OpenBOR Beginner's Course

Digital Brilliance Hour

Digital Brilliance Hour

Active member
Hello All,

I have finally been able to start uploading our Beginner Course for OpenBOR. I've also noticed other tutorials that focused more on the asset creation, which is AWESOME. This course really focused more on understanding the mechanics of OpenBOR in a very plain way, so that people understand the fundamentals. This was extracted from a curriculum that was built for teens so that they could start to understand the fundamentals of game development without getting too technical yet. It's more about exposing them to the subject that's easy to digest. And because we've been having great results, we extracted the OpenBOR portions to help anyone else who really just wants to understand OpenBOR for someone who really isn't all that technical yet with hopes of bringing excitement to wanting to do more and know more.

We will be updating this list each week(more will be added midweek) and other higher levels of the course will be coming soon:

 
Fantastic work Digital Brilliance Hour. Very professional, well put together, and just great all round. I really like that you've done your homework too. Most tutorials tend to be a rehash of outdated or factually incorrect information.

The only thing I would note is you might want to mention the folder layout of levels, Bgs, Chars, etc. is not a requirement. Only the following items are hard coded:

  • Text file names in the main data folder (models.txt, video.txt, etc.).
  • Global items like fonts and the go arrow in Sprites folder.
  • The global music tracks. If not found, the engine simply won't play them.
  • Some of the global sound effects in Sounds folder. Note these are not strictly required, but the engine will throw alerts in the log if it can't find them. Tip: You can (and probably should) replace them with blank sound files so you can use your own elsewhere.
  • The global script events in Scripts folder like update.c, keyall.c, and so on. These obviously aren't required, they just aren't run if not found.

Other than that, you are free to name and organize items, sub-folders, and such however you see fit. You could put custom scripts in a folder named mickey_mouse, your model assets in my_game_is_awesome, or anything else that suits your fancy. :)

Just a couple of other things in case you aren't aware:

If there is a data folder in same directory as the engine, OpenBOR loads from both the .pak file AND data folder, not just one or the other. In any conflict the data folder has priority, allowing you to test changes and develop on modules that are already packed up.

Unlike models, levels are reloaded every time you start them. This means you can make changes to a level design while the game is running and you'll see them the very next time you play that level. It's possible to do this with models too, but it's not the default behavior.

DC
 
Damon Caskey said:
Fantastic work Digital Brilliance Hour. Very professional, well put together, and just great all round. I really like that you've done your homework too. Most tutorials tend to be a rehash of outdated or factually incorrect information.

The only thing I would note is you might want to mention the folder layout of levels, Bgs, Chars, etc. is not a requirement. Only the following items are hard coded:

  • Text file names in the main data folder (models.txt, video.txt, etc.).
  • Some of the global sound effects in Sounds folder. Note these are not strictly required, but the engine will throw alerts in the log if it can't find them. Tip: You can (and probably should) replace them with blank sound files so you can use your own elsewhere.
  • The global script events in Scripts folder like update.c, keyall.c, and so on. These obviously aren't required, they just aren't run if not found.

Other than that, you are free to name and organize items, sub-folders, and such however you see fit. You could put custom scripts in a folder named mickey_mouse, your model assets in my_game_is_awesome, or anything else that suits your fancy. :)

One other thing just in case you aren't aware, if there is a data folder in same directory as the engine, OpenBOR loads from both the .pak file AND data folder, not just one or the other. In any conflict the data folder has priority, allowing you to test changes and develop on modules that are already packed up.

DC
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This is SUPER SUPER HELPFUL. I didn't know about the folder structures, I thought they had to be named like that. Wow that really opens up a lot for me. Wow. I'll definitely make sure to add this at least in the intermediate course then. Yeah that's huge.
 
Digital Brilliance Hour said:
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Glad to help Digital Brilliance Hour, though I did miss a couple of tiems - music folder and sprites folder. IIRC, there are a couple of hard coded music file paths too (the intro music I believe). No big if they aren't found though, the engine just won't play them. I also added a note about loading levels. The sprites folder is hard coded for fonts, so that one there's no getting around. Still, that leaves you a massive amount of freedom otherwise.

DC
 
Damon Caskey said:
Digital Brilliance Hour said:
...
Click to expand...

Glad to help Digital Brilliance Hour, though I did miss a couple of tiems - music folder and sprites folder. IIRC, there are a couple of hard coded music file paths too (the intro music I believe). No big if they aren't found though, the engine just won't play them. I also added a note about loading levels. The sprites folder is hard coded for fonts, so that one there's no getting around. Still, that leaves you a massive amount of freedom otherwise.

DC
Click to expand...

Yeah I agree, and that all makes sense too
 
I watched the YouTube free beginner tutorial and it was awesome, great explanations, good production quality.

I paid $5 to join the online course, unfortunately, there was no new material beyond the beginner's course on YouTube available. I don't regret paying the $5, They provide a nice beginner's package with all the tools you need. I did learn from it, but I hope to see more content in the future.
 
hamayaz said:
I watched the YouTube free beginner tutorial and it was awesome, great explanations, good production quality.

I paid $5 to join the online course, unfortunately, there was no new material beyond the beginner's course on YouTube available. I don't regret paying the $5, They provide a nice beginner's package with all the tools you need. I did learn from it, but I hope to see more content in the future.
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Hi Hamadan, yea the $5 is really for the community which focuses on both game development and music production(we just use OpenBOR to teach the topic), the assets tied to the tutorials, and the additional courses coming soon. It’s really more for the extras that I couldn’t really do on YT. And FYI the intermediate course is coming in oct. the advance course coming in dec. more content is def coming. Thank you for your feedback on this!
 
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