Author Spring RTS Book-Packt Publishing

[Spawn_Retard]

just reasure me this book wont happen, right?

[knorke]

the Wiki's actually pretty complete atm, I think.

wat. maybe for people who modded for TA its easy to get into because they only have to look up whats different.
but afaik there is still no guide how to make a simple mod with a simple lua animated unit. and even to make a half-sunk-in-ground crashes game when firing tank there were so many stupid obstacles its not funny. like upspring fucks up the textures and ingame they are good. its absurd what problems there are.
if someone really wants to make a documentation about spring, make a well commentated sample mod.
And upload it somewhere and link it in the wiki. Not some mysterious file that everybody on the lobby has heard about but nobody has ever seen and then you get some rapidshare link and inside is some compilled script from this TA script language and its not human readable and totally useless.

also the last pages of the book should be stencils for papercut models.

[Gota]

With how newbie friendly spring is It would be appropriate if the book was written using the Predator's Language.

[Argh]

just reasure me this book wont happen, right?

Why?

wat. maybe for people who modded for TA its easy to get into because they only have to look up whats different.

I barely did any TA modding at all, and it wasn't much trouble, tbh. If I had to do it now, it'd be easier- there's a lot more documentation available, and many more people who know how to use the tools and answer questions.

if someone really wants to make a documentation about spring, make a well commentated sample mod.

I thought that was what FLOZi's project was all about. So, how can it be made more helpful?

even to make a half-sunk-in-ground crashes game when firing tank there were so many stupid obstacles its not funny. like upspring fucks up the textures and ingame they are good. its absurd what problems there are.

UpSpring reversing textures isn't exactly the end of the world. And if you used DDS, like you should, you wouldn't have that problem, anyhow.

I guess I need to make an article describing how to convert your textures to DDS with Compressionator or something, for all of the people out there who can't be bothered to learn how to deal with export plugins for GIMP / Photoshop.




Overall, I guess my final analysis is that if the materials available aren't doing the job, then we need to talk about why, and what is really needed. I'm surprised people find this stuff really hard going; then again, I hardly needed any documentation to figure out UpSpring in the first place, things like DDS weren't ever mysterious, etc.

This is one of the reasons why a book might actually be useful; in a book, the author could write detailed, step-by-step walkthroughs, etc.- the kinds of materials that people who aren't getting paid aren't going to do.

[Wartender]

phew, that was quite a read. i should stop lurking in threads that i don't understand xD

as far as the wiki/book issue, how about the best of both worlds?
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

as an example, take http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro

i learned almost everything i know about blender from here, most things are documented and up-to-date, and i keep looking at it for tips. It doesn't have to be made by one person, anyone can edit it.

you don't get money though.

of course, given that i don't really understand this thread much, i could be posting something totally irrelevant/useless. Well, i tried.

[Argh]

Just looking at Blender: Noob to Pro... this is my take.

While it's free, and maintained by a much larger userbase than Spring has... it has the same problems our Wiki does. The information isn't organized around workflow very much, and it has a lot of random information put in odd places.

One of the things I'm doing now is looking at the flow of the current information; just a quick look showed me that a lot of information wasn't presented very efficiently at all. After looking at that, with nub-vision on, I can better understand Knorke's complaints- the information's all jumbled, there are a few important things missing... and some of it's just plain wrong.

[SinbadEV]

My problem with the book deal comes down to:

I doubt anyone would pay anyone enough for the amount of work required to prepare a book like this...

The book IS writable in my opinion... and if done right would be at least as useful as an ASP.NET 2.0 book to an ASP.NET 3.5 developer... but there is no way, unless Packt does some REALLY AWESOME marketing and tricks a bunch of those "I want to make an RTS game" kids the same way those "How to build a Mame arcade machine" kids have been hooked...

I really kinda like the idea of a spring wikibook...

[AF]

You do remember Packt is asking us to do all the work and hand them a free book? We get the same benefits from having a very good set of documentation on this site here, and its free for our end users.

I would deem having the best piece of documentation available having a price tag on it a disaster. Especially if it was the community who wrote it.

[AF]

And please, if your going to go on a tutorial writting rampage, do it on the wiki or blogs etc, dont do it on the forums. The editing tools for forum posts aren't good, and the whole setup makes for very poor readability. Its also counterintuitive. When you go to a site, you dont assume the tutorials are stickies in forum threads, you expect them to be with all the other stuff, aka 'development' up at the top

[Spawn_Retard]

IF this book goes ahead, i expect everyone here to atleast get a free copy.

[SinbadEV]

We totally should have a documentation/tutorial rampage... I think, with a little bit of organization and a few dedicated volunteers, the existing documentation could be sifted through and refined to reasonable place for interested parties to find what they need... not volunteering myself... I would, except I'm chronically lazy and all... but if it IS to be done, where would the best place to do it be?

I'm thinking the existing wiki is such a mess it's probably not the best place... what about actually starting a "wikibook"... step one would be to build a rough outline and then break it down into workable sections.

[1v0ry_k1ng]

hay guys, can i has into that private forum?/

[CarRepairer]

Once the SpringRTS book is published, wikipedia trolls won't have an excuse to delete our entry. I think.

[KaiserJ]

but without the book, how will you know if sefidel ever gets the sandwich/

[AF]

Its STILL not public?

[Wartender]

holy crap, i just realized the tutorial i was following for blender was from these guys. lol.
http://www.packtpub.com/article/creatin ... in-blender
</sort of on topic>

[SwiftSpear]

What rights do we have over the content the book authors produce? Can they host their contributions online in a wiki for us if they'd like to? In alot of ways I see alot of good things coming out of a project like this taken on by 1 or more members of the spring community, but if all content for the book has to be produced exclusively for the book it could suck up alot of time from the people who might like to produce information to be digitally distributed as well...

Regardless, ultimately I think the decision should be made by the author candidates, not the nay sayers or theory speak. This kind of a project, as someone with a bit of a passion for writing, really excites me.

[Tobi]

Regardless, ultimately I think the decision should be made by the author candidates, not the nay sayers or theory speak.

This.

Also, related post: http://springrts.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=22372

[ushai]

I am Usha Iyer, the Acquisition editor of this book. This book is not dull theory and is targeted at beginners who know nothing about spring. The book will teach them practically through building a game with Spring RTS. The principle here is 'learning by doing' and will involve lot of illustration screenshots.
Please feel free to contact me at ushai@packtpub.com if you are interested in authoring this book.

[Hobo Joe]

I'm still amazed this is going forward. It doesn't make any sense. First of all, Spring is not a very mature project, not to say that it's not good software, but it still has more than its fair share of holes and gimmicks, and that means its subject to quick changes, which could make any portion of an instruction book completely obsolete. Second, the developmental process is... not exactly simple. There are a lot of hoops that have to be jumped through to get everything working, things aren't all laid out in a logical fashion, etc.

But most obviously, Spring is small - very small. There's what, maybe 1500 regular players? 3000 semi-regulars? That's a pretty small number and that's an optimistic estimate. How many of those people are at all interested in development? 5%? 10%? Probably even less. Then considering the wiki, although it has holes, has a lot of the information needed, certainly enough to get someone started with developing for Spring, why would someone buy a book? How would a book make enough money off of this community to pay for itself? It would take a huge amount of time for whoever was writing the book, and they would PROBABLY never get paid for it, which means they might as well just write for the wiki, that way more people will read it rather than someone else making money off of their work.



If someone actually wants to do it, well more power to them. I just think it's a little(read:way way way) too ambitious and optimistic and pretty much a waste of time.