Still stuck on arrays

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whizzbang

I'd like to come in here and ask a valid question, with some old AS code, without being referred to Godot docs all the time!
I learned AS by people helping me.

whizzbang

I made a game. A Quiz game so I could help other parents of Autistic/Epileptic kids and parents. It was made in AS3/php/xml.
I made it with lots of help. I made lots of changes just by learning from the basics this friend game me.
And when I wanted to run it I was told AS is dead!
That was 8 years ago.
I paid some dude in 2018 on Upwork to convert it to html5 and javascript and for my 1K I got hardly of the work. I got the phaser engine.
All I want is someone to help me understand godot. I've tried different examples with http request, sqlite... I don;t really understand how json works in godot.

I posted.

Pixophir

Forget json, php and html5 for a moment. Just download the engine and start with the documentation:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/3.6/

duane

Moving from phaser to godot for an online game seems like a bad move to me, unless you want it to be a stand-alone quiz game, in which case there are easier choices than godot.

whizzbang

duane Such as?

duane

whizzbang

I'm guessing you mean, "I'm creating a stand-alone application, and want to know about easier options." Although, if that's the case, I'm not sure why you're trying to use http requests.

If you do a web search on open source trivia or quiz projects, you'll find hundreds of already complete programs that you just have to put your data in. Using existing software is always easier.

Here's a tutorial on making a quiz in pygame. Here's one in python/tk. There are orders of magnitude more examples available for python than godot.

Now if this is just a learning project to get you familiar with godot, or you need some specific godot feature, that's a different issue.

whizzbang

duane Not easier options at all. Just re-learning.
I don't want a complete quiz game. I want to re-learn what I spent hours learning years ago.
It's not the quiz... it's the learning.
I downloaded some godot trivia source codes. That's how I learn... by examples.
What I need is to take those examples and learn the code to adapt to my own.
When I ask a question on here I don't want to be referred to the godot docs all the time.
Or to another quiz made in another language.

Erich_L

Yeah 8 years ago is like 100 years in computer science development time. A game engine for an online quiz would be overkill.

cybereality

Well yes and no. I used to make quiz games for a freelance client. Originally in Flash, but then in HTML5 when Flash died. You could easily do something like this with just vanilla HTML and Javascript these days. However, it does help to have an editor, and using Godot would help with cross-platform, as doing web dev by hand is madness when you need to support 10 web browser versions and desktop and mobile operating systems. So using a framework, that is tested and cross-platform is actually a good idea. So I would say Godot is not a horrible choice, but I agree it's overkill. Maybe an HTML5 framework would be more suitable. However, if you use Godot, you can export to HTML5 and also desktop PC and mobile apps, so it might be a better investment long term.

whizzbang

cybereality Thank you! That's what I've been trying to get across (though not very well). I've looked at so many different options from Haxe, Apache Royale etc. I have Visual Studio code but it's not very 'visual' at all.
I need that dev environment where I can drag a pic or add a font and whatnot and see it in real time. Godot reminds me of Flash with scenes etc. Plus, flash was mostly cross platform back then (a little bit of work to package an android apk but not back breaking). I could still do so providing I agree to Harman's Air terms.
Even publishing a Phaser HTML5 game to android. OMG!

All I want to do is as you suggested... long term though? I don't have time to fart arse around. I'm 61. This old lady would like to see all of the work she did 8 years ago to have some meaning.

cybereality

I think Godot will be fine. However porting the ActionScript to GDScript might be hard for you if you're not a programmer. It may be easier to just make it from scratch in Godot, or pay someone to do it.

whizzbang

Would you be willing?

whizzbang

I'd give you the bones.
I'm so bloody stubborn. I'd learn from there.

whizzbang

Just as I did when Nyz gave me that first start on my AS3 quiz via chat on stack overflow

cybereality

Sorry, I'm too busy right now. But it's not a hard project. I'm sure some other people here could do it. Maybe make a new post in the job offering section.

Erich_L

"It's not the quiz... it's the learning."

