21 Dec, 2009, Tyche wrote in the 21st comment:
Votes: 0
Dubstack said:
The code does seem to be pretty understandable I would most likely have a hard time with the classes and adding a change class system and skills other than that I think I can pretty much manage the code. I'm not saying all of you are fond of teaching but hey anyone can grab a book and read it and know every thing in it but whats the point if you don't know how to use what you have learned. That is what am asking to learn, not the hey how you doing this the world of coding am asking for someone to teach me how it all works not what book with a theory, or something of that nature. I'm not saying you can't read the book and know how to do it either am just saying I have read a few chapter on how to code and most of it I don't understand but I beat if someone would show me it be a little simpler. (Showing is not doing)


Ah but showing really takes more effort than doing. But I know what you mean about learning to code from tutorials and books not having an immediate application to a particular task (i.e. adding classes to a mud). There are various How-to guides and FAQs to ROM and Smaug which deal with some common changes. You might get up to speed faster doing both, reading the how-to guides even if they aren't the exact same version of DikuMud you are using AND walking through C tutorials.

Howto Guides:
http://www.circlemud.org/cdp/
http://www.hypercube.org/tess/rom/faq/in...
http://www.gammon.com.au/scripts/showfaq...
http://www.cs.utk.edu/~london/smaug/
http://www.snible.org/mud/mudstart.html
21 Dec, 2009, Tonitrus wrote in the 22nd comment:
Votes: 0
Dubstack said:
The code does seem to be pretty understandable I would most likely have a hard time with the classes and adding a change class system and skills other than that I think I can pretty much manage the code.

I don't know what you mean by a "Change Class System", but this probably fairly related to the codebase you are using. I hacked around on Smaug for years before I finally began to grasp the underlying organization of it and learn where to go to look for specific things or to be able to change things. That wasn't even a coding issue, once I was able to find the code I was looking for, it was a lot easier. I did this mostly without help, by the way, and probably without the intelligent use of grep, because after it occured to me that grep exists for finding needles in haystacks, everything was a lot simpler. Anyway, once you grasp the underlying organization of the codebase that you are using, things that seemed impossible before often become quite trivial. I think what I would recommend is setting up a codebase for you to play with. Go find a bunch of snippets related to areas that interest you. Add them, see how they work. If it breaks, who cares, delete it and add snippets to a new codebase. Make sure you're not using this as your official project codebase while you still don't know what you're doing unless you have good versioning control. (Actually, I don't recommend ever using anything as your official project codebase without versioning control. I once accidentally deleted my entire fight.c file after adding several hundred lines of changes.)

Likewise, if you want to add a feature, see if you can find a similar feature. For 90% of the time I messed with Smaug, I didn't understand pointers. I knew what they were as a concept, but in actual application of them, I didn't understand them, so I hacked similar features into what I wanted. Here is an affects system. I want spell preparation. Same idea, slightly different application. So I just copied the affects system into a new spell preparation system and cut out irrelevent features and added some stuff I needed.

If you're not going to take a class, as has been suggested, then you should try this approach. Just reading a book might help you, but it didn't help me. I learned C and some of C++ sometime around 2000, but couldn't do anything vaguely resembling intelligent programming until 2007 or 2008, because I had just read the book to learn the concepts without ever bothering to learn the underlying mindset. Once you've got the mindset down, everything becomes much, much easier.

After messing with a few decent snippets, learn to use grep. Look through the header files for constants that interest you. In stock Smaug, you'll see stuff like CLASS_THIEF, CLASS_MAGE, and so on. Just grep for them, then check the matches you get. Read around a bit for context. You can learn a lot about the code that way. There's also a nice "walkthrough" of Smaug that goes through the general code organization of how Smaug loads up and processes information. It's a bit like homework, but if you end up getting more involved with Smaug, it should be quite useful.

Bonus suggestion: You'll probably not want to try to code any feature that affects characters before they are fully logged into the world, or you'll have to fight nanny(), the final boss of Smaug.
21 Dec, 2009, David Haley wrote in the 23rd comment:
Votes: 0
Tonitrus said:
Just reading a book might help you, but it didn't help me. I learned C and some of C++ sometime around 2000, but couldn't do anything vaguely resembling intelligent programming until 2007 or 2008, because I had just read the book to learn the concepts without ever bothering to learn the underlying mindset. Once you've got the mindset down, everything becomes much, much easier.

For what it's worth, I don't think anybody suggesting books is saying that you would read them, then sit on a rock and meditate for a while, and emerge a zen-coding-master. You obviously have to practice what you are learning. The thing is that most people aren't patient enough to practice on small things first, and so will read the book and then try to write a whole MUD from scratch and fail miserably, and conclude that learning from books isn't good. Obviously it's not, if that's the approach you take! To use an analogy: don't read the manual on running marathons, and then try to run a marathon without bothering to try out walking or even small runs at a time.

Start small, or you will (a) waste time on futile efforts, (b) get very frustrated and give up, or some combination of the two.

