Possibility of a tutorial book on Construct

Has newt been hacked ? Looks dodgy!

Anyway here's a mockup i made of the cover.Not the real one but my Idea of one.

<img src="http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7658043/bookcov1.jpg">

Scirra Any Construct pros who would like to contribute their skill by writing a book on construct? Contact:

http://www.packtpub.com/

Interesting....well I would hope that this guy would work something out monetary wise to folks doing the work. Otherwise I see no point in helping somebody out make money for only them.

scidave I got the documents from newton and they do apparently pay for The work you do.But the Contract idea?. I have to go over it with my lawyers 1st before i do anything , Even if i do it for free.

It probably would've been a good idea for them to mention that they're paying a royalty in their first post.

Anyway, in my opinion they're going to need more than one writer or at least another "battle-tested" Construct user for this. Firstly because of time constraints, but the other reason is that most of the time the most knowledgeable people in any field or software category tend to not be able to write tutorials that beginners will be most able to understand, and since it's not likely that the publishing company uses Construct heavily they'd need another critical eye who does use Construct to tell them if the head author is making sense in a reasonable way.

Considering that the stuff being done with Construct by everyone who uses it is in an increasingly stable but still highly developmental phase, it's highly unlikely that one person will know all the best practices and alternative methods that a beginner would need to have clearly explained in order to use the program.

It'll be interesting to see what direction they take.

Well i think the authors of Construct should have written concise tutorials before releasing the application.Like game maker's apprentice written by the two authors who made game maker.And even the help files that game maker 8.0 has are very detailed.It took me only a week to create games using the gml language only.

Hopefully Construct 2 will have better and more detailed tutorials and examples.Raymond Hooks has a good point there but why is everyone always so sceptical when someone wants to do something which would benefit most beginner users off Construct? .Find out more by actually e-mailing newton and getting the detailed document's.These imo's does not help anyone , get the facts straight.

Well i think the authors of Construct should have written concise tutorials before releasing the application.Like game maker's apprentice written by the two authors who made game maker.And even the help files that game maker 8.0 has are very detailed.It took me only a week to create games using the gml language only.

Hopefully Construct 2 will have better and more detailed tutorials and examples.Raymond Hooks has a good point there but why is everyone always so sceptical when someone wants to do something which would benefit most beginner users off Construct? .Find out more by actually e-mailing newton and getting the detailed document's.These imo's does not help anyone , get the facts straight.

I'd say the reason why nobody initially needed any tutorials for Construct Classic at first is because it's so close to Clickteam products in usage, and everyone who knew about it back then migrated over from using them. So we already knew the basics of what we were doing.

In fact, it's definitely worth downloading the demos of their products just to look at their tutorials. They have so many since the community is alot larger (it's older, and has more finished games made with their tools).

Just a reminder we recently renamed Construct to Construct Classic, so to avoid confusion the book should probably have "Construct Classic" in the title.

Hey Ashley,

Thanks for letting us know that. This is really vital and it could have created a lot of misunderstanding.

Thanks a lot.

—

> Scirra Any Construct pros who would like to contribute their skill by writing a book on construct? Contact:

>

> http://www.packtpub.com/

>

Interesting....well I would hope that this guy would work something out monetary wise to folks doing the work. Otherwise I see no point in helping somebody out make money for only them.

Hi to all,

For starters let me assure you that "newton" has not been hacked and neither am I a bot.

About the tweet, it is part of our search. Since we could not get in touch with anyone who seemed interested in writing this book, we reached out through Twitter and the Forums.

I hope the above clear the air about the tweets.

The second issue is about monetary gain. As has already been mentioned, we pay a royalty to every author. Even further, Packt has an obligation to the open source community and a yearly contribution is made to open source.

Read about our origins http://www.packtpub.com/about-us

our commitment to opensource http://www.packtpub.com/open-source

I do hope this assures all about our sincerity and loyalty to the open source community and I do hope we can work for the construct community too.

—

Hi Again

When I tried to nudge this post into activity, I did not know that I would stir such a hornet's nest.

For starters for those who have not figured it out, I am not "newt". He is a unique and individual person unto himself. Neither have I hacked his account. I don't think I could do that even if I wanted to.

It probably would've been a good idea for them to mention that they're paying a royalty in their first post.

