WHY AREN'T THERE MORE TUTORIALS ON THE BASICS?

I contributed my part to the Make WIP Happy Foundation's Help New Third-World Game Developers fund.

Edit:
Booleans, Variables, Constants, Arrays, and using them in Conditional Branches

What you really need to know in order to start using an RPG maker is switches, variables and conditional branches. Once you understand them you have what you need to make something resembling a game. Now you can make it so that your game actually progresses somewhere, e.g. you kill someone and that someone then stays dead.

Not everyone finds them intuitive. It's fairly common that people asks "what does switches do?" Unlike say "Transfer Player," switched doesn't do anything on their own and requires conditional branches to have any effect. I believe that some new RPG maker users searches for a quick and immediate use for switched just like the "Transfer Player" command has and then gets confused when they can't find any. However, once someone understand what switches does he/she is in a good position to start creating something. After that a tutorial acting mostly as a reference to what the various event commands does should suffice for quite a while and let him/her learn the program at his/her own phase.

That said, a tutorial which teaches a newbie the basics is not very useful if the newbie doesn't know the tutorial does exactly that. We know how important switches and variables are. A newbie having trouble with the program could see a tutorial titled "Switches and Variables" and then go "let's first search for something that teaches me the basics".

I can not explain it. I remember grasping what switches and variables was for more or less immediately. However, I have noticed that some don't.

I have also noticed that not everyone fully grasps the fact that computer programs aren't sentient. If you ask people if computers are sentient, almost everyone will answer no, yet some of those will still try stuff that could only work if the computer was sentient. Some people just don't "understand" computers as well as others.

It takes time.

post=149372
Aten: Those are good, but not terribly accessible for people. You can't just pick out a random locker and find them. They'd need to get put into the site tutorial system.

Ok, I submitted them. TBH I forgot all about the tutorial/article submission thing.

I am currently working on a guide for complete RM2K/3 noobs. It will cover the basics (switches, variables, message types, etc.) needed for one to create a project with ease.

I hope to get it completed soon though, I seem to be more busy in the summer than in the school year.

Fist pump.

post=149415

post=149402
I might write a beginners' article on general game design principles.

These have been covered numerous times. The problem is that there are very few tutorials on APPLICATION rather than THEORY. A tutorial usually has a clear goal on what you are accomplishing "Learn to Create an IRC Chat Widget on your Website", is a tutorial. "The Benefits of Having an IRC Chat Widget on your Website" isn't a tutorial.

post=149213
Well? I was just messaged by a "noob" who was trying to get started with RPG Maker VX. And we don't have a single damn tutorial for them to learn from. Nothing explaining switches, tutorials, events, etc. Things that people would need to know to make a game.

And you guys wonder why we have people making such incompetent garbage.

Well I thought it would cover what you bolded but I see what you mean. I'm writing something right now though.

Huh?