TDN Now available to ALL

#1 Well.. unfortunately.. the content that I was hoping for is really NOT there... A few good examples to get you started of course.. but boy is the content just lacking. Take the tetris example.. I thought great.. some solid code to follow.. but the author leaves out a huge section, links to an outdated tilemap tutorial (v1.0) and without this.. your stuck.

Only 3 genre examples.. not card games (isn't that one really 2D?), no puzzle games, no logic games, no board games, no RTS games, etc. The mini platformer looks good... but boy, if this is all the community has to offer... it's like trying to code in the dark still.

I was hoping for a dedicated community like you find at some other 3D forum boards with 20-30 new topic posts daily along with 10-15 responses per topic! Where is all the source code examples, snippets, step-by-step tutorials on all genres. Why hasn't GG thought it necessary to create these as well?

Oh well.. perhaps it is time to move on to another product and try it.. Thx for opening them up though!!

#2 Perhaps a "lessons learned" that the GG guys can pass on to the engine development community once all of the contracts are completed at IA is that any engine team needs to have a full time employee working on documentation. I can't help but wonder how many more commercial/professional products built on Torque engines we would have seen over the past few years had the documentation been better.

Don't get me wrong though, I love me some GG.

#3 Remember TDN is a community maintained wiki.

#4 Also there is a TDN Forum if thats what you were meaning Pesto.

#5 Brian - I agree... I've been a firm believer that before you release a commerical product to the public, you must have a very solid documentation system in place. Even more important for an indie /hobby game creation product, is the need for strong, detailed and maintained tutorials and examples. This is my biggest complaint with GG and it's products.... the docs/tutorials are really marginal. Sure TDN is supported by the community... well... I'd say that there is really no community then or most people are lost like me so they can't really contribute. Or perhaps, they don't want to post info on TDN since they rather charge for it via the Torque school classes or don't want to give away their sources since they worked so hard to figure things out.

In any event... I'm really disappointed in the lack of content here.. I thought with all the references to TDN in the blogs, that there would be a plethora of info. Perhaps TGE has more content since 90% of the users seem to be using it over TGB.. but the TGB product appears to be an afterhought.

Sorry... just feel like sharing my thoughts on this - I wish I could report happiness instead.

#6 People still continue to release "Resources" rather than posting stuff on the TDN. As Matt said, its up to us to make the Wiki grow. But over the last few months, it has grown tremendously than where it was around February or March.

#7 TDN is most useful for the reference:
tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/TGB/Reference
I always have that open when I'm scripting :)
I have always found the TGB docs good, but that maybe because I was used to the TGE ones :P

#8 Also, don't forget that TGB is a fairly new product when compared to TGE. Documentation is good, but tutorials and such are much harder to write. I'ts true however that the overall content is either outdated or incomplete. TDN is a good idea, but it should be an addition to the documentation for TGB, not a replacement.

#9 Great posts.. and yes - perhaps I jsut expected (hoped for) more. I feel like the engine has so much potential.. but without guides and help, how are you supposed to create a game? Perhaps I am just one of those people that learn by example... so to create a board game (which was my goal), I need a place to start.. an example board game that I can learn how was made. It's a common problem in the gaming industry... how to get started with a product.

#10 Many articles on TDN may be incomplete, but the trick is, when you've found an article lacking in some area and done the leg work yourself to find the answers elsewhere (forums etc), don't forget to give back to the community by filling in some of the blanks in TDN.

The main thing to bear in mind is that TDN is a community resource. Articles that used to be fully up to date and complete, will slowly go out of date as the engines advance. TGB is an example of this. Many earlier articles are based 100% around scripting, at the time they were written the level editors didn't exist.

As TGB has progressed though, members of this community that have tried to follow the various tutorials have hit hurdles such as functions now be named differently, or tutorials not using the new level editors (and even more recently not using behaviors). Those that worked through the tutorial have eventually returned to bring them up to date with the latest version of TGB and included notes on how to use the level editor instead.

Despite the incompleteness of some articles, I still think TDN is a great resource. It's just up to the community to keep filling in the blanks and expanding it.

That aside, I've been more than happy with the level of documentation for TGB, both in terms of the reference docs detailing all the functions available for use from script as well as the various game tutorials to get you up to speed with the level editor.

#11 Matt,

"Remember TDN is a community maintained wiki."

I'm not sure that community Wikis are as self-managing as people would like to think -- they need a dedicated staff that's committed to sifting through the material that's submitted, organizing it according to standards, etc. It doesn't seem that GG has yet put their full shoulder behind TDN -- they've still got their foot in a few different worlds. Where's the best place to get help for some particular Torque feature? Sometimes it's here, sometimes it's here, and sometimes it's here. Is GG waiting for someone in the community to make a script to go through all of the resources and submit them en-masse into TDN?

It's like GG has gone "halfway" with the whole community thing. GG wants the community to help support Torque, but when the community does it (either with Linux patches, sound improvements, or GUI fixes), it's extremely time consuming to get the improvements integrated into HEAD. At this point, there grows this pseudo-open-source community of hacked patches that are strewn around the forums, the resources, TDN, and external websites, and it becomes a royal pain to support it and use the software.

