YouTube video feedback [Video Tutorials for MonoGame]

Hi, I made my very first youtube video and I would like to hear your feedback.

The code is NOT the cleanest, I know. I wanted to focus on partial things, concepts and ideas - not present the prettiest code possible, if there is such a thing.

Thanks, code on.

9 Likes

Needlessly epic, lole. Find some actually fitting, calmer music.
Also kind of a nothtingburger in terms of content. Nobody wants to see seven minutes of you making four buttons. If you want people to watch that, you need to make it interesting - show a weeks worth of progress, explain how you did it and what problems you faced, preferrably with a voiceover, most people listen to such videos in a background.

Thank you for your opinions.

Let me explain my thoughts.
It is supposed to be beginners guide - so I picked a lightweight topic. Something I would like to see in my beginnings. I wouldnā€™t say ā€œnobody wants to see the basicsā€ - I imagine there are plenty of newbies.

I tried the voiceover narrative - but my voice and my english (not my first language) arenā€™t simply good enough.

The music is a personal preference, I wanted it to be energetic to pump you up into action, wanting to try it out immediately. But that is certainly something that I will play around with.

As far as the problems faced. The format is just a few minutes long - and every obstacle is covered, that is why it reiterates/refactors the code many times. I donā€™t want to show just bits and pieces from a weeks long path.

I think you might have expected more like a DevLog, which this is not. I tried it to be a walkthrough begginerā€™s tutorial.

Does this make any sense? Thank you again, appreciated.

So itā€™s a guide and not a devlog. Because it sure does not look like a guide. : D

You cannot just do a timelapse with minimal explanations and call it a guide, not even talking about the code itself (passing spritebatch into Draw? Seriously?).

Videotutorials about coding are next to useless anyway. They just waste your time and trick you into thinking youā€™ve understood something. Youā€™d be much better off writing articles, or plain code samples.

Took me less than 2 seconds to want to stop playing the video.

More like 0.86 seconds to make the decision, had to move my mouse across my wide desktop, so it counted 4 seconds on YouTube.

Donā€™t write an essay as a response to feedback, take the feedback, and move on.

Improve your code before creating pointless videos, you are wasting peopleā€™s valuable time, and whatever value you place on your time.

And you called it ā€œButtonā€, what type of button? just one button? what language? what Framework/Engine? What Platform for? What planet is this video for?

I suppose Welcome to the Community.

Keep Codingā€¦ I guessā€¦

while i agree with the substance of the feedback here i find it exceedingly harsh. iā€™ve made plenty of stuff thatā€™s not super great, but itā€™s all on the journey to make cool stuff. remember weā€™re making video games here, itā€™s supposed to be fun :slight_smile:

you can be incredibly talented and intelligent but youā€™ll never truly be a ā€œgoodā€ programmer if you lack basic soft skills. i would hate to be on a team with people who talked like this to me or my other team-mates.

did this person get caught eating babies or something? what a terrible thing to sayā€¦

anyways iā€™m not super active here i but welcome you to the community and i hope you keep programming if it makes you happy!

3 Likes

Congrats on missing that this was his first post, nice insult there though šŸŖ„

Thank you, Zach.
But donā€™t worry, itā€™s the internet - I can take whatever it throws at me. And I asked for it.
I know they meant well. And thanks to you all.

2 Likes

i did notice it was their first post?

ā€œi suppose welcomeā€

ā€œkeep coding i guessā€

youā€™re pretty much telling them to give up and that theyā€™re not welcome here

i can be rude on accident sometimes too, but i can push them to be a little nicer in the same way they can push you to be a better programmer, in their own way

In other newsā€¦

Nice video :slight_smile: I do agree with the general feedback that you might want to either consider a written guide, or perhaps a more compact approach. What Iā€™ve noticed a lot of people like to do is discuss the code, but then also have prepared snippets that you can copy/paste in while discussing them.

A great place to see examples of engaging, yet brief, coding videos is Brackeys (Unity).