Dubstack, I would note that several people have shown interest in helping you get started, so as has been said a lot of people are willing to help you along the way. It's just that you're not going to find somebody who will sit down and show you every step of every process along the way.
22 Dec, 2009, Confuto wrote in the 24th comment:
Votes: 0
We've already seen how this ends, people. The guy wants to be able to program, he doesn't want to learn. Fair enough, but you don't get the former without the latter, and from what I've seen, he's not actually willing to put the effort in - he wants someone to do it for him.
22 Dec, 2009, Runter wrote in the 25th comment:
Votes: 0
DH said:
For what it's worth, I don't think anybody suggesting books is saying that you would read them, then sit on a rock and meditate for a while, and emerge a zen-coding-master. You obviously have to practice what you are learning. The thing is that most people aren't patient enough to practice on small things first, and so will read the book and then try to write a whole MUD from scratch and fail miserably, and conclude that learning from books isn't good. Obviously it's not, if that's the approach you take! To use an analogy: don't read the manual on running marathons, and then try to run a marathon without bothering to try out walking or even small runs at a time.


In my experience it's best to read a chapter, do the exercises or make up your own, then go to the next. It's just too much information to take in without reinforcing. Trying to read (and often speed read) through a book and actually retain all of the information is difficult for us average people. We actually have work hard—Know well what leads you forward and what holds you back.
22 Dec, 2009, Abel wrote in the 26th comment:
Votes: 0
Perhaps this might be of use – some people have raved about how it helped them start out.
http://www.reddit.com/r/carlhprogramming...

Also, I find it hard to believe I didn't have an account here already. Must've had a different account name. :lol:
22 Dec, 2009, JohnnyStarr wrote in the 27th comment:
Votes: 0
From another angle:
If you wanted to learn bad enough, you would just make it happen. I wanted so much to learn my first downloaded copy of
ROM about 3 years ago. But I new that it was just too much for me to take on without teaching myself how to really program first.
Believe it or not, but I didn't look to hard on the net for a mud programming community, mainly because I didn't think one existed!
Once I found this place about 2 years later, I took it upon myself to step up and get my hands dirty. Now, with a little help from these guys,
I'm involved in some exciting stuff. I didn't take any classes (although I'm sure I would know more now if I did), I bought some great books
and I made it happen. Specific questions are partially what this forum is all about. The people who make great games, love to learn. Do you love
learning new things? Or do you want to just be the god of some game?
22 Dec, 2009, Dubstack wrote in the 28th comment:
Votes: 0
Thank you all for the URL you give out that will help me long the way. Yeah hey I my not know much about coding and me getting books to do coding is kind of hard I live in a country as place lol library ain't filled with "books" (Its not the video/movie store dicks) But am sure I could learn something if I posted the right questions.
22 Dec, 2009, Kayle wrote in the 29th comment:
Votes: 0
Dubstack said:
Thank you all for the URL you give out that will help me long the way. Yeah hey I my not know much about coding and me getting books to do coding is kind of hard I live in a country as place lol library ain't filled with "books" (Its not the video/movie store dicks) But am sure I could learn something if I posted the right questions.


Lol.

A library generally is filled with books. That's kind of the definition of library.

Miriam-Webster Online Dictionary said:
Main Entry: library
Pronunciation: \?l?-?brer-?, -?bre-r?; British usually & US sometimes -br?r-?; US sometimes -br?, -?ber-?, -?be-r?\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural libraries
Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French librarie, Medieval Latin librarium, from Latin, neuter of librarius of books, from libr-, liber inner bark, rind, book
Date: 14th century

1 a : a place in which literary, musical, artistic, or reference materials (as books, manuscripts, recordings, or films) are kept for use but not for sale b : a collection of such materials
2 a : a collection resembling or suggesting a library b : morgue 2
3 a : a series of related books issued by a publisher b : a collection of publications on the same subject
4 : a collection of cloned DNA fragments that are maintained in a suitable cellular environment and that usually represent the genetic material of a particular organism or tissue
usage While the pronunciation \?l?-?brer-?\ is the most frequent variant in the United States, the other variants are not uncommon. The contraction \?l?-br?\ and the dissimilated form \?l?-?ber-?\ result from the relative difficulty of repeating \r\ in the same syllable or successive syllables; our files contain citations for these variants from educated speakers, including college presidents and professors, as well as with somewhat greater frequency from less educated speakers.
22 Dec, 2009, Twisol wrote in the 30th comment:
Votes: 0
22 Dec, 2009, Zeno wrote in the 31st comment:
Votes: 0
Quote
(Its not the video/movie store dicks

What is this I don't even
22 Dec, 2009, JohnnyStarr wrote in the 32nd comment:
Votes: 0
Dubstack said:
Thank you all for the URL you give out that will help me long the way. Yeah hey I my not know much about coding and me getting books to do coding is kind of hard I live in a country as place lol library ain't filled with "books" (Its not the video/movie store dicks) But am sure I could learn something if I posted the right questions.

Rubbish! If you can post on Mudbytes, you can buy on Amazon.
24 Dec, 2009, Fizban wrote in the 33rd comment:
Votes: 0
JohnnyStarr said:
Dubstack said:
Thank you all for the URL you give out that will help me long the way. Yeah hey I my not know much about coding and me getting books to do coding is kind of hard I live in a country as place lol library ain't filled with "books" (Its not the video/movie store dicks) But am sure I could learn something if I posted the right questions.

Rubbish! If you can post on Mudbytes, you can buy on Amazon.


Assuming his unwillingness to learn carries into the rest of his life he is likely asking people what size they would like their #3's, as such, no, he can't afford to buy off Amazon.
24 Dec, 2009, Orrin wrote in the 34th comment:
Votes: 0
Can we avoid any personal remarks please.
26 May, 2010, JohnnyStarr wrote in the 35th comment:
Votes: 0
Oh no, we were all so happy with this thread behind us :sad:
20.0/35