I hope before the official Steam release the 'Docs' will be updated . Too many things not known by quite a few people on how or what to do/use .
Bad documents or ones not updated could be bad for FPSCR on Steam .
Lance

I do agree that supporting documents should be updated and included in the Steam Release. A lot of changes have happened over the past year to the engine that may not be mentioned there.

I also agree, the documentation was something that let Classic down badly. Great things can be done with the software but only the chosen few knew how to get the best out of it as the documentation barely scratched the surface, this was why I created the "Official Community Guide" for classic. I hope Reloaded's documentation goes into real depth so I don't have to do another guide!

One of the most helpful documents ever for FPSCx9 was the FPI syntax PDF that the community developed. Should have been included in the official releases (and maintained and updated).

Reloaded needs a Help link on the engine that will open up a help index.

To be honest all my energies have been on coding the software, and its always a trick with documentation as you can only really document once you've finished the product you're supposed to be writing about Do you think there is a need for old-school manuals, or would you prefer a continual stream of video tutorials on all matters Guru? I had planned to create several of these per week once we're out and about. Can you suggest areas that will still need good old pen and paper documentation, and which areas you are happy to see promoted into the medium of video and blog style articles/tutorials?

Personally I have always found the most help - useful game tutorials being in the form of "working examples" i.e. "How to make a game" and small specific example snippets showing how the expert achieves an objective. Foe example how to create and get a decal working - together with a small real working example. Videos can do this but they require one to start stop videos often for people to follow the task route second to second sometimes and videos can be large to cover some things of course.

Working examples themselves can be looked at by and end user and studied if all content is accessible and easily understood which is not always the case so some matching/supporting text/image description is supplied with them.....

The Original Dark Basic software product is a good example of a manual with supporting real working examples to learn from and follow. Problem always was and especially for non coders many such example tutorials in that and other softwares often are not helpful but frustrating as the actual manual tutorials and code examples are out of date and are not updated when the products are and then when following the manual tutorials your code does not work and your attempts crash a level and so on - very frustrating for those learning.

When it comes to things like learning GG and how to work with it and code anything useful via lua in particular detailed examples and descriptive would be essential for non expert coders. A detailed and full lua command set and GG code manual and alike is at least quite vital I would think.

Whatever I doubt there's a better alternative to some form of highly detailed and exact help/tutorials rather than the alternative of here's what you get and now go discover/experiment/learn/tech yourself and find out how to do things yourself.

Ideally whether electronic and online or hard copy such as PDF that could also be printed a full manual is invaluable as a reference tool as it can't really be bettered.

In reality I am not sure how useful a full manual is or would be. As being what we are many don't read manuals and "Do the tutorials" anyway. We tend to like to dive in straight away and do it the hard way and get out hands dirty from the off - when learning the basics first by doing the tutorials and reading the manuals can save much time and headaches. But if you don't have one you cant refer to it anyway. Many will often get fed and give up because they get frustrated the cant achieve things or things go wrong.

Any help is better than none.

Reloaded is and will become quite a big product I guess with many features. I agree better to spend time on the product dev itself. The product itself if "Intuitive" to use for the end user would be a big benefit and a good UI and well designed easy to use self explanatory interface can help remove the need for detailed descriptions of the same in any manual. Something not easy to achieve with any software so it seems and few get there as well as we might like.


There will I am sure eventually be a lot of help and useful info provided to be found covering most things through these communities but that may take some time and true to say currently little inside the product is explained with the distribution itself. I personally don't know how or where tor find or tried half it can do yet I am sure.

My preference order is

1. pdf documents
2. example projects
3. video.

The thing I am especially craving for is a GG Lua functions reference. Currently, to find my way around I start by looking at the global.lua file and then at the other lua files, because in them I see functions not appearing in global.lua. It would be really great to have a comprehensive reference. I understand that new functions will keep being added and the remedy to this is to have the reference time stamped and it is not even necessary that the ref is totally synchronized with the latest GG version. But at this point the amount of info that is floating around is getting unmanageable. For scripters it is almost mandatory to have all (most) of it collected in one document.

Actually it was mentioned in another thread the best method would be a wiki-page. There fore the community can contribute to creating documentation to help one another.

yes but that gets over crowded with not so helpful spam etc. how about a thread on here with the subject titles of what it does. then have description and how to and a video link. with a lock so no one can spam, and a lock on that thread to stop silly people posting stuff. this can be monitered, here and precise, without lots of spamming or silly subjects. and maybe a pdf download of the full amount.

Also, we've had several wiki attempts over the years, For Classic and Reloaded, and most of them see a little use, then peter out.

While I see videos have definite value, I often find the internet it too poor, or the videos go at the wrong pace, so I lose patience (probably just me) - there have been some TGC ones which I have found particularly useful.

I would like to see an online manual like AGK, which provides insight on the main features, functions, keys etc., like the AGK pages it could also be provided as an intractable PDF.

While videos are good, they are often not practical:
-- If the software is used in education (where I first came across FPSC x9) video sites as Youtube are often blocked, also if in a classroom you can't all play videos at once
-- Slow internet, theres noting worse than waiting 15 minutes to watch a 5 minute 'how to' video.
-- No internet at all (if its not the main PC in the house)

An (interactive or standard) PDF can also be downloaded to an iPad/tablet for easy reference, or can be printed out.

I would prefer the combination of :

pdf docs,
examples projects,
videos
wiki

Also there is a section on GameGuru store page "Guides" . TGC can have their guides as well as community guides be posted there. The community then can rate the guides, this could be a thing for a future competition for final docs.

