity and Cryengine does.
How about getting the guys at Eat3D to make some, or even experienced game designers on the forum.

I would volunteer, but wouldn't want to steer people the wrong way with my programming techniques LOL.

After 3 weeks I have managed to load 3d models, get a camera working. I know how to position and rotate my models. How to do basic operations with the camera, and now how to make a 2D sprite,

You could say why didn't I read the tutorials, and you know I have been. I have read the lot, but not necessarily understood it all.
For instance I recently read the 2D tutorial and couldn't understand why there was nothing on screen until Juanpro told me what I was doing wrong, and now I got it working.
Also I have been searching and searching for answers to my problems on the forum. Very often if you look hard enough you will find answers, but not all the time.

I have found very few tutorials on youtube, compared to other engines out there.
I find it strange. I think it would be nice if there was a video tutorial acompanying every written tutorial. I find I learn better like this, than reading text.

Anyway that is my rant

[hendu]

Perhaps it's something to do with the target audience. I for one find video tutorials a complete waste of time, and an absolutely horrible way to learn anything ("umm", "ahh", "wait a bit"). I read at more than 1000 words per minute, most people speak about 60 WPM, plus all those pauses.

One time I decided to not use a library when most of its tutorials were videos.

/counter-rant

Of course if someone wants to do them I'm not against that, but they should never, ever be the primary documentation.

[Asimov]

Hi Hendu,

I find I learn faster from videos. Which is why I started using the chilli engine a while back. Only reason I stopped using it, was because it was only a 2D engine and I needed to go with 3D.
I also have a lot of Eat 3D dvds, for Unity, which are very well done.

I also agree text tutorials are very important for reference, but find them hard to follow if you have never used the irrlicht engine before.

People are wired differently. I learn faster from watching, than I do trying to guess at a text tutorial, because it doesn't tell you everything you need to know.
Plus watching videos forces you to type in the code slowly, instead of copying and pasting from a text tutorial and not really understanding what it does.

When I have learnt enough about irrlicht, I will give back to the community by making videos myself, but I am not at a stage yet where I can do that.

[sudi]

I think the reason there are no video tutorials is that irrlicht is simply a graphics api. There is no special IDE or Editor that the user has to learn. Actually irrlicht users dont have to learn anything about irrlicht but about using an api and of course learning basics about 3D/2D and how it works. But that stuff is actually not irrlicht specific and can be learned everywhere else.
Now you say you learned alot about Unity with their tutorials, but i guess most of it was how to use the editor since after you know that you are pretty much on your own again.
Another point might be that it is really boring looking at a text editor on screen while you could easily get the information by reading. As I said there is no IDE or editor what so ever.

[SLC]

I know there's a couple videos (here, here) to get you started but I don't really expect someone to make a whole series on it and even go through the trouble of actually writing an actual game.

[christianclavet]

Personally, I would prefer having PDF. Video tutorial are great to show how graphic interfaces work (Unity, UE4), theses are great for EDITOR interfaces/method learning. I don't think I would learn much coding from a video.

If you want learn video game programming, video could be used to give you the overall concepts (visually), then would refer to documentation (PDF) for the details. Getting details about programming from a video is a waste of time.

[archmagus]

I (in general) don't like video tutorials because I hate Flash. Tutorials that teach the use of a graphical tool are sometimes okay so...
A video on setting up all the external graphical tools might be a good idea. A PDF/HTML reference is (or should) be enough for learning the Irrlicht API but a video on setting up eg; your favourite IDE with Irrlicht, downloading and using Blender's B3D export plugin, downloading/compiling/installing Irrlicht/IrrExt from SVN, etc, etc. might be well received.

Irrlicht has some very good documentation, but a lot of the background (graphical) stuff could benefit from video tutorials.

[thanhle]

I (in general) don't like video tutorials because I hate Flash. Tutorials that teach the use of a graphical tool are sometimes okay so...
A video on setting up all the external graphical tools might be a good idea. A PDF/HTML reference is (or should) be enough for learning the Irrlicht API but a video on setting up eg; your favourite IDE with Irrlicht, downloading and using Blender's B3D export plugin, downloading/compiling/installing Irrlicht/IrrExt from SVN, etc, etc. might be well received.

Irrlicht has some very good documentation, but a lot of the background (graphical) stuff could benefit from video tutorials.

Great idea on video usage.
pdf is also good. Only drawback is will the content last forever on the internet?