Communities can do a great job of submitting information to a Wiki, but IMO, there still needs to be official management of the project, to bring things together, to organize, to format, to update, to cull, and to contribute starter information to kickstart community submissions.

To be dangerously blunt, I feel that TDN has been under-managed. However, I've got my hopes high that much of this can be fixed with the "new" GG being able to hire more employees to do such things -- you guys at GG do some really great work with incredibly few resources -- I'm amazed at how much you all are able to pull off.

Without the dedicated team of Wikipedia editors, they wouldn't have nearly the quality that they do. Without a group of core GG employees who work seriously on TDN, we will be just yet another unorganized collection of vomited submissions that plague all too many community project Wikis on the web.

--clint

#12 Clint would you think we as the community could elect community leaders to mod the Wiki? Something like the associates program but there roles would be centered around getting the WIKI organized and help be the middle man between us and GG and getting updates put into the head in a timely fashion? I think that would be a good solution.

#13 Donald,

That could be a great solution if people were willing to do it.

I see it working best with the community Wiki -- but the trick would be finding skilled people who are willing to take the time to do it for free. It might be a slightly different dynamic to ask people to volunteer for your commercial efforts (as compared to getting volunteers for an open-source project). Even so, if the community feels that GG is treating them well, then I don't see any reason why this couldn't work. I know I've volunteered time to companies that I wanted to see succeed, and I know that there are dozens of people in the community here who volunteered many hours and done much to help form GG into what it is today.

Regarding getting updates put into HEAD, I wonder how much that person could have actual access to GG's internal SVN in order to make commits, and how much they would be able to do that from a liability perspective. Still, both of your ideas (community leaders for docs, community leaders for patches) sounds very interesting.

--clint

#14 So here is how we could go about it.

Once we Elect the leaders they could possibly get some other benefit that would make it worth there while. Like let's say automatic acceptance in BETA releases from GG in the future. Or whatever GG would feel they are able to give out to the leaders. In turn there must be a way to monitor the leader's activities. In other words making sure they are making changes to the TDN. You know what I just got another idea in the middle of typing this. This could also be a long distance intern job. Perhaps GG could fit this in under there intern program. This would also build the interns skills in dealing with large communities. Good resume bullet since everything is going to the way of the Internet.

Now on to updates and commits to the GG Head.

I doubt very seriously that they will allow some outside (even though they maybe elected) to make commits to the code. I could not imagine how disruptive that could be. What would be nice and neat is to allow the Community leader test the patch and create test builds with the patch in it. Once its verified that it works then send that same build through GG's QA process. You would have to do a lot of regression testing for each patch so this could potential overwhelm the testing department. GG could even expand the testing department to the community team. Allowing the Community team to run regression testing on builds with parches.

Another thing this could do is cut down on traffic to the GG team. Running a community this size takes a lot of time away from what we want them to do. Build better tools! Having a Community Leadership Team in place would mitigate the amount of GG presence so that way they get alerted to the more important threads.... like this one :)


I could get togher a plan to help role this out. I don't think it would be that hard. I am sure it would require some site changes and some 'Odd" permission settings.

#15 These are all great ideas... but I just think that GG is headed in too many different directions without "solidifying" what they've already done. For example... look at this new Insta-Action thingy... yes again, something new. But, they still have a ton of holes to fill from past things they've introduced/sold (ie: TGB).

Maybe it's just me.. but I feel like GG is moving in 20 places at once without providing support for their existing products. There is only 2 working example tutorials for TGB which aren't even supported by GG - and there are bugs in each one. How is a new person who just wants to build a simple card game supposed to use TGB to do so...

Anyway.. I rant too much.. If the community can help - I'm more than happy to contribute.

#16 Think about it Pesto. First off every commercial engine has bugs although this is no excuse to have bugs its just the nature of the beast. How ever they are working to fix those bugs and the community is your support. Which you should know before you purchase. Funny thing is you will probably get faster help from the community then you would from a company where you would spend thousands of dollars for the product. I do think the official support could be beefed up more. Maybe that is something that will happen with time.

I dont think they have to many projects on their hands. They only have like 5 lines of business right? For a company of 70 or so people. Thats not that much.

#17 By the way.... David Blake would be my pick for one of the community leaders.

#18 True.. but 5 lines of business (with at least 2 more in development) and now this insta-action stuff.... sorry - but to me you build your community as you build your products. I fully agree about the bugs in a product.. but I"m talking about bugs in the beginner tutorials.. and the fact they aren't kept up to date with new releases.

Sorry.. I should stop talking about this because I don't want to be labeled a complainer.. I do like the products but just wish there was a larger community sharing resources and tutorials. If you check out some other products, their forums are flush with posts daily - it makes learning and using the product that much easier.

#19 This actually is good point you make. So we know the model is to have a community that helps support the product. Let's take a look at the beginner tutorials. Which ones in general did you find bugs? The best way to NOT be a complainer is to be a resolver. Now I am no code monkey by any means. But if you and I can fix this then we can post the fix and submit it to someone at GG to have them update it.

So tell me which tut is giving you issues. Hopefully some real code monkeys can jump in and help us. If it has to do with the first book though that is something altogether different. Anyways reply back.