I would like PDF docs along with examples .

Example on some of the things not covered . If a new 'Game-Guru' owner tries to enact path how would they know about placing an entity (enemy) down first . It certainly is not in the provided docs or about zone stretching ? The basics need to be covered before Steam launch . This forum would be swamped with people asking basic questions that should have been covered .
How to videos would be very helpful also .
A help file thru 'Help' in the editor would be nice .

Lance

@ Lee and Dev Team

I'm for PDFs, as watching narrowly focused videos still leaves tons of questions, and generally, it is hard to see the exact key strokes etc. I'm an old guy and I find reading much more informative.

That said, The bigger picture here is people like me who have very very limited understanding of Steam. In reading through these posts, frankly I don't care about the name, I'd just like to know what I should be doing??? What are these Steam coins for? How are they used? Someone needs to put together a Ben Frankin, FPSR on the Left and GG on the right...

What happens to the store and those models we have put up there? How (at least in basic terms) does Steam work, and how does GG work with Steam, and how do WE work with both, I mean down to what buttons to push????

16 months ago I began a very steep learning curve and have made a lot of progress. I'm not giving-up, but it seems I now have a whole lot of extra work, and much of it I don't understand. If GG is to be an Easy Game System (which will focus it towards many people who are in the same boat as I am) Then the Dev team needs to get down to basics. You understand all this, but we don't.

Lee, I wrote a 12 page basic guide to LUA programming in FPSR. I'm going to send you the PDF and the Doc File. How will these steps change with GG? Please feel to use it if you find of value, but beyond that I remain confused.

Should we be signing-up for Steam now? I plan to spend tomorrow trying to put all this in perspective.

Also, If PDF's become an option, we need a way for people to be able to get at them on line.

OK enough, I know your plate is full.

GoDevils, if you did that, you'll be fine. I've used Steam for a little over a year now. I don't understand the coins, gems, badges, or whatever, but I know this much, everything I have on Steam is accessible on every computer I have (that will run it). No discs to keep track of or carry along (so many games in the past required the disc to be inserted to combat piracy), no internet connection is necessary (at least for the games I have), and progress is kept in the cloud, so I can pick up wherever I left off. Still, you're way ahead of me if you did as you said! The only thing about Steam that I have a beef with is I am so often tempted to buy games that I will probably play once and never look at again. If you catch them on sale, they are very tempting, and I mean, dirt cheap.


Don

Also, the store isn't going away from what I've read.

There is certainly a good case for both. Good documentation of all functions are a must imo. Videos are great, with many people these days preferring them to reading a huge chunk of text. They are still secondary to actual inbuilt documentation though, more a way of fleshing things out. We need good basic support; All the key editor functions explained and Lua examples for people wanting to get into it a bit further. Video helps give users a more in depth idea of how tools and such work in actuality, but should be really just an extra bonus on top of solid documents.

I can understand that as the product develops things change and you don't want to be constantly revising things, but after a point people want help files. I am fairly up on Reloaded because I follow the blogs and news all the time. Not all users are as attentive and so gems of info get lost to all but the most devoted followers. Even so, I can sometimes find myself remembering you mentioned a flag setting for something, but can't quite remember when or where; a lot of blogs to check to find it!

I wholeheartedly agree good documentation is needed. I also understand the need to wait until certain things at least are pretty stable and not likely to change. I do think however, that in game help options should be updated with any new data and not be missed in future. There are many options in Reloaded that are just not shown. For example the lens flare settings, which can or could be changed up and down in game using the keys (I think), but there was nothing to tell you this anywhere I have seen in the on-screen help. I got the info in an email, until then I was oblivious that it could even be changed!

So yes, less dark arts, more info please!

Lens flare settings? We have them? Really? I haven't received an email from TGC since late last year (October newsletter, I think). (and yes, I've checked my spam folder)

Personally I prefer everything that is written, does not matter the support used. (pdf, docx, html, etc)
Anything that requires you to be connected to internet has a drawback, that depends on internet. What is written, is always at your fingertips.

In my case is more effective it is written, if I find a word that I dont know what's it means, I can search it in Internet more easily, but as for the video, I miss the half or author's words , perhaps because of the accent, speed speech, slang etc, but this is only because my firts language is not English, but Spanish.

Sometimes I have trouble understanding the meaning of a word, for example, backed texture; according to the dictionary and googles translator, you can bake bread, even meat or chicken, but no texture. LOL.
Therefore a glossary of terms, say, "special expressions", would be helpful.

3com

Footsteps !!!

There not great.... In the Asylum sounds like your walking on Metal ?
surely there is a better Default Footstep for interiors
on this page there is a sound effect that would be cool "Footsteps Sound Effect 1"

http://www.soundjay.com/footsteps-1.html

I would imagine it would cover 95 % of interiors for the moment

I also like the written word (can you tell ). I also print things out and read them when I'm away from the computer.

PDFs are much more valuable than video for many aspects of training, especially regarding syntax and coding. I don't like to watch a 10-20 minute video of a person typing only to learn what could be easily gleaned from quickly scanning a paragraph or two from a written document. 1-2 page cheat sheet PDFs are especially useful to quickly look-up particular commands and features.

I do not like going through help on forums as your bound by the search terms and its very hard to cross reference. That is why i prefer a wiki (with quality control admins).

If it was hosted with TGC it could replace the "FAQ" at the top of the page here.