On the note of the actual content, you might want to consider a few things (up to you, just suggestions!)ā€¦

  • Check out SOLID principles. They make code architecture kind of nice.
  • Consider moving what happens when a button is clicked outside the button logic. Instead of doing things there, have it trigger an event that whoever instantiates the button can choose to subscribe to, or not.
  • Having the button responsible for owning a reference to its own texture like you did at the start was actually really good. Alternatively though, you can pass in an instance of a ā€œButtonDataā€ object (or something like that) and have it be accessed from there. More Single Responsibility (S in SOLID) but not super critical.

I have a few other thoughts but either way, great start and keep it up :slight_smile:

1 Like

I donā€™t want to waste more of your time, but I think the event thing part happens in the video. Setting custom textures is certainly wanted, but omitted in that case, thank you for the pointers, would love to hear more.

Oh, I might have missed that. My bad! :slight_smile:

Hello, round two: GameDev Quickie #2 - Parallax background [MonoGame] - YouTube
Thanks.

1 Like

I think the narration style with code being typed in the background at increased speed is a marked improvement. The script is very clear, though you did gloss over a few points without returning to them. I think the only piece of video feedback I have for you is to maybe pause a bit more briefly on completed parts before moving on so the viewer has a bit more time to process it. I know they can pause, but a sliiiightly longer pause may help with absorption without messing with the flow.

Thatā€™s pretty minor though, nice job :slight_smile:

2 Likes

If you remove everything surrounded by ** ** below:

**[GameDev Quickie #2 - Parallax background [MonoGame] - YouTube](**https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPyXfpd8sZo**)**

i.e. this stuff:
[GameDev Quickie #2 - Parallax background [MonoGame] - YouTube]()

You get:

Now I can play it without opening a new tab, and so can so many others on mobile devicesā€¦

Will update my feedback once I see the videoā€¦

EDIT

Music and sound quality improvedā€¦ :100:

Computerised Voice-over [VO]ā€¦ gets a massive negative from me, preference of hatred for itā€¦
Another reason is I am trying to compensate for the lack of breathing it is doingā€¦ aaaaaaand I can no longer watch the videoā€¦ I did make it to 1m37s though

Constructive feedback:
Add VSCode to the title
Add XNA to the title [XNA/MonoGame]
Text is nice and clear
Timings for VO and content was [up until 1m37s] on point, keep that up
Change the font, it looks like DeuLuickie or DeuJuickie, subtitle is readable thoughā€¦
Welcome to ā€˜thisā€™ dev quickie episode/edition/show/devlog/documentary/video
Add the episode number to the audioVO

OK, so I pushed through 1m37s, take a clip of the app running part and use it as the opening clip with the titleā€¦ it shows me what to expect of the videoā€¦

Pace it a little slower so users can orient as you change text and source files on the screen, as the intellisense can be a bit overwhelming for first time codersā€¦

I made it to the end of the video!

Well done!

But hopefully that VO has a ā€˜take a breathā€™ tick box somewhereā€¦ [slow it down]

I like what you are doing there, clean, simple, concise, ignoring project orientation [Was that in the first video? I will never find outā€¦]

If you can create a VSCode setup/orientation video, that might be helpful for a lot of unaccustomed users who enjoy self-harm, err, I mean cross platform codingā€¦ :laughing: I say this because I am considering refreshing my fresh project setup guide and reposting itā€¦

Keep it up!

3 Likes

Hello, episode 3 is up:

I tried to implement your feedbacks as much as possible.

4 Likes

I think your videos are moving towards a great place. The only piece of feedback for the video I have is that you should upload the code for each to a github repo so itā€™s easy to browse the code. I had some thoughts on your implementation, but itā€™s actually a bit frustrating to zip back and forth through the video trying to figure out what you wrote so I gave up.

1 Like

Thatā€™s a very good point. One that I had in mind myself. So, here it is: GitHub - LubiiiCZ/DevQuickie

1 Like

Try finding something less, for kidsā€¦ something along the lines of:

ā€¦and mix it into the background moreā€¦

Just some feedbackā€¦

EDIT

Just muted your video and played this, really hits your input beatsā€¦

EDIT

Here you go

Humble Software Bundle: BIG Royalty-Free Game Dev Music and SFX (pay what you want and help charity) (humblebundle.com)