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[Zilerrezko]

Sup Forum (Ray William Johnson reference)

I was wondering about getting into scripting and coding and programming like that, and was wondering if there are types of classes that maybe I could get at a community college, or elsewhere. Does anyone know of classes like this? or maybe what ones would be good for games specifically, or even Starfarer specifically.

[icepick37]

I took an "intro to programming class here at school". If you can find one of those that'd be a great start. All programming is the same.

I'd also try to google around and see what you can find as far as java programming tutorials go.

[Durendal5150]

If you mainly want to work with starfarer; then adding ships and such is, thanks to the great community tools and support, about as easy as you're going to get in any game. Maybe we can turn this thread into a little modding class for you.

What you want to know first?

[Zilerrezko]

basics, I'm stupid as far as programming and scripting goes for. First of all what IS scripting/programming.

[Zilerrezko]

I took an "intro to programming class here at school". If you can find one of those that'd be a great start. All programming is the same.

I'd also try to google around and see what you can find as far as java programming tutorials go.

I'll check those out, last I check there wasn't much as far as a "computer applications" class. It may be what I'm looking for, it may be just a facepalmer on the first day.

[Zilerrezko]

found this class at a community college, "Introduction to JavaScript & Server Side Scripting", sound like something I should get into?

[Durendal5150]

basics, I'm stupid as far as programming and scripting goes for. First of all what IS scripting/programming.

That's an interesting question. Basically, programming is writing instructions for a computer on how to do something, and scripting is writing instructions for the program. Learning this stuff is pretty much learning a second language. (Or third, if you're not American.)

[Zilerrezko]

hmm, so how DO you go about scripting or programming? is it like CMD?

[Durendal5150]

hmm, so how DO you go about scripting or programming? is it like CMD?

by CMD I assume you mean the windows console? I suppose you could think of it like that.

But if we're going to talk solely about starfarer, then a lot of what you need to know is self explanatory. Open up any old file in starfarer/starfarercore/data/weapons for instance, and all the functions are well labled. All the actual statistics about guns and ships are inside the properties.csv files in those ships and weapons folders, respectively. With my own mod, outside of using the ship editor and changing the .csv statlines, all I've really done is copy and paste an existing weapon *close* to what I want, then look at what's in there and change what looks like it does something.

[Zilerrezko]

ah, that is very straight forward. But the reason I would like to script and or program for Starfarer is to see if I can tweak a few things to get what I want for my mod, like custom colors and custom bullets, custom... everything I guess. I want to make my mod as unique as possible, that's why I'm trying to hand draw my own designs then put em in pixel by pixel. I hear that it's possible for custom bullets and turrets. (not sure about animations) but I think you get the point, but I think I said it a little harshly for osme reason  sorry

[Durendal5150]

Not harsh at all. And certainly it's a good skill to have.

Anyway, custom bullets and turrets isn't much harder than ships. Draw 'em, slap 'em in there. Good to go. Animations are trickier. I'm still learning to make turrets do things other than rotate.

As for the other things you want to change, that's going well above and beyond my realm of experience.

[Zilerrezko]

hmm, would be cool if we could have torpedos and missiles rotate.

I did talk with Alex, or rather just sent him some junkmail with a bunch of questions in it, and he said something along the lines of adding in later something like green engines and shields, or maybe he will just make it more accessible later down the road. Be awesome to actually to my mod actually get built to something playable, first time "modding" if you couldn't tell haha.

Does animating have anything to do with scripting? don't know if you read my mod post lately but I was thinking of like a missile rack sliding of a hatch and firing like that, something like a James Bond type deal.

[Darloth]

Be aware that JavaScript (which is often used in websites, and you mentioned a course about it) is not the same as Java (which is what Starfarer is written in, and what any mod scripts for Starfarer use).

They are reasonably similar, but if you're not interested in websites too much, I would suggest you learn Java first. I personally believe it's better that way around, though your results may vary.

Some animations use scripting (by which I mean, you tell part of something to move up and left, and something else to move right, and that makes an animation) wheras some just use 'baked' animations (by that I mean someone has just rendered every frame in a graphics program, no actual code involved, and one line that tells the whole thing when to play) but so far Starfarer has no ship animation of either type that I'm aware of.

[Thaago]

If you want to learn programming and have never done any of it before, I strongly recommend you start with Python. It is a fully featured language but is much easier to learn, especially if you've never programmed before. Its also incredibly fast to actually do the programming in and you will need to do far less typing. Search for some beginning tutorials, this one is not bad: http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/Python . Most people still use python 2.x (2.7 is pretty common) but there is a python 3.0 that breaks backwards compatibility - maybe its time to start with that one? I still use 2.7...

It has its own peculiarities (no need to declare data types/it converts data types on the fly, is not compiled but run by an interpreter, does not use brackets but rather whitespace for while/if/class constructs etc etc) but switching from python to another language is easy because all the core concepts are the same between most languages.

If what you want to do is mod starfarer... well... there is cool stuff you can do with scripts that requires some programming knowledge, but most of the game internals are buttoned up away from users, and the other stuff is replacing sprites and graphics or stringing together API lines. Don't get me wrong, its quite hard to make a good mod, but most of it is not programming. In the future there may be more access and once the campaign API is bigger then the scripting for that will become more interesting.

[Zilerrezko]

but most of the game internals are buttoned up away from users, and the other stuff is replacing sprites and graphics or stringing together API lines.

Is this why I can't add green engines, or green shields? or anything "colored", I guess like a custom bullet trail color?

Be aware that JavaScript (which is often used in websites, and you mentioned a course about it) is not the same as Java (which is what Starfarer is written in, and what any mod scripts for Starfarer use).

How would I go about learning Java rather than just a website design? It's nice to learn how to make a website, but My main motive I guess is to mod Starfarer, but if many things are "buttoned up away from users", then this means I'm assuming that there is no way to get at all what I want, unless Alex chooses to allow (I guess) the game to have more modding options.

If you want to learn programming and have never done any of it before, I strongly recommend you start with Python. It is a fully featured language but is much easier to learn, especially if you've never programmed before. Its also incredibly fast to actually do the programming in and you will need to do far less typing. Search for some beginning tutorials, this one is not bad: http://www.swaroopch.com/notes/Python . Most people still use python 2.x (2.7 is pretty common) but there is a python 3.0 that breaks backwards compatibility - maybe its time to start with that one? I still use 2.7...

Interesting, but what does this programming do for me? (sorry if this sounds so blunt, but I'm trying to see what I could use it for. I'm willing to learn, but is it worth it. That's almost the whole point of this post. Again, sorry if this sounds so blunt  )