Hello Subeta World!

I haven't been here very long, but alas am addicted. As such I figured I should offer my knowledge! (....and get into the blue building...) A little about me: (Brag time:) I have a Master's degree in computer science, focusing on algorithms and gaming. During my 5 years of schooling, I was a Teaching Assistant in the computer science department for 3 years! I like teaching, and miss it and have lots of free time, so I'm gonna try and teach here! That said, I am terrible at all things design, sorry :) Otherwise I've taught all level of technical down to basic HTML up to complicated artificial intelligence.

So please, ask me anything about computers and tech! Don't limit yourself to web either! Learning computer logic transcends any specific computer language! Some examples! What is recursion? How can I code something as complicated as recursion?? What is the state of AI in the world today? How can i make a game in HTML! How can i do anything i want using the wonders of computers!?

you get the point...

So please friends, let me share my knowledge! <3

Okay, here's a question for you:

I've been thinking about making a simple online game that teaches students about Russian verbs of motion which are pretty complicated for most English speakers. The premise would be something like a rover on a planet, and you have to navigate it to the right spot for some contrived reason using the verbs of motion as a command. It would kind of be reminiscent of what I think they used to call text-based games and choose-your-own-adventure books.

I'm kind of the opposite of you, in that I'm self-taught and I know enough html/css to jerry-rig some web design, but I don't have any official knowledge of things.

How would you recommend going about designing the above game? I know I could do something simple with pre-designed links and pages written for every scenario, but is there a better way?

And maybe, is there a way that the game could keep track of what words a person has the most trouble with? This is currently beyond my skill/knowledge, but if there would be a simple way to do this, it'd be very useful.

I can't tell you how to design the game persay. But I can definitely help a little! First HTML5 added these wonderful things called Canvases (Explanation/Tutorial: https://www.w3schools.com/html/html5_canvas.asp ). Canvases give a lot of freedom and it's pretty easy to understand, and right now I would consider them the best way to make the front end of web games. For now, there is no reason to make a full back end, that can come later. I would recommend Javascript for handling logic and math for the time. Start with base javascript ( https://www.w3schools.com/js/default.asp )[w3schools is really nice].

As far as tracking what words a person is struggling with, Javascript has that power, and more advanced a server can have that power. It's mostly just collecting the important data, tries for each word, failures for each word, successes for each word. The word that has the most failures per tries is a struggle. That's just one simple way. In sort, data collection is your friend in gaming! (this is how you add achievements later!)

Lastly, until you get the hang of it start small! Diving into a game that's too complicated will only demotivate you! So a little project idea to start: Make a game that spawns an object (be it a circle, or a target, whatever visual you want). And the game is time how long it takes you to click it after it spawns. The faster you click the higher the score! Start small! :) Then have the target move around, or have one you don't click to continue. That should be a good start.

I hope that I answered your questions. Let me know if you have anymore!

Thanks for the response! Since all my coding knowledge comes from experience on sites like Subeta, I have zero experience with Javascript. I unfortunately don't really have time to learn it completely; is there a way to kind of blunder my way through it to success? Are there any crash course programs you'd recommend?

Crash course for JavaScript, i would recommend a library called JQuery ( https://www.w3schools.com/jquery/ ). It clears a lot of the clutter of JavaScript, and saves so many keystrokes

Thank you very much! I will check that out. :)

Have you ever made extensions for browsers? How much have you worked with Python?

I've never made browser extensions.

My low level python is pretty weak. I've only used Python for basically very advanced AI. So sadly, probably not the most helpful.

Hello! Thanks for doing this. My question is what type of learning would I need to learn to make a simple adoptable/pet site?

Where would you suggest a complete utter noob start with game coding? I want to make a simple point and click

A point and click would require having visuals, right? You could use something like the free Unity game engine, but I think it might be useful to start smaller.

If you want to start super basic, I would recommend making a text-based game with the scripting language Python. There is a community out there for these games in Python specifically (not sure where, saw it on a student's screen). Macs come with Python pre-installed but you will need to download it on a Windows computer.

Otherwise, if you want your point-and-click game accessible on the web, you'd want to start with HTML (visual) and Javascript (logic). You can test and run both in any web browser.