I can't tell from what you've said if you're wanting to move a half-completed project to Godot for the sake of potential users or for your individual learning? If it's for helping other parents of Autistic/Epileptic kids and parents, what does the "game" need to be able to do? And how do you want people to be able to access it?

whizzbang

Erich_L Sorry if I didn't make myself clearer. The project was completed in flash CS6. I started with a very basic quiz AS3/flash script with php/xml written by a person I'd been talking to on StackOverflow. It gave me the bare bones of scenes, tweens, movieclips, math, integrating php and xml etc. From that I learned much more by looking up examples, asking for help on forums. The completed game has player registration, login, forgot login details, change user detail options... multiple categories, multiple options for the number of answers, random questions and answers, option for an answer popup with explanations or on button press skip to next question, countdown timer/no timer, scoring with default score or score decreasing with countdown time, achievements, and a leaderboard.
There was nothing "half-completed" about it. What was half-completed was the Phaser project I paid for. That's not the work I'm trying to move to Godot. One of the reasons why I thought Godot would suit me better is that I need a visual editor like Flash/Animate. It's similar. I've tried to use editors like Visual Code and install Haxe, Flutter, even Phaser etc but the hoops one has to go through just to get them to work? Publishing via Animate has turned into a nightmare with AIR.
Which brings me to your question "... for the sake of potential users or for your individual learning?". Why can't it be both of those things? If it was just for potential users I could buy source code. But I didn't spend months perfecting my game all for nought. I'm quite happy to learn all over again but, just as before, I need those "bare bones".

In answer to your question about what I want the 'game' to do? That I was probably even less clear on.
One of the reasons why I decided to make this game is, is that my adult aspie/epie son is a massive 'Super Hero', sci-fi nerd. We don't have a lot in common re Super Heros but we do via old school sci-fi like Star Wars and Star Trek. We found this online desktop game and it was boring. I thought I could write way more challenging questions. And so it went from here. I ended up by writing more than 1000 questions for TNG alone.
I found that it gave us something to do together (he would be my questions/answer editor) and if he was in a situation where he felt uncomfortable, he could access the test game via his laptop or phone and his mind would be focused elsewhere. In the full version of the game the only 2 people on the leaderboard were me and him LOL but it was fun to see if he could beat me.
I used the basic version with scoring in percentages for my daughter in her final high school exams.
For my son, timing is an issue. He's slow to understand in real life.
For my daughter, she needed to see results as in an exam.

I would like other parents and/or educators to be able to do the same. Free. I don't want to make money out of this (except for my Star Trek game and I don't want someone to do that for me). And I'd like it to be cross-platform so that parents/educators, and those with disabilities can access easily, so they can create their own quizzes. All the options there. All the coding is done and all they have to do is create a sql database, write the questions, change the backgrounds, images, fonts etc to suit. All instructions provided.

To date, I've found a tut that I can use php/sql for registration and login. Works great.
I found a "millionare' game that uses http request to my database, and uses a countdown timer, but the questions, nor answers, are random.
I've found another Godot quiz source code that uses sqlite for questions and answers, and I cannot figure out how to get the answer text to display randomly insync with the buttons because the author used images rather than text.

And to be honest? I'm really struggling with how to use json! I get arrays but not how to implement them in Godot.
I'm happy to start all over and re-learn. If someone would just give me that foundation in Godot with the foundation I learned in flash AS3.

I do hope I made this clearer Erich?

Cheers

Erich_L

whizzbang Much clearer, I guess I'm just not so clear as what part of the quiz requires a game engine. (3d characters? 3d lighting?) HTML+javascript+ your mysql seems like it could do everything you want. A game exported from a game engine, even with a Godot export being under 40 mb, is still massive compared to a webpage you could rapidly export, refresh, and share. I have to admit I was under the impression your project was more ... idk the term.. oriented toward helping people with special needs. If you're after some family bonding, I'm ashamed to say the best advice I have (from personal experience of course) is 3-5 beers. Learning half of the tech universe for the off chance of some male bonding? What a sweetheart you must be m8.