New to Development

Medullan · Post by **Medullan** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 8:22 pm

So I am new to these forums. I was going to wait until I had something substantial to contribute, but I have run into a slight hiccup...

So I spent the day yesterday experimenting with some of the tools available and have found them very educational. I managed to produce a couple of small maps and some recolored monster tiles to use in them. I finally figured out how to add them to the code properly so I could test them. I still have a lot of work to do before they are really playable but I now feel confident that I can use the tools at my disposal to transfer files from my imagination directly into AT. I did run into one problem though I signed up for an account on github and created a fork so I could try committing my changes, but I don't see that it has actually committed from Android Studio to my github account. I have read through all the tutorials and am not quite sure if I missed a step. If anyone could advise me it would be much appreciated. Also any tips or hints for a noob would be awesome.

Tools I have been using...
Android Studio
Genymotion personal Android emulator (way faster for testing than what comes with Android Studio)
AT Content editor
Notepad++
Photoshop
Tiled

Thanks,
Hopefully not a total Noob

Post by **Zukero** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 8:35 pm

Hello Medullan and welcome to our forums.

For your commits to appear on github, you need to "Push" them to your "Remote". By default, your first remote is called "origin". Seeing how you seem to have found your way around, that should be enough for you to figure out the right way.

I personally prefer using eclipse (the adt bundle) than android studio, but everyone has their preferences

If you wish, you can instead make a fork of my repo (https://github.com/Zukero/andors-trail/), as Oskar is not active these days.

Other than that, don't hesitate to post here or PM me if you encounter issues or have questions.

Good luck !

Medullan · Post by **Medullan** » Mon Jun 02, 2014 9:19 pm

Okay so it seems I have managed to "push" something but I can't seem to figure out how to find my changes on github.

Edit:
Well looks like the sledgehammer approach worked. But for some reason I don't think the entire program was supposed to upload to my fork. If anyone has any suggestions I am out of ideas, but at least I can publish my changes now. YAY I still have an hour and a half to create content!

Post by **ctnbeh13** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 2:56 am

Greetings Medullan,

Depending on your exposure and experience with Photoshop, you may already be aware of my recommendation to follow. If so, hopefully it will be helpful to others who might be interested in icon, image, and other graphic editing and/or creation.

When saving your work, take advantage of the recorded detail saved in a file using the .psd extension, or at least save it as a .tiff for avoiding the artifacts/pixelation that occurs when using a .jpg/.jpeg format (or another that may be a little heavy on the compression), which is affected by every save at the end of your work session.

I am actually surprised by the number of photographers (that don't work from .raw image files) and graphics artists that don't use the .psd format when working in Photoshop.

Some examples of the artifacts/pixelation that tend to result in a slightly blurred rendering can be found right here on the forum, often in examples of applied color changes. The only difference between two differently colored images should be the color.

Medullan · Post by **Medullan** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 3:06 am

Thanks for the tip. Do you mean for me to use this file extension when I am saving incomplete work between one work session and the next? I was under the impression it was necessary to save image files as .png as those are the file extensions currently in the program.
I am actually pretty new to photoshop I only have it because my wife is a photographer. By proxy I was aware of the higher quality and size of .raw files.

Post by **ctnbeh13** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 3:51 am

Yes. The finished image should then be saved in the .png file format. Hanging on to the last save of your original .psd file for your personal collection will also let you return to resize, sharpen, recolor, mirror, etc., the image with greater consistency later, to either use elsewhere, or perhaps to share with another contributor. I only share the latter as again, I have encountered a number of people who "feel" that they arrived at a finished product, and then realize that maybe they really didn't, but now that they deleted the original or working file, they really are.

Another approach to achieving ease of detail in creating icons, NPC's, and other items, is to create a 64X64 pixel image to initially work with. It should be easier to work on during creation. When you are satisfied that you have a finished product, resize the image to 32X32. There are a few other tweaks that you can apply in the process, but it sounds like you should have a fairly good guide to walk you through the steps to maximize the benefits that are available to you with using whatever version of Photoshop you have, at home already.

If there's anything else that you might have time for (which is a key factor in going from concept to creation), and it's something that you have a question about that isn't otherwise covered somewhere else here, don't hesitate to ask. I find your interest and enthusiasm encouraging.

