We need a "Newbie Questions" or "Tutorials" forum

#1 That's what the public forums for each engine are for, I presume.

#2 Actually, I think it's a good idea in general to have a "Getting Started" forum where all the new cats can herd into, and we can have some stickies that have FAQs and other resources to help them out all in one place. The GD forums are good for that too, I suppose.

#3

Quote:I imagine there are some participants there who would rather not be bothered by newbies.

Some yes, but there are many of us who welcome newbies and try to help. For general and/or scripting help related to the individual engine just ask in the public forum related to that engine.

About the only things I personally don't look at are TGB or TorqueX questions, and because of a website bug that doesn't list new posts in the TGE Private forums I've been neglecting to help in there.

There are many other people who are helpful around here so welcome aboard and ask away.

#4 And come to think of it, a "General Torque Script" forum or a "New to (engine here)" sticky thread would both be good ideas.

#5 I have to disagree with multiple forums. Its just that much more to have to weed through.

There are two types of people in the world; Grouper and Dividers. Groupers find things in common and clump them together, Dividers find differences and sort things out.

I'm of the minimalist mindset. Put everything together in ONE forum, so I only have to look one place. In the past I've requested specific forums for specific things, but then I spent forever trying to find anything.

Put it all together in one forum and give me access to everything :)

Besides, I think most of us like it when we know the answer and can help a Newbie! We all had to start somewhere, and we've all asked for help, even Ed Maurina!

Just my 2¢
Tony

#6 Well, suit yourselves. Though I predict you're going to get sick of me clogging up the General forum with all my newbie questions.

(Incidentally, this whole disagreement illustrates one of the fundamental design flaws of phpBB and similar web forums... but that's another topic entirely!)

#7 As a tip, the people who get irritated by seeing newbie questions pop up tend to only do so because the person posting the question didn't bother to use the search to find their answer first.

Also, there are public forums for each engine. When seeking answers you'll have much more luck getting an answer by posting in the forum for the engine you're using as opposed to the General forum.

#8 ha ha if only the search worked properly ;)

#9 What does "search" do? ;)

#10 "Also, there are public forums for each engine."

I started a long post about how I couldn't find these forums, but naturally enough, I found them in the process of documenting exactly where they weren't. :)

For the record, you can get to these on the main Forums page, but only by clicking the disclosure triangle next to "Engines" near the bottom of the page. The TGB forum is here.

Like most things, it seems obvious once you've found it...

Thanks,
- Joe

#11 @Scott: Yeah. The search doesn't work all that hot. Just browsing last weekend, I stumbled across how to get the "CleanDSO.command" that comes with the TGB install to function on my Mac. I'm still not sure what it does, or why it's a good idea to use, but I got it to work on my home computer. Now, I've installed TGB on my "work" computer so that I can go through tutorials on my downtime, and for the life of me I can't find the post that explained how to get CleanDSO.command to work. I know it involves typing something in the terminal.

I've searched by name, included the OS, included TGB, tried numerous variations and I can't find it. Occasionally I've seen what looks like it might have the answer, but then it's been in private forums for products I don't own so I can't read them to be sure. I know the thread didn't deal specifically with that command, it was just something that came up and the person asking about it suggested that the answer be more easily available. Now I totally agree.

So, two things. I would like a newbie forum as well, in some form or another, even if it's a sub-forum in the main, public, engine forums similar to the different options in the art forum. And possibly including keyword tagging by everyone and not just the originator of the post. That would allow someone with something to add to make their response easier to find.

And if anyone could help me get my computer sorted out so that I can run CleanDSO.command, and maybe tell me what it does, etc. That would be great. My assumption is, it searches through folders in tgb, finds .dsos and deletes them. I would also like to know is if it's possible for it to do the same thing in the folder where I store my projects.

#12 Interesting, I hadn't really run into any search problems myself since it was fixed after the site launch. Though I haven't had much need to search for a lot of stuff the past couple months.

Honestly I don't much need for an entire newbie forum, even as a subforum (which technically don't really exist it seems). Maybe add a "Getting Started" tag for threads and at least a stickied FAQ thread.

@Collin
While this is off topic I'll go ahead tell you about CleanDSO. What it does is delete all the .dso files in the directory. By deleting them you ensure that they will be regenerated by the engine after you make edits and save. If a .dso file is present the TorqueScript file won't be recompiled and you won't see your changes.

As for how to port the Windows DOS commands to do it on a Mac terminal, that's for someone else to answer.