[Pipmak-Users] Re: Basic Mac help

[Urs H. <ur...@an...>]

Hi

> As it seems Pipmak is aimed at people who are not serious game
> coders, is there any chance that someone could create some kind of
> documentation, even if it was just a page long, to tell people how to
> do basic stuff, like open the Pipmak Demo and see/use the code, for
> people who do not have a background in programming.

Would it be useful to have a step by step tutorial that describes how to
create a simple pipmak-project? Do you mean something like this?

>  From looking at the Pipmak numbered files, and reading the
> discussion of how the program works, it seems like there would be a
> relatively short learning curve in order to start breaking into
> Pipmak. [...]

Right. Games that don't need some special features are easily created.

> But as it is, for someone without a basic understanding of how to get
> started, one can't do anything. And none of the Lua sites (that I can
> find anyway) give a basic overview of any of this. All of them are
> aimed at people who are already programmers and are new to Lua only.

http://www.lua.org/
I see your problem. For the first steps in pipmak, you do not need to
know anything about lua at all. You only have to create images and
hotspot-maps. Like this you can already create a few panoramas, for
example a little island on which you can walk around. To create the
corresponding .lua-files, you only have to copy and modify some
statements. You can take the ones from the demo project of pipmak.
(Look at the end of this post.)

> What is needed is a basic step by step process that introduces first
> the new paradigm of writing programs on a mac and goes from there.
> ie. Does one have to install Lua for Mac on your machine first? If so
> how is that done? How does one see/work on/ "compile" (hard as it may
> seem to understand, to many many people, compiling is not a concept
> many people have any idea of) files? What is the "Console" program
> and how does it work - again there is no reference material on any of
> this anywhere I can find.

In order to create a pipmak-game (or project if you want), you do not
need to compile pipmak itself. Lua is linked statically into pipmak, so
you don't even have to install lua. Just download the newest build of
pipmak for the mac.

> As it is, all the documentation assumes a level of programming
> understanding beyond what I would assume many of the possible users
> of Pipmak have.

The main problem seems to be to find the information you need. 

> I only share this as I have talked to many people who might use
> Pipmak and become loyal users/developers/community members, if only
> they could find a little help with understanding what is basically a
> new paradigm. In general, most such people come from other
> disciplines, graphic experts/3d modellers, interactive fiction
> writers, etc.

Graphic experts and 3d modellers? Advice them immediately to use pipmak!
I hope to see a free, graphically fantastic game on pipmak! (Dreams ...
some become true.)

> If the goal is not for Pipmak to become a kind of middleware for a
> larger user base then I would understand not wanting to offer this
> help - though it would seem that is self-defeating, as those who
> already understand programming are inherently a group less in need of
> the program.

As I'm not the author of pipmak, I'm not saying anything about the
destination of pipmak. But for me it's like this: I have some
programming skills, but wouldn't be able to write my own "Myst"-engine
from scratch. Exactly such an engine is Pipmak. With Pipmak, I can
concentrate on the game and am not bothered with technical thigs like
OpenGL and protability. Unfortunately, I do not have much time at the
moment to develop my game. So progress is only made very slowly.

A simple pipmak-project:

main.lua looks like this:

  version (0.23)

  title "Pipmak simple project"
  startnode (1)

OK, node 1 is our first position in a virtual world.
Save all Images you need for this position in the folder 1.
In 1/node.lua write the following:

  cubic { "01.jpeg", "02.jpeg", "03.jpeg", "04.jpeg", "05.jpeg",
"06.jpeg" }

  hotspotmap "hotspots.png"

  hotspot { target = 2 }
  hotspot { target = 35 }

Do the same thing for every position (node). If you have done this, you
can already wolk around in your virtual world. How the images 01.jpg to
06.jpg and hotspots.png should look like should be described in the
documentation to pipmak. You dont have to compile anything, simply load
main.lua with pipmak!

Greetings
Urs