Post by **Zukero** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 11:08 am

Medullan,

I suggest you to read the git book on http://git-scm.com/documentation. It is pretty well written, and will give you a good grasp of how git works, and how to use it. It will also help you get familiar with the associated vocabulary (like, branching, merging, pushing, committing...)

There is nothing wrong with having everything appearing in your repository. That is how git works. Don't worry though, only the differences are saved/pushed through the network. The only time where it could be quite long, is when you create your local repo from a remote: telling your computer that you want to use git for a project for which you provide a git repo URL. It will fetch a huge deal of data at that time, but after that, it's all smooth (depending on your ISP though :p).

Actually, when you create your fork on github, you have N+2 repositories to consider.
N is the number of computers you use to develop (generally only one). These are local repositories. When you do a "commit" in eclipse, it is saved in your local repository.
The other two are two "remote" sites: your github repository, and the "upstream" repository (the one you forked from).
You are only allowed to "push" your commits to your own github repository (https://github.com/YOUR_LOGIN/andors-trail for example).
You will often need to "Fetch" from the "upstream" repository. When I will add new features to the code, or new content, I will push them to my repository. If you have worked on something else in the meantime, you will be able to "fetch" my new version, and then "merge" or "rebase" (close, but different concepts, read the git book) your modifications on my latest version before submitting it to me for inclusion in the game.

For Andor's Trail, we even have a third repo to watch : the Google Code one on https://code.google.com/p/andors-trail/. This one is the official master repo. New releases will be built from this repo.

The repo hierarchy is somehow the following:

Google code repo
|--Dev team member github repo
|**|--Contributor github repo
|**|--Contributor github repo
|--Dev team member github repo

From what I saw on github, your repo is forked from Oskar's repo, but there is another one forked from mine (user Dilrakai).

However, I noticed that your "master" branch is not setup correctly. Indeed, your master branch's root is the Android project root folder, while it should its parent folder, containing three folders: AndorsTrail, AndorsTrailEdit and ProjectPage.

I suggest you to read the Contribution Guide, and specifically the Setup your development environment part

Raner · Post by **Raner** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 12:41 pm

Yeah yeah... Raner was taken on github

I _think_ I forked it correctly, off of your copy Zukero?

I have gotten as far as playtesting my first (unfinished) map on the android emulator - so there is at least progress. I cannot tell you how much your guide was beneficial critical in getting this far. As were Ian's supremely detailed map-making guides.

I still messed everything up the first time though, heh. It was interesting when I noted that all the water borders I (for some reason) added as 'above' rather than 'objects' were... well... ABOVE my character.

Even if I never publish anything, it is at least a learning experience, and quite a bit of fun!

-Raner

Post by **Zukero** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 1:25 pm

Oh, ok. I was surprised to see two forks on the same day

Well, it seems that you forked it correctly indeed. Good to see that the guide was useful, and that you managed to get a running AT in an emulator from a github fork using it !

Medullan · Post by **Medullan** » Tue Jun 03, 2014 6:33 pm

Okay I think I might know what I did wrong. I imported the project into eclipse from my local machine as that is where all of my changes were. When I pushed the project up to github I used the force option to overwrite my previous pushes that didn't work properly. It sounds like I need to fetch the project from your fork using the clone url add my changes and then push to my fork. It sounds like I may be able to use the merge or rebase to add my changes from the project on my local machine. I started reading through some of the book on git*documentation yesterday it is how I managed to get anything done at all yesterday sounds like I should read it some more. (seems my main problem was not checking the "store in secure store" checkbox under my user credentials once I checked that box everything uploaded as expected.) I think the I am going to try that now and see if I can fix it. If not I may put that off for a while my wife is home today and wants to help me make content. Anyways thanks for the help so far. If I run into anymore problems I will post them here.

--------------------------
Edit:

I ran into a new problem today. We spent a couple days working on a new map and I wanted to play test it. I have already had success there so I just did the same thing I did before.
I added a mapevent to transition to my new map first into wild0 then into home in both places as soon as I entered the edited map the game crashed. By this I mean when I entered wild0 it crashed so I moved it to home and it crashed as soon as the game loaded. In the course of trouble shooting I discovered that if I changed the map transition to go to a different map I created it worked as expected. So I must be adding it to the program correctly. So there must be something wrong with my map but I can't immagine what it could be and I really don't want to scrap it and start over.

here is the map in text format if someone could look at it and let me know where it is broken that would be awesome...

Andor's Trail

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