Was My Posting To The Adobe Forum Stupid?

[tinjaw]

I made a posting to the Adobe Forum two days ago. It didn't get a reply and because of their forums being the way they are, it is now buried many many pages down and probably will never be seen again. I see that very few of the postings to that forum get replies and I think it because of the way their forums work.

Or did I get no replies because my posting was idiotic and not worth of a reply?

My posting is here, in their forums where you can take a look around at their forum software.

If you just want the opportunity to tell me my post was idiotic, I have copy&paste'd it below:

I am completely new to anything Flash. I have never written a single line of Actionscript. I don't know the difference between Flash and Flex. I don't know in what forums Flash developers hang out. I don't even know what kind of coffee they drink, or if they drink tea instead.

However, I have developed games and have been thinking about developing some casual games and have heard rumors that Adobe is "pushing" causal game development with Actionscript 3 and their latest releases. So I went to adobe.com expecting to see a link for something like "learn how to develop games in flash" or some such. I poked around the developer related pages and didn't find anything I thought useful.

What I did find were plenty of stuff for *existing* flash developers. Links to articles and HowTos for specific topics and information about products that cost a minimum of several hundred dollars. I can't learn how to develop games and create a prototype with a 30-day trial, and I am not going to buy a $1000 pro-grade tool when I am an indie developer without a budget or a pre-funded project that would justify such expenditures.

I have seen some open source stuff, but don't know if it can do anything more than build some annoying shaking banner ads.

So let me introduce myself as a possible use-case for Adobe Marketing and the Flash (Game) Developer community.

I am an educated experience software developer who has a day job doing "enterprise" software stuff. I want to *play* in my free time (evenings and weekends) with "Flash Stuff" and learn enough to be able to build a simple game that I can put on my personal website and have my friends download. I am not a student, so I can't get student discounts. The money I have goes toward toys^H^H^H^H tools for my other coding habits^H^H^H^H^H projects. I am not interested in 30-day trials, as I may go 45-days or more between the first and second weekends I get to play with this. I know OOP so I want to start out learning how to do the "advanced" stuff from day one and not have to start with dragging and dropping PNGs w/o any coding and then "relearn" how to do it in code so I can do anything beyond having the image appear and rotate.

I *am* willing to put time into this endeavor, but only after I have a few things spoon-fed to me by "advocates" who's job is to get me "hooked" and willing to invest my time to go beyond Hello World. At the same time I am download and playing with GarageGames, TGE/TGB, Game Maker, Dark Basic, Blitz Basic, etc. and many complete development environments that are full-featured and completely free if I limit myself to releasing only freeware games, or cost me less than $50 for the "professional" version with all the bells and whistles.

I have heard rumors and rumblings about some open source tools being available and Adobe maybe open sourcing some of their previously pay-to-play tools, but also understand that Adobe can probably provide a better "comprehensive" package of tools, documentation, tutorials, and support, *if I can find the right place to ask/start.*

And, most of all, I don't know where to start my search as I have no personal contacts to bug about stuff like this.

So, where can I find the big red button to push and get everything I want handed to me on a silver-platter.

[please understand I have written this with some attempt at self-mocking humor and am not some clueless n00b]

Thank you for taking the time to read my lengthy posting. I hope to find some helpful replies and start down an interesting learning path.

--Chaim

[Darwin]

So, where can I find the big red button to push and get everything I want handed to me on a silver-platter.

[please understand I have written this with some attempt at self-mocking humor and am not some clueless n00b]

 

Doesn't seem stupid to me...

[tomos]

If you add another post (plea!?) it presumably goes to top of list again

I've posted about fonts somewhere in Adobe forums (is it "Typography forum" there )
& gotten help.
It's probably just the luck of the draw & that it's so busy as you say.

Posted a bit in freehand forum there too & it was painfully slow to navigate it & threads older than a certain date weren't shown -
but that could have just been adobe discriminating against the newly aquired Freehand 

[Deozaan]

It's too long for the other idiots to read. Shorten it to something like this:

HOW DO I MAKE GAMES IN ACTHISNCRITP??!??! PLZ TELL ME AND MAKE IT EZ TO UNDERSTANDD!!!11 PS IM NOT A N00B LOLZ!

Almost guaranteed you'll get plenty of replies. But they'll probably still not be helpful.

[app103]

I think there is 4 problems with your post:

Problem 1: Whatever it is that you want is buried in a lot of text. Keep it short & simple and to the point.

Problem 2: It isn't clear exactly what you are asking for. Technically there isn't a question in that entire post...at least not one that ends in a question mark.

I am not trying to be a nitpicker here, but when scanning it twice to try to figure out what you were asking I couldn't find a '?' that would signify an actual question was in all that text.

Problem 3: The only thing that popped out at me from that entire post was this:

So, where can I find the big red button to push and get everything I want handed to me on a silver-platter.

You should know better than to ask that, whether you mean it that way or not. You will never get an answer to a post containing anything like that. At least not a useful answer. People run away from demands like that. And it doesn't matter what other words you surround that with, that still won't fly very well.

Problem 4: (most likely the biggest problem of all) You posted that to the wrong forum.

You would probably do a lot better if you go here and click 'community' and select a link from there. There is loads of stuff there that lead offsite. Browse around till you find something with a forum of people that seem to know what they are doing, answers questions, and are populated with more of the type of Flash user you would like to become.

You could also consider Yahoo's Flash Developer Network. There is a Yahoo Group there that might give you a lot better response to your questions.

If you are going to rely on a user to user support forum on Adobe's site, you aren't going to get anywhere. Nobody that works for Adobe officially spends any of their time there.

Your questions aren't of a specific software related technical problem. If any questions get answered on that forum they would be of that type, and only if some user that can answer it happens to drop by & see it and bother to reply.

You would be better off asking here for links to resources and recommendations for good flash game developer communities that welcome all levels of experience.

I am sure Deozaan could probably tell you a few.

[Deozaan]

You would be better off asking here for links to resources and recommendations for good flash game developer communities that welcome all levels of experience.

I am sure Deozaan could probably tell you a few.

-app103 (November 01, 2007, 02:38 PM)

Shhh! Don't tell!

Besides, I'm not about to respond to a stupid post like that! 

[mrainey]

One forum I go to has a thread titled "Am I a thread killer?".  The first post reads "Seems like half the threads I reply to just die right after I answer.   Are you people trying to tell me something?"

The thread now has 290 pages of posts.   

[Renegade]

+1 for keep it short.

People don't read - they scan. Mostly...

Keeping things maximally readable (i.e. Short & simple) attracts more readers. People don't want to get dragged into something long. They like quick fixes. Perhaps what you wanted to say was:

I'm an experienced developer looking to get into Flash game development. I have little or no Flash/Action Script skills.

Can anyone point me to a good starting point/tutorial for Flash game development?

[Carol Haynes]

Other people have said it - keep it short and clear what you want. More than 6 lines and no one is going to read it.

See http://www.adobe.com...rums/guidelines.html for some hints too.

Did you know you can also access the Adobe forums via usenet at news://forums.adobe.com (sorry you can't use links to usenet in BBCode - just copy the address to your browser or simply create an account in your NNTP reader, such as Outlook Express if you don't have one, with the server name fourms.adobe.com). They don't have all the forums on there any more (they used to) and seem to prefix everything with macromedia (which is very strange since macromedia no longer exist). I haven't used it for a long time but you used to have to log on to the usenet server with the same username and password as your web forums. I have to say when I bothered with Adobe Forums (which I don't any more) I found the usenet approach much quicker and easier to deal with.