throttleman
06-11-2002, 09:41 PM
Here's a couple of suggestions I've found have helped me immensely over the past month that I have had ZQ. You will find, as I did, that many questions can be answered if you just folow along.
1st - Make sure you download the newest version of the player as it has the updated version of the help file. There is more information there than you know what to do with.
2nd - Don't spend fifteen minutes running through Alpha's tutorial as quickly as possible and think you are ready to design a quest of epic proportions. Run through it many times and make sure you know why it is you are doing the different steps. You will never learn anything if all you are doing is mindlessly repeating the lessons straight from the tutorial.
3rd - If possible, print out the tutorial and the help file. I will admit they are long (the tutorial is well over 100 pages), however it makes it ten times easier to find the answer to a question. Plus it allows you to read them over away from your computer. I even went so far as to hole punch them and put them in a binder.
And, what I think is the most important thing, play with the editor. I like to come here to the forums and find something that I don't know how to do. Then I go back and try to make it work myself. I can't tell you how many things I have learned about this program through simple trial and error. If you have something you want to do with your quest, try doing it yourself first. Don't just throw a couple flags on the screen, not get the desired result, and give up. By taking the time to figure out exactly why your idea didn't work you will gain a better understanding of the way the editor works. You are also more likely to remember the correct way to do it.
I guess this all comes down to my hope that maybe I can reduce to number of questions that I see whose answers could be discovered if people would take a moment or two to actually read the tutorial and help file.
Pardon me now as I fall off my soapbox.
1st - Make sure you download the newest version of the player as it has the updated version of the help file. There is more information there than you know what to do with.
2nd - Don't spend fifteen minutes running through Alpha's tutorial as quickly as possible and think you are ready to design a quest of epic proportions. Run through it many times and make sure you know why it is you are doing the different steps. You will never learn anything if all you are doing is mindlessly repeating the lessons straight from the tutorial.
3rd - If possible, print out the tutorial and the help file. I will admit they are long (the tutorial is well over 100 pages), however it makes it ten times easier to find the answer to a question. Plus it allows you to read them over away from your computer. I even went so far as to hole punch them and put them in a binder.
And, what I think is the most important thing, play with the editor. I like to come here to the forums and find something that I don't know how to do. Then I go back and try to make it work myself. I can't tell you how many things I have learned about this program through simple trial and error. If you have something you want to do with your quest, try doing it yourself first. Don't just throw a couple flags on the screen, not get the desired result, and give up. By taking the time to figure out exactly why your idea didn't work you will gain a better understanding of the way the editor works. You are also more likely to remember the correct way to do it.
I guess this all comes down to my hope that maybe I can reduce to number of questions that I see whose answers could be discovered if people would take a moment or two to actually read the tutorial and help file.
Pardon me now as I fall off my soapbox.