[Asimov]

Hi archmagus,

If you don't like flash how on Earth do you use youtube? Personally I love flash.
I don't need tutorials for Blender as I use 3ds max.

There are arguments on both sides, but I learn far better from a video than I do from text. Text is great as a backup, but if you are new to something, it is much easier if you see how it works in a video before you try to implement it yourself. Sometimes if you see it done, it saves you 3 days of heartache when you don't understand the text, and you do something silly.

Haven't had much time for irrlicht in the last few weeks grrr. Been working on a complicated model in 3ds max, and been building a knowledge base for my website at the same time, but will be back to my game I started on as soon as these things are done.

[sunnystormy]

How about video... AND text?

You could record a video that moves at the pace of the speaker, and provides a hands-on demonstration of the topic, as well as supplementary PDF/HTML/whatever documentation for those who prefer to read.

[archmagus]

If you don't like flash how on Earth do you use youtube? Personally I love flash.

HTML5 or youtube-dl
I'm one of those crazy people who exclusively runs Linux, and since Adobe only provides a very old version of Flash for Linux it's a sort-of hate-hate relationship.
(There is also Pipelight which lets me run Windows plug-ins in my browser with wine)

I don't need tutorials for Blender as I use 3ds max.

Sorry, I didn't mean to exclude 3dsmax (or other software) users, just using Blender as an example. Ideally, there would be Irrlicht Setup/Usage video tutorials for any piece of graphical software needed. I don't actually know what the setup for 3dsmax is or if it needs anything special to be used with Irrlicht.

There are arguments on both sides, but I learn far better from a video than I do from text. Text is great as a backup, but if you are new to something, it is much easier if you see how it works in a video before you try to implement it yourself. Sometimes if you see it done, it saves you 3 days of heartache when you don't understand the text, and you do something silly.

Well Irrlicht should have more tutorials and demos anyway. Videos are much better for showing final results, so videos that supplement the text (as sunnystormy said) are probably better. You will need some text however, as you can't copy/paste from a video...

How about video... AND text?

You could record a video that moves at the pace of the speaker, and provides a hands-on demonstration of the topic, as well as supplementary PDF/HTML/whatever documentation for those who prefer to read.

YES!

[Asimov]

Hi archmagus,

HTML5 or youtube-dl
I'm one of those crazy people who exclusively runs Linux, and since Adobe only provides a very old version of Flash for Linux it's a sort-of hate-hate relationship.
(There is also Pipelight which lets me run Windows plug-ins in my browser with wine)

Strangely I don't think you are crazy, as I used to be one of those crazy people who carried on using Amiga OS3.9 for many years even when pcs went into colour.
Amiga OS did pretty much everything a pc did with only 2megabytes of memory, and was a much better OS.

However I had to succumb to pc os in the end because the Amiga was getting left further behind in technology.

Also most of the software I use now would never work on an Amiga LOL.

I tried linux, and it is very hard to get into. Also our server at work runs on linux.
It is so strange how you have to mount everything to get something working.

There are so many different linux variations as well. Wouldn't know where to start LOL.

[archmagus]

I would actually agree that Linux can be hard to get into at first, if you want to try you should try Xubuntu which is very easy to setup. Not as bloated as Windows and way more secure. Have been running Linux since ~2013ish (mainly Debian/CrunchBang and recently Xubuntu). Nice thing about both of those is that they are very customizable and flexible, free, and come with at least 2 usable programming environments each (aka: a C compiler and the Python interpreter).

I considered making a tutorial for compiling Irrlicht on Linux, but it looks like this guy has already made a pretty good one, plus some tutorials that cover loading models, maps and a simple AI. I think he even says 'Irrlicht' correctly.
I might also make a video or two in a few weeks (too busy at the moment), if I do, I will either post in this thread or make a new thread. If I make anything it won't have audio though, since i haven't got a microphone, you will have to read subtitles or something...

[sunnystormy]

@Asimov Debian! Use Debian!

As for compiling Irrlicht on GNU/Linux, you'll need to grab an updated copy of "Glext.h" in order to do it properly. You can find one if you do a search for it on the forums. Hopefully that's something that will get updated in the 1.9 branch if it hasn't already... >_>

[Asimov]

Hi all,

I might try linux at some point, but probably on one of my old laptops. Not going to mess up my main computer with a dual booting thing LOL.
Trouble is I have very little time to experiment. Nearly finished writing my knowledge base system for my website, and then I will be back to 3D modelling, because I have a lot of unfinished models that need finishing. Then I might get time to do some more programming at last heh heh. If only I had more time.