Castle Game Engine (Cross Platform) - Need Help with Drawing a Raycast Vector

[TRon]

So I know I can't run without being able to walk, but what if no one is willing to actually show me how to walk correctly?

Note again that I did not read the thread closely so have no idea what exact roadblocks you are encountering or encountered.

If you (and that also goes for me) have no idea how a certain construct needs to used then I always fall back to trying to read/understand what is written in the manual. This is especially true for new introduced features (I have to learn about those as well).

I can not be sure but it could perhaps be that (the impression of) the lack of reading the manual is something that is being held against you. For sure Michalis seem to have thought so (note that that thought is my interpretation of his post, and not his), when referring you to the manuals.

The sad thing is that in case there is even some truth in the above that exchanging posts this way (you encountering an error and asking for help) is much more time-wasting then you might perhaps believe. These posts are usually time-consuming, time which could have spend otherwise (trying to grasp the concept of a construct from the manual for example).

Now, I do understand that this might not be the case or perhaps you are one of the people that have difficulty learning from a manual (I usually dislike reading manuals as well) and/or rather spend time in practice by just doing things (and just see where that gets you  )

Now that is it concerning that part.

Another point, that might or might not be applicable to your situation: When asking a question (more experienced) people can usually detect (by how the the question was asked) how much time was spend in trying to find the answer to the problem. Just pasting an error (again I do not know if you did something like that or not) is not showing any incentive.... The right question would be more like, when I am trying to do x I tried solution y by means of z then ran into error a. Reading through the manual I noticed k, l and m but for the life of me I can't seem to figure out how l and m are applicable to z in order to use y so that I am able to do x. Could someone please help me out there or explain if it is even possible to do x the way that I tried to use it ?

When you encounter errors regarding 3th party libraries then things can become even more tedious because using 3th party solution means investing even more time. That is for example reason I do not know everything. I know the basics but learning about a 3th party implementations/API's is sometimes too cumbersome (even for me). There are even libraries out there that I avoid on purpose simple because their code-base is too difficult for me to understand (and I am not willing to invest time to learn more about it: but I also do not ask questions about those as well because i have the believe that learning about it is my responsibility).

Especially the latter is difficult because most 3th party libraries/API's are poorly documented (again, I do not know if that applies for what you are using atm) and requires you to even look at their source-code in order to get familiar with the 3th-party's code-base and API that should be used. And that is very tiresome and when you are in the process of deciding if you even want to use such a library can be a (whole lot of) waste of time.

One of the things I noticed about these forums is that in case you show incentive on your part then most people are more than willing to help you out (unless the topic is very specific or require much in depth knowledge, then sometimes it can take longer or you can't even get an answer at all because nobody seem to have the knowledge). Trying to take a shortcut by trying to let someone else do the work for you is always detected, even when you are not aware that you are perhaps doing so. It is usually frowned upon or you get a negative response.

Hence some of my ramblings that might perhaps be able to shed a light on how things work in practice 

[michalis]

Note that I told you why your code crashes. See above in this thread, 3 times now. I emphasized the critical sentence:

Initialize the field "AvatarTransform" of the instance of class "TMyMesh". It is not initialized now.

It's literally a 1-line addition to your code.  I'm not sure if it will solve all the problems, but I'm pretty sure it will solve the issue with your code crashing in "CreateMesh" routine, which you show on the screenshot https://forum.lazarus.freepascal.org/index.php/topic,66238.msg507353.html#msg507353 .

Please follow on this sentence.

- If you are not sure what some words of it mean, read about it, and ask precise questions. If you don't know what the word "field" or "instance of class" means, we can point you to resources (like https://castle-engine.io/learn_pascal ). Using classes is a big topic, there are books written on this subject, that's why we send you to read them -- it's not a topic someone will exhaustively explain in a forum post, from the ground up and completely. At least I'm not able to explain these things in a forum post, I wrote one book about it, and it's probably too short

- Follow up on the error message from the compiler. It tells you a line that crashes. See whether variables used there have reasonable values. Output these values in any way. Or use Lazarus debugger, as pointed out in this thread, to investigate these variables. See what values do they have, think whether this is the correct value, and if not -> how to change it.

