The speed that Code monkey talk at through list lecture is a 30 min marathon with no “breaks”. I’ve code A* before and this was hard to follow at normal speed.
Maybe spiting this lecture up into pahtNode part and Pathfinding part would make it easier to follow.
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Not only does he go through topics incredibly fast, but he does them differently than as instructed in the previous lectures from Rick/Gary (for example: Vector2Int for Grid system vs the X,Z Gridsystem). So not only do I have to repeatedly rewind to understand the section while he’s jumped onto another topic in 15 seconds, but now I’m confused on as the proper/optimal way to do things instead of building on past experiences. It feels like he’s trying to speedrun the gamedev course without having knowledge of previous courses, and like I’m listening to the “The missile knows where it is at all times” video. Not at the same instructional level as the other lecturers.
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For what it’s worth, Hugo mentions when we set up the GridPosition why he chose that over the Vector2Int. Vector2Int works with XY coords while the world space we are working with is in XZ. Setting up our own custom GridPosition struct teaches us how to work with structs, and it allows us to easily reference the z axis without having to remember to convert the Vector2Int.y into a z axis. If you look at the code base from Code Monkey’s original prototype on Youtube where he announced the course, I believe he even uses Vector2Int in his own prototype. There’s no right and wrong way to do something here.
Personally Im delighted that we went the custom struct route because that’s one more feather in my gamedev hat. It would be a waste of my time and money to take multiple gamedev.tv courses if all they did was recycle the same techniques over and over again and force all of their guest lecturers into the same mode of working for each course.
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I’ve been running through the entire course at .75 speed, but even with that I’ve also noticed several frustrating instances of something being said and then a sudden cut changes portions of the code so I have to pause to edit mine and fix it with no mention of the changes.
Please do point out specifically where you see those kinds of cuts, I made sure to always leave some time after writing some code but I might have missed some
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There isn’t “one true solution” in game dev, every game is different, everyone works different, the solution is different depending on your goals.
I mentioned in that lecture that you could use Vector2Int if you wanted, I chose to go with the custom struct approach because I didn’t want confusion with Y/Z.
Don’t focus on memorizing what is the “proper/optimal” way to do something, learn the logic, learn the tools, then when you have a similar problem in the future you know what tools you have at your disposal to solve that problem.
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As I’m fond of pointing out, there is often more than one path to the same solution.
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I’ll try to remember to point it out next time I see it
To be honest, the only ‘cuts’ I have noticed that Hugo didn’t say anything about was when he left out a semicolon somewhere where one should have been, or he made a typo.
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One thing that helped me here was to:
- Listen to the whole thing end to end on normal speed (or +/ 25% whatever you’re comfortable with)
- Copy the code from the resources link as is
- Watch again and then look at your own code as Hugo is speaking.
I love the fact btw that the team at GameDev.TV is trying to teach A* Pathfinding within the context of an actual game! It takes so much hard work to pull this off! Definitely noticed and appreciated.
Suggestion for Hugo and team - After making some code changes just pause for a second to let the student take catch what happened and make the changes themselves. I found myself having to rewind many times to catch what happened before a cut or before the screen scrolled up or down.
Yeah, the speed at which he talks and does stuff is crazy, it is not very educational unfortunately. And often it is very hard to understand what is going on and why