[PAID] Searching for a programming instructor.

Business and Project Management Discussions
#1

I decided to go ahead and re-write this thread to give the people viewing it in the future a better understanding of what I’m looking for, as I don’t believe my first-post was declaring my intentional gains.

First, I’ll start off with a little background about myself so you know just who you’ll be picking up. My name is Chris and I’m 19 years of age, I’m currently in college attempting to achieve my Major in Computer Science. I’ve been programming for about 6 years now in the Java Language, as-well as a little bit of C++ and C#. I’ve never worked on the graphical side of things when it comes down to programming, so everything that I’ve done has been console based or filling in the logical functionality for an Swing Interface Shell, Needless to say I have a decent understanding of Java.

Or at-least… That’s what I thought until I ventured into graphics. I came in here with my head held high and set some very basic standards for myself. “I want to create a very, very basic isometric type game, where I can place buildings on a flat-land”. This idea can be referenced to the popular game Clash of Clans where you are placing buildings down on an orthogonal map.

I would believe(by using reasonable deduction with my knowledge that I have already) that this game doesn’t check to see if an object can be moved, however checks to see if there is anything inside of the current position that you’re attempting to move to, this of-course would return a boolean variable and either allow you to place the building there or not. Okay, cool… basic understandings… YAY.

So; What exactly am I looking for?
I’m looking for someone to help me understand the core behind a Tile-System and get the above prototype working how I had envisioned. I’m not looking for much. A flat land. A single Selectable building that I can place. There doesn’t even have to be much to the selection system, just something showing me that it’s selected.

I’m willing to pay somebody to help me get to understanding all of this so I can get a basic skeleton completed and study it, that way I can understand exactly what I’m working with and try to create my own game. I can promise you I’m fast to pick things up; However I’m not the type of person that can read an article and then create something. I have to be talking to someone about it, and have it explained to me personally. I need questions to be answered if they arise.

If you’re interested in this, please let me know about how much you would charge.

#2

Why not take some college courses? If you’re willing the pay, why not just make it “legit”? Not like you have to go all the way to a degree, but you can get into a java class (at my college at least) for only $162 + Books.

Sure, the book might be $100, but a good college-level programming textbook is nice to have anyway. :smiley:

#3

I am :wink:
I’m actually in college full time working for a degree in Computer Science; However I’m currently stuck with the pre-req courses.

#4

Quick quip while on the topic of courses: there’s also many free online courses you could take, see Coursera and MIT Opencourseware.

But saying “take a course” doesn’t really help much, without knowing what to take a course about.

This to me sounds like you want to know the basics of translating your ideas to code, i.e. “I want there to be a screen with X and Y happening, but what does that mean in terms of classes/objects/functions, etc?”
Is that correct?

#5

I’ve been awake far too long without sleep to understand exactly what you just said, so excuse me if I come off the wrong way in my reply.

I don’t have any experience with the graphical display of events, I’ve never created a game that required excessive logic before, in-fact, most of the things I’ve ever created have been server-sided applications. I have the basic understands of when to use certain methods, switch-statements, loops, variables, hashmaps, dictionaries, etc. etc.

I just don’t know how to go about getting it on the screen, I guess is what I’m looking at.

I explained in the OP what my goals were, from that I will be able to expand and create something on my own; However my problem with programming when I try to tackle something new is always getting the basics down, once I have the basics I can pretty much take on anything.

EDIT: You guys are talking about all of these courses; However I’m not sure that I’d find a course on Isometric Game-Development :wink:

#6

First thing off of the google search:
Creating Isometric Worlds: A Primer for Game Developers

Also, for graphics work, people here will tell you “use OpenGL, none of that Java2D BS, it’s hopeless!” but I will tell you that I think J2D is great for beginners, in that it tends to be much simpler the OGL, but to each their own.

