Make Your Own Coding Tutorials

So, at the suggestion of Moly, we’ve opened up our Shootorial Tutorial shell to allow anyone to make a coding tutorial with it. Surprisingly, you don’t even need a copy of Flash to do it – all you need is a text editor! I have uploaded a tutorial on how to make tutorials here: http://www.kongregate.com/games/anthony/tutorial-tutorial. Please use this thread to discuss questions and tips on making tutorials with this tool.

Please note, while you may distribute these tutorials externally, you must include credit to Kongregate and a link back to our Tutorials page. Details are given in the tutorial. We hope to see some great ActionScript and Flash tutorials from you all!

Sweet! I might make a tutorial now! Thank you. ♥

Awesome! I allways liked the shootorial engine, thisshould be a standard format for all tutorials. I hope people won’t forget to give credit to you guys though…

Btw congrats on your 5555th post, go watch the Interstella movie with Daft Punk music now.

Awesome Anthony! Nice work here.

Could you include the source code of the shell?

I think for now we’re intending to try to maintain some quality and consistency by not releasing the .fla file. I’m not sure if that’ll change or not, but for now we’re hoping people will be able to do almost everything they want using these tools. We can investigate later and see if there’s demand for something more robust.

Is it possible to make text selectable? Seems like it would be very useful, particularly if you want to show some code snippets.

If you use the <GROUP_CODE> tag it will make a snippet that is copied to the clipboard when it’s clicked

Nice. I’ll see about getting my TD tutorial put up in one or more (probably three, like the articles) of these since that was my personal follow-on from the Shootorials. It’ll be interesting to see what gets uploaded this way!

can you upload the files somewhere else? clicking them through the tutorial gives me a formatted version, because all of the html gets processed (Even though it’s a txt, because you’re loading the links through an internal function, asFunction:Tutorial.loadNewURL,tutorial.txt, and being flash, there’s no right-click save as function). I’d like to see the unformatted txt. (trying http://www.kongregate.com/games/anthony/tutorial-tutorial/assets/tutorial.txt doesn’t work)

SO, Phoenix, can you go edit it a bit?

make a GROUP_DOWNLOAD tag, which calls a function to download file when clicked, instead of just opening the link. Also, if possible, add to the ContextMenu of the GROUP_DOWNLOAD items a “Download File” option. If you don’t know how that is done, here is a really simple tutorial: http://snipplr.com/view/12939/as3-download-a-file-to-the-desktop/

They get to browse where it is saved. The “Error” most of the time will be they cancelled the download, so don’t worry too much.

Please add that. Thanks.

Oh, and I’m looking forwards to what will come out of this. Please, people when you make something, link to it here, or it will be buried. I don’t have time to make anything atm :( nor any ideas.

The folder is http://chat.kongregate.com/gamez/0005/3680/live/assets/

In any case, what browser are you using? I’m running Firefox, and all the links open in a new tab for me anyway.

yes, it opens in a new tab, but the html in the .txt gets parsed… instead of it asking me to download and save. Using the File—>Save As saves the formatted .txt… weird. Same with the swf, but with the swf I can go File→Save As. Still a PITA tho. Would be better if Phoenix updated it to use the FileReference.download.

OOPS! I was accidentally using IE. Looking at the comments, IE8 does this….. stupid… Firefox works fine.

That said, phoenix should still fix it, for all of the IE users that are still out there.

Very neat.

Would it be possible to either make a new game category for tutorials instead of pushing them all into Music/More?

Or at the very least, could we make a thread here to keep track of all of the tutorials that are made? I wouldn’t mind managing such a thread, if this ends up with a good reception from the community.

OOPS! I was accidentally using IE.

That explains it. Anyone who knows anything realizes that Internet Explorer is not actually a standards-compliant browser.

janathanasdf – I’ll look into it, but I’ll have to actually get ahold of the .fla to make those changes (which I don’t actually have a copy of and will have to track down from wherever it ended up). I might be able to implement it but this was primarily an effort to open up a tool that already existed – we’re not intending to do a lot more development on it. Still the links are a bit annoying right now, this is true, so it would be nice if we could add that.

Moly – Thanks for the <GROUP_CODE> tip – I had missed that one in my samples. I’ll go back and add that in.

Originally posted by Frogmanex:

Very neat.

Would it be possible to either make a new game category for tutorials instead of pushing them all into Music/More?

Or at the very least, could we make a thread here to keep track of all of the tutorials that are made? I wouldn’t mind managing such a thread, if this ends up with a good reception from the community.

Psst…there is a Tutorials game category. We made it when we released Kongregate Labs. ;-)

(ok, full disclosure, I had forgotten that too until Emily reminded me – apparently we’re desperately in need of some hot new tutorials to keep everyone’s interest in the category!)

So there is, so there is…

But it’s still not listed under Games up at the top. And the Tutorials link under the Developers tab takes you to the Labs page, with only the Shootorials. So maybe just a link to this page from the Games tab? =(

(ok, full disclosure, I had forgotten that too until Emily reminded me – apparently we’re desperately in need of some hot new tutorials to keep everyone’s interest in the category!)

So, you want to suggest some categories? Other than Moly’s AS3 Shootorials.

Oh, no, I meant that people didn’t realize we had a Tutorial category at all, so hopefully getting some more tutorials in there will boost awareness.

And Frog, that’s a good idea – I’ll suggest that and see if we want to change it, or perhaps have a link to other tutorials on the Labs page.

Updated the tutorial to include the <GROUP_CODE> sample and update some of the text. I do not have a new download method yet – I’m looking into that but can’t make promises yet.

Darn…I was going to make this exact tutorial myself….you beat me too it!!!

Haha, sorry ’bout that. You and Moly emailed me gave me the idea. :-) Anyway, now you can move on and do a different tutorial instead.

Btw, there’s no limitations on the actual tutorial right?

It can be a tutorial about C++, or a tutorial about baking your favourite chocolate chip cookies? Or does it have to be flash-related?

thanks.

Well, that depends. I think if you’re going to upload it to Kongregate and put it in our tutorials category it would need to be Flash related (be it programming, animation, vector art, maybe music/sound development, etc.). If you’re just using it to upload on your own site or elsewhere I think you’re welcome to do whatever with it, as long as you give us credit of course. :)

I think it needs to be something computer or flash related, else kong would be spammed with stupid things.

Originally posted by anthony:

Well, that depends. I think if you’re going to upload it to Kongregate and put it in our tutorials category it would need to be Flash related (be it programming, animation, vector art, maybe music/sound development, etc.). If you’re just using it to upload on your own site or elsewhere I think you’re welcome to do whatever with it, as long as you give us credit of course. :)

Alright, I see. That makes sense. Just wanted to confirm, cuz the category wasn’t “Flash Tutorials”, but was rather just “tutorials”.