Proper Documentation
by Joseph D. Walters · in Torque Game Engine Advanced · 03/29/2007 (9:19 am) · 3 replies
I have to say...
I recently upgraded to Torque Advanced from TGE and discovered a major roadblock while compiling, it took me a full day just to find out that the version of the DirectX SDK I was running was too new. The forums are what eventually helped out but the fact is there should be some basic documentation that lets you know things like this.
There is information on the forums dating back to 2001 and 2002, so I am not even sure what to believe on the forums. I am sure this is not a huge issue for anyone that has been using torque for an extended amount of time but for anyone new to the engine it is a HUGE issue. This goes for the art pipeline as well as code. I am able to answer most of my scripting questions using the Torque Books available though but even those are for old versions.
Proper documentation would save me more time and headaches than just about anything. Cleaning out the forums would be very helpful as well. There are certain issues on the forums that come up again and again that should be pulled out and placed somewhere your users can go and just find one answer rather than 30 different answers from 3 different builds. Seriously there are 3470 results to "Shader Error" in the forums alone.
I realize this is more of a rant than a post and I apologize for that but it is extremely frustrating when you have to deal with this sort of thing and I have seen a lot of people complain about the documentation. If GG feels like this is an inappropriate post please feel free to delete it.
Thank You
I recently upgraded to Torque Advanced from TGE and discovered a major roadblock while compiling, it took me a full day just to find out that the version of the DirectX SDK I was running was too new. The forums are what eventually helped out but the fact is there should be some basic documentation that lets you know things like this.
There is information on the forums dating back to 2001 and 2002, so I am not even sure what to believe on the forums. I am sure this is not a huge issue for anyone that has been using torque for an extended amount of time but for anyone new to the engine it is a HUGE issue. This goes for the art pipeline as well as code. I am able to answer most of my scripting questions using the Torque Books available though but even those are for old versions.
Proper documentation would save me more time and headaches than just about anything. Cleaning out the forums would be very helpful as well. There are certain issues on the forums that come up again and again that should be pulled out and placed somewhere your users can go and just find one answer rather than 30 different answers from 3 different builds. Seriously there are 3470 results to "Shader Error" in the forums alone.
I realize this is more of a rant than a post and I apologize for that but it is extremely frustrating when you have to deal with this sort of thing and I have seen a lot of people complain about the documentation. If GG feels like this is an inappropriate post please feel free to delete it.
Thank You
About the author
#2
03/29/2007 (3:24 pm)
I did find that eventually, and I usually do find what I am looking for eventually. The issue comes down to how much time is wasted looking for information. I didn't think to look to the TDN pages since everything was compiling properly and most of the information there is pretty basic. Admittedly it was a stupid mistake on my part, but when one of the forum posts says "I am using the most recent version DirectX and it works for me" I didn't think it would be an issue. I am just trying to point out that documentation is an issue with TGE and TGEA. 
Torque Owner Gary Preston
If that is not the case any longer and you've found you need to (or can) use a newer version, please take the time to update the TDN getting started page so others can benefit from the time you spent looking into it.