Quake 2 Freeze Tag Thread

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Quake 2 Freeze Tag (Forums : Coding & Scripting : Quake 2 Freeze Tag)	Locked
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djk30	Aug 21 2014 Anchor
Hi there! I am hoping some day to learn C to code a mod for Quake 2. Ok, so back in my teenage years I played Q2 Freeze tag and it was a great mod. I'm interested in learning to program in multiple languages, and as a project to get under my belt, I've always thought it would be great to play Q2 Freeze tag with bots but it always bothered me nobody ever took the time to accomplish this. I have the quake 2 source, the freeze tag source, and several source codes for bots including the gladiator bot, famkebot, and acebot. I also have the Code::Blocks compiler, downloaded several tutorials, and have a couple e-book PDFs covering the C language. It's just that, I'm really struggling still. I made a list of what I don't understand about certain aspects within the Freeze source. I understand the basics of functions, but when you have something like structures with values that contain functions that point to structures within arrays, I get confused. I've taken a few college courses on programming as well and I can do basic programming examples. I.E. I know the basics of functions, pointers, arrays, but man some of these values, I don't know what they mean, I don't know if changing them will totally result in failure, I don't know where to start. I look at the code for the Gladiator Bot and I feel like I'm reading an alien language written by a genius. How do you propose I go about learning how to do this? Should I just take a few pages of the pdf a day and focus more on becoming proficient with the C language? I feel like it would take me a year of dedication to really start to get it. A lot of these really good programmers I learn started at a young age. The creator of the old DeviLS tutorials, many of them were written by a 15 year old. I'm 30, so maybe I lost some natural ability to learn this shit. Any suggestions?
SIGILL	Aug 22 2014 Anchor
In my experience starting with existing game code to learn how to program in a certain language is not a great idea. Things can get overwhelming very fast, especially without prior experience with code architecture. Learning the different building blocks of a programming language is one thing, learning how to use them or to understand how other people have used them is something else entirely, and (in my opinion) is the most different part of programming. That said, I have never worked with Q2 and its modded bots code so I don't actually know how difficult and/or overwhelming they can be. Good documentation can help a lot, so if there is decent documentation it might be worth 'rangering on' if you are really dedicated. It's still going to take a lot of time though. It took me generally 3 weeks to feel comfortable enough with a few game engines, and I do have quite some programming experience. Probably the best thing you can do is to write some small projects from scratch, play around with different things (such as the "structures with values that contain functions that point to structures within arrays " you mention, even though I'm not sure how a function can point to an array), try out different 'code architectures' and get really, really comfortable with the basic building blocks the language itself provides. After that, move on to modding a game, in this case Q2, so you will only have to deal with new game-specific 'topics' - the way everything works, which functions are used by which objects etc. I should mention that I am not an game industry professional and I have only 'messed around' with modding, I have never completed a mod. Maybe more experienced modders or professionals have completely different ideas about this subject.

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djk30

Aug 21 2014 Anchor

Hi there!

I am hoping some day to learn C to code a mod for Quake 2. Ok, so back in my teenage years I played Q2 Freeze tag and it was a great mod. I'm interested in learning to program in multiple languages, and as a project to get under my belt, I've always thought it would be great to play Q2 Freeze tag with bots but it always bothered me nobody ever took the time to accomplish this. I have the quake 2 source, the freeze tag source, and several source codes for bots including the gladiator bot, famkebot, and acebot.

I also have the Code::Blocks compiler, downloaded several tutorials, and have a couple e-book PDFs covering the C language.

It's just that, I'm really struggling still.

I made a list of what I don't understand about certain aspects within the Freeze source. I understand the basics of functions, but when you have something like structures with values that contain functions that point to structures within arrays, I get confused. I've taken a few college courses on programming as well and I can do basic programming examples.
I.E. I know the basics of functions, pointers, arrays, but man some of these values, I don't know what they mean, I don't know if changing them will totally result in failure, I don't know where to start. I look at the code for the Gladiator Bot and I feel like I'm reading an alien language written by a genius.

How do you propose I go about learning how to do this? Should I just take a few pages of the pdf a day and focus more on becoming proficient with the C language? I feel like it would take me a year of dedication to really start to get it. A lot of these really good programmers I learn started at a young age. The creator of the old DeviLS tutorials, many of them were written by a 15 year old. I'm 30, so maybe I lost some natural ability to learn this shit. Any suggestions?

SIGILL

Aug 22 2014 Anchor

In my experience starting with existing game code to learn how to program in a certain language is not a great idea. Things can get overwhelming very fast, especially without prior experience with code architecture. Learning the different building blocks of a programming language is one thing, learning how to use them or to understand how other people have used them is something else entirely, and (in my opinion) is the most different part of programming.

That said, I have never worked with Q2 and its modded bots code so I don't actually know how difficult and/or overwhelming they can be. Good documentation can help a lot, so if there is decent documentation it might be worth 'rangering on' if you are really dedicated. It's still going to take a lot of time though. It took me generally 3 weeks to feel comfortable enough with a few game engines, and I do have quite some programming experience.
Probably the best thing you can do is to write some small projects from scratch, play around with different things (such as the "structures with values that contain functions that point to structures within arrays " you mention, even though I'm not sure how a function can point to an array), try out different 'code architectures' and get really, really comfortable with the basic building blocks the language itself provides. After that, move on to modding a game, in this case Q2, so you will only have to deal with new game-specific 'topics' - the way everything works, which functions are used by which objects etc.

I should mention that I am not an game industry professional and I have only 'messed around' with modding, I have never completed a mod. Maybe more experienced modders or professionals have completely different ideas about this subject.