What I am wordering is at what point do you become more belonging in the advaced users section?I used to think it ment you were fluid in code,now I am and I don't know if thats so true.There useing functions I did not know evan existed.I'm learning new stuff like online 39 Dll codeing and 3D,but its like I am a n00b too it,just like I was to simple codeing.Other advanced users they seem to know it all,and now I see no experts topic,i'd be among pepole who have been learning gm for years and can do anything.In sumary,should I step up,or hang low for awhile?

Knowing GML is only Intermediate. When you are an advanced user, you will know.

The Advanced GML Discussion is just a renamed Experts forum. It's intended audience hasn't changed, just it's name. Feel free to read through it and learn a few things. If there is something you feel could add to the discussion, feel free to say it. If you know for a fact something is wrong, feel free to point it out. If you feel out of your depth in the discussion, I suggest you keep your mouth shut .

I'd say it's more of a label for your question's content rather than your skill level.

IE: Novice is for simple questions that don't require complex methods to solve. Advanced for questions that require critical thinking and lots of effort to solve.(generally)

Thanks alot.I'm no stranger to critical thinking and a bit more complex problems,but not so much I only post topics for them.I will take your advice of staying out of some,but will be replying more than you may think.

I'd say, see if you can understand and follow the discussions in the advanced forum and are able to look up things and understand from the manual or after some testing how they will work. If you can do all of that yourself, this means others don't need to "hold your hand" in creating things. I'd say this is a good criterion.

That is not the desired intention of the forum, it is meant to be used solely by advanced users not for advanced questions. This is why the moderators explicitly changed the name to 'Advanced USERS Only' to try and get this message across.

It just so happens that, naturally, advanced users will generally not be asking easy questions. However it is quite possible for beginners to ask complex questions and they should not be doing so in the advanced forum. The difference being that an advanced user should not need his 'hand held' as Erik said; ie they should, at a reasonable level of effort and ability, be able to understand and implement suggestions for themselves before looking for any further assistance.

I tend to stay away from the advanced Q&A forum, I'm at the point where I feel I could pretty much program any 2D game I put my mind to, but i still dont consider that truely advanced. Ive posted in there a few times, the first time i was still too much of a novice to understand their suggestions. I'd say if you are interested in using that forum, browse around in it for awhile, read some discussions, and if you feel like you could fit in and discuss at around the level of depth as they are, go ahead and post. This forum is generaly pretty nice anyway so no one around here is going to care if you misjudged your skill level

For the advanced Q&A, it is best to only ask questions you know won't be answered in the novice Q&A. You're never too much of a beginner to help in the advanced Q&A. You can answer anything, as long as your post helps the topic starter solve his problem.

For what used to be the experts forum, you need to be fluent in most areas of GML. Most of the time the problems there don't touch too many aspects of GML (at once), but you never know.

This is just my opinion, but as Dave said: "When you are an advanced user, you will know."

In my opinion (which might not account for anything)....the novice q&a section is for people who are new to the forums, new to GM, or new in general to the point they:

1. didn't read the forum rules so they...
2. post questions that have already been asked because they...
3. didn't do a search first

If you even look at some of the topics in the novice section, you will see that their posts are lacking in structure, do not have a specific problem that is pinpointed in (usually absent) code. More "How do I program GML?" or "how do i make a game?" questions are asked there, along with countless other repeated (hate the word but) noob questions.

The questions usually asked in the novice section can usually be answered within a split second by any professional programmer without even opening GM for verification. Stuff like "why doesn't this code work {code}if a equals 10{end}" is so obviously not advanced topic.

However, when you start to get on the line of "what is advanced," usually comes down to how the topic has been presented, most advanced topics are very clear with elaborate code with a question of "how do I optimize this" or "why is my shader not working properly"....these questions are very very specific and is usually by people who actually TRIED to get it to work before posting. It also requires even the best programmers to take a step back and actually fiddle with the code to understand it before making any decisions. You will find it is riddled with mostly online, 3D, and shader posts with others speckled here and there.

Hope that helps.

I still decide to post my advanced problems in the Novice area because there's more people and a greater probability that I shall get a rapid response to a simple question. Noobs test other people's stuff more, which is great.

@Everybody
Hell, I can make a whole damn game without Game Maker, and I still prefer the Novice area. Most of the questions I ask in the Advanced area are ignored, even when they're about something that I've pretty much searched for a couple hours on.

@Sabby,
Since when did Game Maker have shader support? Sure, emulating the effects of shaders by using surfaces, but shader support? I'd like to take it apart.

I use the "View New Posts" button, which shows up any section in order, I'll open up anything that I might be able to solve (or says "unsolved" in the text) so it's not about people not being in the advanced section, it's more about the questions being tougher to answer in the advanced section.


I'm guessing "Sabby" meaning me? "Sobriath" was a microchip I designed that used AI techniques in mapping it's core structure, which allowed it to become any CPU type it wanted..."Sabriath" was the base language for it, I scrapped the project years ago, but rewrote the language for higher up programming (higher up like C++, while asm is lower, as an example). Sabriath stands for "Self Automated BRanch Intelligent AlgoriTHm" for it's original low end language. I started using the name for my alias right after scrapping the project at 17, it allowed my hacker alias 12013 to fade out of existence (shh ).

Anyway, back on topic...I've seen many topics dealing with shading, and yes, it was done with surfaces...I'm not familiar enough with the technique but I can pinpoint shading if I see it.

... An I would probably kick them to Novice/Intermediate.

As "flexaplex" mentioned (two post above yours) the Advanced subforum is for advanced people, not for to-hard-to-answer-for-yourself/a-Novice kind of questions.

Actually, the "Provide Sample Code" paragraph in the "Advanced Users Forum Rules & Guidelines" page nicely sums it up :
Posting the problematic code is mandatory.
Supplying a description of what the code is supposed to do and how it fails is needed for the reader to understand what the problem is and what kind of answer is sought. Allso Mandatory.
Mentioning what has allready been done in search for the bug/to solve the problem yourself is, as far as I'm concerned, that what seperates the Novice/Intermediate people from the Advanced.

You do not want to know how many "difficult" questions I've allready moved to Novice/Intermediate that simply evolved around simply not writing a command the right way. And yes, there is quite a difference between "instance_destroy(obj_player) does not want to work, help !" and "How do I use "instance_destroy() to destroy another instance than the current one ?". Although both belong in Novice, the latter one signifies to me that the poster has at least used his head, instead of just ignoring what GMs help says about the command and insert arguments where none belong (and generate errors!).

In short : If you can explain what you are attempting to do, how it fails to do so, what you have done to narrow-down the possible cause of the malfunctioning (read: debugging) and include the offending code your problem might maybe be simple to solve, but your approach is Advanced. And that is what counts.

I think you should step up

The point at which your grammar is good.

I can dream...

I like questions that require critical thinking and lots of effort to solve but I don't think it really means being an advanced user. I guess being an advanced user means knowing how to think in GML even without knowing it. It can sound a little crazy but I consider that someone who doesn't know GML very much but knows how to handle it very well is an advanced user.
Withal you can't know by heart all that manual containing at least 1000 functions and variables (i mean yes you can but I don't recommend that lol).