That being said, there are a neigh on infinite number of basic graphics tutorials (some on this forum!) to get you started. Look (google) around, find what you can, and if there’s a particular thing you can’t figure out, or can’t figure out what to search for, then come back here and we’ll do what we can.
Unless you get lucky and someone takes you up on your tutoring request. :point:

#7

Ah, sounds like you want to learn about game theory pretty much. My best advice is do what we all do when we get stuck around here, head over to the “Newbie Debugging” forum and just show an example of what you’re trying to do, what you have so far, and ask for help!

Guys around here love to help out. I’m more on the graphics designer side of the house than a programmer currently. I’m a fairly competent programmer but I still sometimes find myself asking some oddball theory-related questions I’m a bit fuzzy on or just looking for advice on better ways to execute code.

EDIT: Adding on to what Pizza said; of course look for tutorials or existing helpful material online first. :smiley:

#8

Just a note: Game Theory tends to refer to an advanced branch of mathematics, which actually tends to have little to do with game development.
I’d say he just wants to know about just that: game development. There’s a great community at /r/gamedev to help you out there as well. Check their sidebar for all kinds of info.

#9

I stand corrected. :stuck_out_tongue:

That’s what I get for making up terminology on the fly.

#10

It personally doesn’t bother me if the Tutorials or help I recieve is for OpenGL or Java2D. It’s quite simple to translate from one to the other.

#11

I actually read this entire post before even posting; But it leaves out a bunch of things; I’m one of those people that needs everything explained before I get a grasp of it. He just states that there’s a Tile Class somewhere, but I have no idea what’s in it? Probably an Abstract class that has thins like “GrassTile”, “SandTile” etc that extends it; However I don’t really have the slightest idea. This is why I’m willing to pay someone to help me get started.

#12

Hmmm… Programming is creative, there are many right solutions to any given problem, and all the right solutions have different bugs and limitations. Five people will tell you five different things - some will be quite similar (with telling differences) but some of the things they say will be poles apart. So I’m not sure how much it would benefit you if someone “told” you “exactly” how to do it.

#13

[quote=“CTucker1327,post:1,topic:48030”]
Anyone really skilled and experienced will likely have something better to do and much more profitable means to get money. Besides, many people who are skilled and experienced like to help others for free.

Read books, read tutorials, ask questions or critiques of your code here and you’ll learn at pretty much optimal speed.

#14

I can agree with Grunnt, reading books and tutorials and learning that way is effective (you thoroughly understand the code you write), but it is not efficient.
Looking back on my experience learning OpenGL 1.1 and then realizing the programmable pipeline and OpenGL 2+ existed was not efficient. I spent many months of evenings and weekends trying to learn basic things and fix basic issues that could have been explained to me in much less time.

Don’t rediscover the laws of physics, just to reinvent the wheel, just to create a basic cart. If want a basic cart, go buy a cart or ask someone to make one for you or help show you how to make one.

If a guy is willing to pay for tutelage than more power to him. He has the foresight to understand that graphics programming is a complex maze of topics that can be efficiently learned through teaching.
I enjoy helping people learn :slight_smile: (served as a tutor at university), but I don’t think I am knowledgeable enough in the particular topics the OP is looking for (tile systems, possibly shaders, animation, etc).

#15

That’s a reasonable question for the Newbie area.

How about starting with this as a preliminary answer: define your Tile class with one property, an instance variable that holds the TerrainType housed in that area, and the related getters/setters.

TerrainType can also be a single class. It could hold a reference to the graphic that needs to be drawn. You make as many of them as are needed so that you have one of each type of terrain in your world. Then, reuse them as you assign them to the Tile class.

Then, make a 2D array of these Tiles, and implement the translation algorithms that the article employs to map X,Y mouse locations to the internal representation.

The render method for the world would inspect the array of Tile, get each TerrainType for that Tile, and employ the translation algorithm to determine where to draw.

Will that get you rolling? Further questions can be posted at the Newbie forum. If you want to mail me a check, though, I’ll be happy to provide a name and address. :wink:

I can certainly relate to the sentiment of wanting to have someone to just explain things, I must admit. Have been tempted to ask for tutoring services more than a couple times myself.