The Turing Walkthrough - Beginning to End

[Cervantes]

The..Turing..Walkthrough

Welcome to the Walkthrough! This is a listing of the important tutorials in the [Turing Tutorials] forum. They are sorted by when you should learn them. In this way, it's sort of like a book. You can teach yourself Turing with this guide. It is unlike a book, though, in that the articles here are written by many different authors. A consequence of this is that styles will change from article to article. It is possible also that coding convention will change from article to article. This is regrettable. The best thing you can do is to follow the coding conventions yourself, and be consistent with yourself, even if you happen to be reading code that doesn't. That said, be sure to keep the Style Guidelines by wtd close at hand. Read the guidelines every now and then, and follow them!

This Walkthrough is written for people who are learning Turing without any prior programming experience. As such, if you are already a programming whiz and are just trying to tuck the Turing language under your belt, you might get a little bored by the pace of these tutorials. If so, you might want to consider reading a fastpaced introduction to Turing by Token. It won't take you all the way through Turing, but it'll take you through all the basic stuff that you really just want to learn the syntax for. For some of the more advanced topics, such as object oriented programming, you should probably read the regular Walkthrough tutorial, because Turing does OOP so different from other languages. If you know another language, you should check out Turing Translations by wtd. It translates many different introductory concepts into a dozen or so other languages. Find the code bits in the language(s) you know, understand them, then read how to do the same thing in Turing!

With that said, dive in! Check out the Essentials section and start reading the first tutorial on an unfamiliar topic. Also, glance over the Extras section and get an idea of what material is there. Then, whenever you feel you're ready (read: whenever you want to take a break from the real stuff and have some fun making games), read some of that material. The material there is mostly about graphics and advanced input. You know, game stuff.


Essentials
{

The Basics - Introduction to programming, commenting, basic output, variables, and basic input by Cervantes
If structures - Write code that can make decisions by Cervantes
Functions and Procedures - Organize your code into sections and call them at will; introduction to recursion by Cervantes
Loops and For loops - To repeat sections of code over and over by Cervantes
String Manipulation by Cervantes
Index - searching through a string by AsianSensation
Records and Types - Create new, compound data types by AsianSensation
Arrays - Mass variables by Freakman and Cervantes
Enumerated Types - Create an indexing system that is readable and understandable by Freakman
File Input/Output - Reading and writing data from/to text files by Freakman
Bitwise Operators - Experiment with binary, getting closer to lowlevel programming by Zylum
Recursion - Subroutines that call themselves can achieve amazing results by Zylum
Modules - Collections of procedures and functions by Delos
Pointers - Referencing memory and creating linked lists by lyam_kaskade.
Classes Part I - Make your own objects by Cervantes
Classes Part II - Create objects that interact with each other by Cervantes
Classes Part III - Inheritance and Polymorphism to create a network of objects by Cervantes
Functional Programming (in Turing!) - Passing and returning anonymous functions by Cervantes

}

Extras
{

Graphics
{


Basic Graphics - Make your program look nice by Asok
Fonts and locating put - Make your text look nice by basketball4ever
View.Set and View.Update - Configuring the run window and eliminating animation flickering by Freakman
Windows - Managing the window(s) your program run(s) in by Delos
Pictures - Import your own .bmp's and .jpg's by Hacker Dan
RGB - Create your own colours as you need them by TheZsterBunny
Intro to 3D - Project a 3D world onto the 2D computer screen by Windsurfer
GUI (Graphical User Interface) - Make clickable buttons by Recneps


}

Advanced Input
{


More advanced input - getch, Input.KeyDown, Mouse.Where by DanShadow
Input.KeyDown - in more detail by Tony
Mouse.Where - some more detail by Hacker Dan


}

Other Stuff
{


The Dir Module - Traverse and manipulate directories by jamonathin
The Net Module - Use Turing and the internet together by DanShadow
Collision Detection - Determine when two objects collide--a necessity for games by richcash
Whatdotcolour - Another approach to collision detection and other useful things by Andy


}

}


If you have any questions about anything covered in this walkthrough, please do not ask them here. Make a thread in the [Turing Help] forum.

Broken links? Want to write a tutorial? Private Message Tony (or Dan).
If you have any comments/suggestions as to the order of this tutorial, or the concepts covered/not covered, please let us know.
*edit* Wrong author credited with a tutorial. Fixed. -zylum

[AsianSensation]

w00t w00t! This is some awesome stuff.

Goob job Cervantes. I think you deserve 500 bits so you'll be 500 bits richer than other mods, until you post again that is.

[Delos]

I think I shall keep this link handy...since without explicit direction, few newcomers will ever find it.
Great work, as always.
(BTW, love the use of colours...now only if you learnt to spell 'programme' correctly...)

[Malazan]

Wow, that's a lot of stuff to learn on Turing. Thanks for making such a great topic, now I can actually learn how to use Turing well

[ltig99]

Good work!

[ZeroPaladn]

yay now i can learn turing!

[Flikerator]

Very, VERY detailed. Gj. The thing I notice is the lack of GUI.

[Mazer]

Cervantes wrote:

GUI (Graphical User Interface) - Make buttons aplenty by Recneps

[Cervantes]

Yes, though that only covers Buttons. There's a whole whack of other widgets that aren't explained. Not that they are much different, mind you. The most important part of a GUI tutorial would be explaining the general structure that GUI requires of your code: action procedures, widget creation, GUI.ProcessEvent. An expansion on this tutorial to cover things such as textfields, textboxes, radio buttons, check buttons, and the like would be good.
It is listed in the Improving Tutorials thread.

[nitrox]

[mod:01070149d5="Cervantes"]Yes, I'm sure a "website" with a jpg extension will help people learn Turing. Move along, if you have nothing helpful to add.[/mod:01070149d5]

[ZeroPaladn]

lolz, i just got to reading most of the tutorials in great detail (as a should have a year ago ) i thank you again Cervantes for setting all this up, you should put this somewhere on the compsci turing homepage for quick refernence.

[nmr123321]

thanks a lot. really helps for newbies like me

[didsbub]

Very detailed walkthrough. It gave me good information and examples of code.

[onemanyarmy]

i have a question about view update.. i used thee
View.Set("offscreenonly") code and then the view update inside a loop

but the thing is how do i end it? because i have other animations going on after and they dont show cuz of the view set.. is there to end it? or do i have to use view update through the whole thing?

[Andy]

it's actually surprisingly simple

View.Set("nooffscreenonly")