Disappointed.

#21 As far as the search goes I've found I often get better results if I have it sort by date instead of by relevance (you can change how it sorts by clicking Date in the top right of the search results page).

#22 Search no longer works well for me, as my landlord has stopped me from conducting the live chicken sacrifices I relied on to ensure proper search results, and the rubber ones I've tried don't seem to please the gods...

You can also click on the "omitted" search results at the bottom, which sometimes turn up valuable stuff...

#23 @Everyone - I really appreciate the encouragement.

@Ron - I'm glad you and the others recognize that my job is never-ending. There is simply no way for documentation to ever be complete. When I first took that in, I got a little nauseous. Once I really took the time to start tasking out my responsibilities and deadlines, I began to see a shining light of hope.

As I stated in my most recent blog, I am going to start a major documentation cycle for Torque3D. Instead of using up my time to consolidate and update existing docs from TGEA, I am completely erasing the slate. I am going to write Torque3D's documentation completely from scratch. When I'm happy with what I've written, I will then pull over whatever useful content I think should go in.

Quote:Torque3D will launch with the most polished and useful set of docs you will have ever seen for a Torque product.

While everyone else will be posting .plans about the cool stuff going into Torque3D, I will be blogging about the short term documentation accomplishments (fixing tutorials or updating a landing page) and releasing details about the new Torque3D Docs.

Rest assured, Ron, that everything documentation related you posted will be addressed and surpassed.

#24 @Michael - Cool, glad to hear it. If you could pull that off, it would be a huge step forward. You have both my deep respect and my deepest sympathies for the job you do :) And I hope you guys really do get around to putting in a new forum someday, one with a search function that works well. This one lacks, I'm afraid.

@Matt - L3DT calls them Alpha maps rather than opacity maps. You can see why someone new coming in could get frustrated trying to figure things out :) [actually, I see I misspoke after further research. L3DT uses up to 4 alpha maps to create an opacity map, or now it can use 8 alpha maps to create 2 opacity maps, from what I gather. Procedural generation of terrain bitmaps is not something I've ever messed with, I need to get a better feel for how that works]

@Bill - Awesome, thanks Bill, that wasn't what I saw, but even better, since it gives instructions on how to set it up. Guess I'll be tinkering with the code some more, heh.

I don't want you guys to get me wrong, I'm not being all negative. So far I love this package, it's amazing. you guys really have done a remarkable thing here. And I'm sure I'll still have many many questions in the future. But at least now I feel like I've reached a point where I can start to get basic results, I have a baseline from upon which I can build my knowledge. Getting to that point though was quite a struggle, and that is one that could be mitigated for others in the future, I think.

Anyway, I'm off to play with my terrain some more, still trying to figure out a good workflow for that. See y'all later :)

#25 The documentation could definitely use some help, though I too understand that Michael has his work cut out for him. Things are certainly a lot better now than they were a year ago ;)

On the other hand, getting up to speed with any complete game engine as a virgin is going to be a time consuming process regardless of how good the documentation is. Irrlicht and similar engines are easy to get started with, but hard to finish with. In my experience most good game engines are the opposite; getting started is hard, because of the complexity, but it's complex because it's feature-rich and once you get it figured out actually finishing your game will be a lot easier, because so many of the little things you'll need but haven't thought of yet somebody else has already thought of and included.

If you're serious about it, and are in a time crunch, then my recommendation is to find somebody that is familiar with the engine, and see if you can throw them a little cash to consult and help get you up to speed. I'm sure there are some people in the community that are willing to help out without breaking the bank.