[strontiumdog]

1. Have a plan. Decide what kind of plugin you want to write. If you have no direction, then the learning curve will be steeper.

2. Look through other people's source code. Study how they did it. There are some truly great programmers here who will have code in some of their plugins that will help you create your's.

3. Read, read, read. Read the SourceMod wikis, the Scripting forum, this forum, the VALVe wikis (e.g. http://developer.valvesoftware.com/w...egory:Entities) for suggestions and help.

4. New programmers often forget fundementals like knowing the different types of variables, leaving out brackets etc, so be prepared for a lot of frustrating moments. Gradually these fade away as your familiarity with the language increases.

SourcePawn is a great language to learn. It follows the basic structure of other langauges like C and PHP and can be a great stepping stone to learning these languages, too.

[CrimsonGT]

Originally Posted by strontiumdog 4. New programmers often forget fundementals like knowing the different types of variables, leaving out brackets etc, so be prepared for a lot of frustrating moments. Gradually these fade away as your familiarity with the language increases.

I know myself, the SM Developers, and a lot of SM plugin writers still leave out brackets and have some very frustrating times scanning over 2000 line plugins trying to figure out why Only suggestion is compile A LOT. I wrote a plugin once that was 2800 lines long, and since it was nothing advanced, I just kept writing. When I finally decided to compile at around 1200 lines, I had something like 39 errors just from misstypes, missing brackets, etc. The WORST is putting a ';' after an if statement.

[recon0]

Originally Posted by CrimsonGT I know myself, the SM Developers, and a lot of SM plugin writers still leave out brackets and have some very frustrating times scanning over 2000 line plugins trying to figure out why Only suggestion is compile A LOT. I wrote a plugin once that was 2800 lines long, and since it was nothing advanced, I just kept writing. When I finally decided to compile at around 1200 lines, I had something like 39 errors just from misstypes, missing brackets, etc. The WORST is putting a ';' after an if statement.

No... The worst is writing a menu system in C++ and wondering why

if (selection = "1")

is always getting triggered even when selection != "1".

Then you remember... Oh... Shit... It's ==

[C.Falcon]

Actually, coming from a guy who has a decent programming background, i am finding it difficult to jump into pawn scripting.

The wiki's are great, but i find that they do not always have enough information.

The best way to learn is to set up your own local server and tear apart other people's code on it. Basically, i take some one's source and start editing it and adding / removing lines, compile, and run to learn what they do.

(Just don't steal some one's hard work, that will just make you a jack ass)

Also the forums are you friend! Use them wisely.

[L. Duke]

I WANT TO BE A PLUGIN MAKER!

I WANT TO BE A SIDE OF BACON!

[DontWannaName]

MMMMM BACON!!! GIMMEE

[bman87]

I am a decent programmer. I know C# .NET, Java, and a little PHP/HTML.
I do not know C++ or C yet. (On my agenda for my bachelors in CS )

What IDE do you use for SourcePawn? I have been badly spoiled by MVS-2008 and its intelliSense..

[recon0]

Originally Posted by bman87 I am a decent programmer. I know C# .NET, Java, and a little PHP/HTML. I do not know C++ or C yet. (On my agenda for my bachelors in CS ) What IDE do you use for SourcePawn? I have been badly spoiled by MVS-2008 and its intelliSense..

PawnStudio

If you don't know a language or library by heart, having a good IDE is important.

[CrimsonGT]

Originally Posted by L. Duke I WANT TO BE A SIDE OF BACON!

That is sig material right there.

[strontiumdog]

I use Notepad++ !