Oinc: Online Course?

Hey guys, this is really just a ‘pitch’ thread, bouncing ideas of you, thinking out loud and so on. So this is not about the Oinc extension directly, it’s more about increasing its use.

Many of you may be familiar with my Oinc Tutorial Videos. They seem to be really helping, I get questions and requests for the third one every single week, which is so great, I’m just happy to help and serve. But here’s the problem with them, it’s often very hard to communicate how to properly construct a complex multiplayer game, in a 15/30 minute video, even if you split the game into parts. The best you can really do is show how a basic movement is created, but there are so many more super exciting topics I’d love to get into, like building servers with Poinc, and creating secure games.

As I’ve been looking at various mediums to help with, people have suggested just writing plain articles or even writing a book on the subject, but each has their own issues.

Here’s an idea then; how about some kind of “Learn Oinc in 6 weeks” online course? Basically, it’s like a college course, there is a rough curriculum which we follow through, learning fun skills for creating multiplayer games that go above and beyond simple movements and chat rooms. How would this be done, well, there are a bunch of great software which allow kind of online meetings, where a lecturer can stream their desktop, their microphone, webcam, powerpoint presentations, all live, and the listeners can type questions directly to them.

So, is that something you guys would be interested in taking part in? There would be two or so meetings a week, where we’d build a game together, learn Python and Poinc and you can get help and advice on your own multiplayer projects. Sounds fun right? Something I’m totally up for organising and hosting throughout the summer.

Sounds like a great idea. Your setup could be heavy on bandwidth.
Perhaps something to consider including a limit of people that can join such a lecture.
I can imagine 20 people at the same time would make it hard to communicate/answer questions well.

Aside from the above, good stuff :cool:

That's a good point. I would definitely have to stick a limit on the amount of people to be 'enrolled'. I can't imagine there being 20 people who would want to sign up, but I think a limit at 10 max would be fine, right? That would allow each of them to have decent 1 to 1 sessions. Thanks for your input.

10 sounds like a reasonable figure, although looking at my klikfarm server usage I can say there are more then individual 20 developers active.

Majority is still using MOO, but pretty sure they are awaiting the OINC 1.0 version. So who knows :grin:

This is a nice idea, and it doesn't have to just be limited to OINC in theory.

Different people could run different "courses" on different extensions in mmf to teach people how to use them. Especially some of the more complicated ones.

I very much doubt there is anyone who knows how to use EVERY extension available for MMF.

You're right, Spike, I'm sure an in-depth course on the Phizix extensions would be beneficial to quite a few people. It doesn't have to stop there though, a course on Level Editors could be useful, or perhaps on developing Isometric games.

This topic is testing for interest in an Oinc course though. Hmm, so far I've had one PM and one person in Gwerdy who would like to take part, but two people are not currently enough.

So what I think I'll do is actually to write the game that I'd like to teach, see if that'll spark a touch of interest. :)

And if not, fair enough, I'll wrap up the Video tutorial series and leave it at that.

I would definitely take part in something like this! :D

Also, a course on making a simple Mario Game from scratch would probably help users alot seeing as how many people have requested help with these in the last few weeks. :)

stephen1980

Very good idea.
I am very interested in participating in this, but I'm a slow learner.
I have the solving of the online part of our project coming up soon and could really use some learning and help.
Sign me up! :)

I would like to follow this course too. Its also good to chat/share this with fellow developers that are using oinc.

Well, okay then, I might give this a go. :)

Because I've got a huge amount of content to prepare, planning lessons, building a website, I think I'll do it on a sign up basis. If you want to be apart of this, send me a PM, I'll add you to the list of confirmed 'students'. Then, in a months time when it's all ready, I can just PM you all back with the details, and we'll kick this off.

Please do include any specific aspects of online development you'd like to see discussed.