The Dink Network

Thank's all for your feedback. Last week I wrote large parts of this tutorial. Most of the text is now written, it just needs to be polished.
So this will also mean that in the near future I would like to have some beta-readers. Preferably I would like to see people who are:

- Proficient at DinkC / WinDinkEdit. (So they can correct me if I make technical mistakes, or if there is a better way to do something)
- Grammar nazis. (I like to get it as error-free as possible. Also, I'd like to get comments on the writing style of the tutorial.)
- Anyone trying to learn DMODing (Let's hear it from the target audience!)

So, if you meet one or more of these criteria, and you don't mind critiquing a rather lengthy tutorial I'd love to have you as a beta-reader. Just post a message in this thread if you're interested. As I said the tutorial isn't finished yet, I'll send it up when it's done. Beware though, it will probably be more than 40 pages (including imagines and example scripts).

Secondly I'm going to have a FAQ in this tutorial. Which questions do you like to be answered in there? The questions I think I will already cover are:

-How do I add my own sounds?
-How do I add my own graphics?
-Wht is the difference between DinkEdit and WinDinkEdit (Note, I'm not covering WinDinkEdit plus here since I don't have any experience on it. I might just take a look later, but that might not be enough to really say anything sensible. (Guest writer maybe?))
- What is the difference between c and d files? (Note, this question will need to be reworded somehow...)
- What are .ff files? (Note, same as above)
- How do I make things appear random? (Not quite sure this one is neccessary...)

The subjects already in the tutorial itself:

Ch1 Getting started:
(How to start a new DMOD, what software you need)
Mapping:
Ch2 Tile mode (also, covered are copying and importing screens)
Ch3 Sprite mode
Ch4 Creating a house (Screenmatch / hardness)
Ch5 Warps
Ch6 Depth que & moving doors
Scripting:
Ch8 intro
Ch9.1 Creating a sign (creating a basic script)
Ch9.2 Creating a person (basewalks explained)
Ch10 Creating a story:
Ch10.1 Working with variables
Ch10.2 The if-statement
Ch10.3 Global variables
Ch10.4 An example story
Ch11 Visions
Ch12.1 The touch procedure
*Ch12.2 Creating (invisible) barriers
*Ch12.3 Scripted warps
*Ch13 Creating cutscenes (including info on sp_script() and spawn())
Ch14 Traders
Ch14.1 The man behind the counter (I'm not sure how to combine this with Ch13 yet, the idea was to show here how to create & control sprites in scripts.)
Ch14.2 Buy
Ch14.3 Sell
Ch15 Enemies:
Ch15.1 A pillbug
Ch15.2 A bonca
FAQ
Appendix A: List of sprite properties

Chapters with an asterisk (*) still need to be written, the rest is written but will need to be polished some more. Chapters 14 and 15 are divided into multiple parts because the example scripts are quite long, even though they cover only modest subjects.

Things I have not covered:
- How to edit hardness-tiles (Advanced topic, not for beginners)
- How to edit hardboxes (To much new stuff about .ini editing. This would require an entirely new chapter which I don't feel like right now...)

Oh, and I'm sure there was a perfectly good reason why chapter 7 is missing... If I could only remember what it was...

@strokend:
-Use robj's technique. Unfortunately this is just one of the disadvantages of WinDinkEdit... I don't know how I would take this into the tutorial properly.
-I won't cover how to edit hadness-tiles, it's a pretty specialist topic. Actually I don't know the answer either, I'd have to look it up as well.

@Sparrowhawk:
- Yeah, I'll ditch .DIZ editing, maybe I'll put it up in the FAQ though.
- TROS covers scripts very intensively. In fact it did it so intensively that I couldn't get through it. (Maybe that's just because I downloaded it after I got the basics of scripting already though.) The DinkC reference on the other hand didn't include enough support on where to start. So the pace of this tutorial is higher than TROS. Maybe it wasn't very neccessary, but I did find it handy for example to write something about how variables work before I explain visions. All in all, let's just say I added it for the sake of completeness...

EDIT: I just realized I made my post way to long...
EDIT2: I also just realized that I have absolutely no intention of changing that...