We usually don't mention the royalty directly as it attracts the wrong people. Since we pay the royalty in advance, from past experience we have noticed that many authors take the advance and disappear. Its pointless trying to pursue the matter with them so we leave it at that.

Instead we try and work with authors who do it not for the money but for the contribution they make to the community. (refer DravenX) Thus we get dedicated authors who are also serious about the technology. The royalty help them too.

Anyway, in my opinion they're going to need more than one writer or at least another "battle-tested" Construct user for this. Firstly because of time constraints, but the other reason is that most of the time the most knowledgeable people in any field or software category tend to not be able to write tutorials that beginners will be most able to understand, and since it's not likely that the publishing company uses Construct heavily they'd need another critical eye who does use Construct to tell them if the head author is making sense in a reasonable way.

Considering that the stuff being done with Construct by everyone who uses it is in an increasingly stable but still highly developmental phase, it's highly unlikely that one person will know all the best practices and alternative methods that a beginner would need to have clearly explained in order to use the program.

Yes Raymond, you are right here. I do agree that we need various viewpoints and other pros who can help the authors. If you notice MrMiller's post, he too mentions the same concerns and we are taking these views seriously. We plan to have experienced reviewers for this book who will work side by side with the author.

We want to do justice to the Construct Community and to the Engine.

—

Hey guys,

I've been in touch with them about making a contribution. You can bet that I'll be sure to report back here on exactly how things have gone, very soon...

Since we pay the royalty in advance, from past experience we have noticed that many authors take the advance and disappear. Its pointless trying to pursue the matter with them so we leave it at that.

Well, then that's a not a good business practice. In a situation where you're dealing mostly in the cyber world and never actually meeting the authors, It would make more sense to pay based on milestones (i.e. complete and submit X amount of work, then get paid X amount, etc).

Yes Raymond, you are right here. I do agree that we need various viewpoints and other pros who can help the authors. If you notice MrMiller's post, he too mentions the same concerns and we are taking these views seriously. We plan to have experienced reviewers for this book who will work side by side with the author.

Time will tell how seriously the advice has been taken.

I'm looking forward to what MrMiller has to say about his interaction with you guys. It's my understanding from some conversations he and I have had by PM and some links he's shown me, he's been a consultant and contributor for a number of big name gaming industry projects over the years, much bigger than Packt (no offense intended). Based on that, it would seem like a no-brainer to get him involved somehow.

I have some writing experience as a freelance reporter for ExperienceGaming.com. It was a Korean site that is dead now, but it was a great experience! I got access to a lot of things that the public didn't even know existed, and I was sent to several conventions over the course of a year or so.

I've also been using Construct for about two or three years now - having developed several plugins in the process. I am also the sole developer of one of Construct's most ambitious projects - Void Runner: an infinite universe down to the rocks on planetary surfaces, and the wiring in spaceship interiors. Scirra even tweeted the early prototype of it! I contributed a little bit to Construct 2's early plugin efforts, but not too much. I'm very loyal to Construct Classic, and I'll be honest - it's primarily because I've invested so much time in Void Runner.

I'd like to consider that "battle tested". I'd be interested in helping out with this. Construct really does need more documentation, and any publicity for it would be awesome. PM me with some more details if you're interested.

newton : Count me out ,I don't want to Contribute anything anymore.Im only getting insults when i try to give an opinion about something on these forums.Some even told me that im stupid and know nothing about Construct.Well i have been doing programming and indie games for over 10 years now so Construct is a synch to work with.I even made plugin's for Construct which i will never release because of these insults i get.

They think it's funny to insult people and calling them trolls etc.I have never experienced this on other indie forum's.Sorry for dropping you this way , But i don't want to do anything when im being insulted this way.

They will probably have something clever to say about this now.I tried to redeem myself of the past mistakes i made on these forum's but they just cannot seem to let the past go.

Once again , I am truly sorry.

Regards : DravenX

Im only getting insults when i try to give an opinion about something on these forums.Some even told me that im stupid and know nothing about Construct.

DravenX.. I'm pretty sure 99% of the people here on the Construct forums welcome your input. You have to have a little bit of a thick skin when it comes to the internet because there is always going to be somebody that will piss you off (and you will piss somebody else off whether you intended to or not). You can expect that the more opinionated you get the more "interesting" conversation will result.

You can either let it bother you or ignore it. Life is too short to worry about what a few people say that you will never meet....