Newbie_Man wrote : The Mozilla documentation describes the ENTIRE core of the language - from the basics (including the greater-or-equal operator you mentioned) to more advanced topics (like constructing objects).
Yes, like I said, nice for someone who knows what he's looking for. A descrïption like:
" Comparison Operators
(==, !=, ===, !==, >, >=, <, <=)"
isn't going to help an absolute beginner. It's like giving all the parts of a car to someone and expecting them to be able to assemble it. You'll need to know which parts can be attached to eachother, etc. etc.
Chaotic already knows something of the language, else they wouldn't have made several games already.
Have you had a look at the code? It's very likely to be mostly copy-paste work from date ariane. And in the earlier games a simple 'if (x && y)' took 2 (or more) html pages...
I don't think it's unreasonable for them to go directly to the source and read the language's well-written documentation. There's nothing in a free tutorial or beginner's book they wouldn't be able to get from the site, and it has the added bonus of being up-to-date.
The main difference with a beginner's book or a good tutorial is that they don't throw you into the deep by handing you a complete reference. Start with the basics, show how things work, give examples, in exercises let the beginner slightly adapt examples and go from there to more advanced concepts. This is how it was taught at my university and this is how I would expect any half-decent book or tutorial to do it. Of course somewhere in the process of adapting examples and creating simple programs the person will learn enough to be able to learn by himself from a language reference. But in my experience as a teaching assistant I have seen various students still struggle with basic concepts even after two programming courses.
I dunno...I don't think my suggestions are out of line. I like what Chaotic has already done. If I didn't, I wouldn't be taking the time to steer them in the right direction from a technical standpoint. I want Chaotic to make good games. The foundation is there - the artwork is good, and the premise is sound. The gameplay itself is the weakest part, and that can be fixed with a bit of research and effort.
'Out of line' is a big word, of course your intentions are good, I never questioned that. But to me it's clear that your recommendations came from someone who knows how this stuff works and like I tried to explain they are way over Chaotics head (and I take that from my own experiences in learning how to program in my mid-teens, and years of teaching the stuff I was supposed to be learning to my study mates, as well as some time teaching random students as a teaching assistant).
And yes you are right, the foundation is there. But I'm not sure if you are saying that gameplay will be fixed with changing to better programming techniques, because it will not (gameplay is an art in itself separate from programming, some concepts about it can be taught, but in the end it's a creative process...).