- I also encourage you to create simple Pascal applications to experiment with these concepts. Simple applications independent from CGE, LCL, or really any other Pascal library. I know you've done some of it from our past threads on CGE forum -- I'm asking you to do more exercises.

- Don't try to guess this line by "trial and error", pasting various things into your code and hoping that one of them will work. E.g. in one of the later posts you added a local variable "PlayerAvatarTransform" that is just equal to "AvatarTransform" and is also unused -- these kinds of tests do not lead to solution.

Sorry for not spelling out this missing line precisely for you. But in the past, I've given you direct solutions to some questions, and the end result is not productive. You have to understand what the compiler says, how the language works, to solve simple problems (like how to initialize a field). From this, you can go and solve the big problems (like how to make a game ). The effort is really worth it, there's a lot of fun things to do, the more and more you can do

[Joanna from IRC]

I think his objective is to waste people’s time as much as possible by engaging them in useless debates. {7 pages so far }His refusal to learn pascal makes this obvious. He did the same thing in the castle game engine forum and opened a frivolous issue in their github.

It’s not your job to beg people to learn pascal. Getting people who don’t like pascal to learn it is a waste of time. Believe me...

To avoid being baited in the future, Here’s some advice... if someone is acting difficult , make sure that they know at least rudimentary pascal before investing more time into trying to help them with things beyond beginner level pascal.

[marcov]

Do keep in mind that most people come to Free Pascal with either Turbo or Delphi experience.

There have been discussions in the past how accessible it is for people without that .

[Joanna from IRC]

It should not be difficult for someone with prior programming experience to learn pascal if they want to. Pascal is not my first language and there seem to be other people who learned basic first as well..

[vfclists]

@JPF12141999

This is my advice to you.

Before people can help you they need to see what you are trying to do, ie they need to see the code - OK?

Learn about Github and or Pastebin and upload your code there for people who want to help you to see what you are trying to do. It doesn't look like you've even uploaded any code for others to see what you want to accomplish.

I am not one for uploading strange zip files on my computer so I'm not even hot on the preferred practice here of downloading zip files with code, though I get that some countries are banned by Github so it may be the way available to others.

One more question. How many programming languages have do you have experience in?

[vfclists]

@JPF12141999

This is my advice to you.

Before people can help you they need to see what you are trying to do, ie they need to see the code - OK?

Learn about Github and or Pastebin and upload your code there for people who want to help you to see what you are trying to do. It doesn't look like you've even uploaded any code for others to see what you want to accomplish.

I am not one for uploading strange zip files on my computer so I'm not even hot on the preferred practice here of downloading zip files with code, though I get that some countries are banned by Github so it may be the way available to others.

One more question. How many and what programming languages do you have experience in?

[Joanna from IRC]

@ vfclists it looks like you double posted by mistake.

I know this might be hard to believe {from your perspective as someone Who is serious about pascal}but there is a possibility that he has never written any pascal code at all and never plans to. His goal is to aggravate and waste our time. He is preying upon our desire to welcome new people to fpc community.

It is good to help people new to pascal of course but new people will be willing to learn the pascal language. That’s the best way to determine their intentions. He deflects all efforts to help him learn pascal because  he doesn’t want to learn pascal.
He has been using “I am a newbie “ as a pretext to get away with being a disruptive time sink. He is literally taking away time from developers which could have been better spent writing code.

By the way he has started a new thread with same purpose as this one..

[KodeZwerg]

To avoid being baited in the future, Here’s some advice... if someone is acting difficult , make sure that they know at least rudimentary pascal before investing more time into trying to help them with things beyond beginner level pascal.

Just no.
Everyone that ask for help should get since asking is the first step of learning and thats what this forum is made for. At least in that way I do interprete it.
If someone earn your attention or not is just up to you but not a rule in itself.
We all can build up our own opinion if something it worth our time or not, like I just did by doing a reply to your partly bold text.

Imagine a beginner join your holy IRC, there is the problem the bouncer, so there a beginner having no chance to learn in practice from other members but on this media/forum, people can actually learn without knowing any basic syntax. If that is wise is printed on a different page, but at least such persons are not getting kicked or banned, they getting advised to read here or there.
If than the OP make progress or not is out of our control but we can judge on our own if the person is willing to spend time learning this fantabulous programming language by watching how he/she grow (or not...)

[TRon]

@KodeZwerg:
+1

OP seem to make an additional effort in a newly created thread which does at least show some incentive. Unfortunately I hardly know anything about castle game-engine nor do I have any time to get into details of this extensive library. Indeed as you wrote KodeZwerg, each individual can decide for themselve if it is worth the effort or not.

[Joanna from IRC]

@kodezwerg you use discord spyware !! You have not participated in chat since 2019 even though I have invited you to come help several times you didn’t care enough about the people there to bother showing up except once as a prank using a fake name and acting weird.

I don’t think anyone here is interested in your Distorted fantasies about what I do with my chat channel. They are most certainly welcome to come visit If they want to know the truth.

Meanwhile I’ve been there almost everyday for years trying to help people with pascal problems even though many are beyond my skill level and those I refer to these forums. I know I’m not perfect but I’m doing the best I can. We sure could use some help from pascal experts.

[KodeZwerg]

@kodezwerg you use discord spyware !!

I do use what I want to use, if there is a problem it is my problem and until now I do not have any problem by using what I want to use.

You have not participated in chat since 2019 even though I have invited you to come help several times you didn’t care enough about the people there to bother showing up except once as a prank using a fake name and acting weird.

Actually it was last year (2023) and not supposed to be a prank.

I don’t think anyone here is interested in your Distorted fantasies about what I do with my chat channel. They are most certainly welcome to come visit If they want to know the truth.

Or read here how my true unfiltered "distorted fantasy" experience was.
I apology to bring this old up and replied in my prior message about naming IRC, so please lets stop it right here. Thank you.

Meanwhile I’ve been there almost everyday for years trying to help people with pascal problems even though many are beyond my skill level and those I refer to these forums.

I know that you work hard on that matter!

I know I’m not perfect but I’m doing the best I can.

Nobody is perfect and I believe you do great!

[Joanna from IRC]

@kodezwerg
So by your own admission you are complaining about my chat channel which you don’t even like enough to participate in because you prefer to be data harvested and monetized by the owners of discord. That’s your choice I don’t care what you choose to do with your spare time so long as it doesn’t involve helping pascal haters by attacking a pascal support channel.

If you had good intentions for helping people in chat with their pascal problems as you did in 2019 {Which was appreciated btw} you would have not abandoned us and showed up years later as a prank using a fake name and acting obnoxious. That is just common sense that I would hope that any sensible person would agree with.

Despite of what you have done, you have always been welcome to come back IF you genuinely want to help people and can act normal.

Nobody is perfect and I believe you do great!

Also your sarcasm is not appreciated. What do you think you are doing attacking the only active pascal support chat channel on a platform that isn’t spyware?

Another thing I find odd is that the discord channel is owned by someone named commando950 who is not a pascal developer and is not active in forums. Why do you think that is?

[michalis]

So by your own admission you are complaining about my chat channel which you don’t even like enough to participate in because you prefer to be data harvested and monetized by the owners of discord. That’s your choice I don’t care what you choose to do with your spare time so long as it doesn’t involve helping pascal haters by attacking a pascal support channel.

This long thread has now gone off-topic.

Please let's stop here the talk about IRC, Discord, and let's not rush to judge people as haters etc.

I am happy to help anyone, including people completely new to Pascal, to learn. I'm sure most people in Lazarus community agree. To this end, both Lazarus and CGE have a lot of docs to help people learn Pascal ( https://wiki.freepascal.org/ , https://castle-engine.io/learn_pascal ).

[Joanna from IRC]

@ michalis you have the patience of a saint.
Even though my gaming days are over I applaud your efforts in creating the castle game engine.