Why WAS Torque3D documentation so poor?

#181 That's ok, I shouldn't have posted about the engine itself, I just misunderstood your previous post ;)

Thanks for all of the info. Just one thing, does that mean that EVERYONE literally is working on docs?

#182 @Glen - Everyone on the Torque team except Eric, Derek, and Jason.

#183 You know what ?

I don't wish to sound like a fan boy or anything like that... BUT, I think that GG should be commended for making such a massive effort to address an issue thats clearly important to its user base - and in the face of a lot of negativity...

#184 @Mich: Thanks. Looking forward to some stuff soon. I still can't vouch for T3D's rendering ability (other than through the games that prove that TGEA works good) but once I can try to break it then I'll be happy ;)

#185 Update and First Draft
Hey everyone. I was encouraged to release a first draft early, so here it is:

Torque 3D Script Manual (Draft 1)

When you download it, you will most likely have to "unblock" the CHM:

1. Download CHM
2. Right click
3. Select properties
4. At the bottom, near security, click on the "Unblock" button.

Note that this is our first pass at the full script manual creation. We have already put a lot of new content in, but we are not finished. The appearance and organization can still change, but the one guarantee is that we are going to keep adding content and releasing updates to it more often.

Please us know what you think of:

- The format (CHM)
- Organization (table of contents and progression)
- Manual portion (handwritten docs about usage, syntax, etc)
- Doxygen output (everything under Modules)

Looking forward to reading your thoughts

#186 I encouraged him :) Be nice, it's a draft. We'd like to start getting your feedback sooner rather than later.

#187
This is really a *very early* draft. A lot of the hierarchy is still in a very temporary structure and it isn't helped by the CHM output making whole pages inaccessible right now (e.g. nothing happens when click on "Sound System" where in fact, this should bring up a pretty big page).

#188 How espectacular!

In 'Quick Reference' could a page be added with a reference sheet like this one? Useful as a summary for quick consultation.

In 'What is TorqueScript' OR in 'Basic Usage' I would talk a bit more technically on the language (non-typed, pre-compiled, etc). Some useful concepts for the reader to take in mind before jumping in.


Excellent work fellas. But dont get too excited by the praises, back to work!

#189 Looks good to me ... no personal preference on formats, organization as expected, always good to see idiot proof examples on the usage of syntax, modules seem fine.

#190 Nice work Michael, Rene, Tom, Melv, Chris, and so on!!!

Things are looking up...keep pushing!!

Thank You!

#191 @Novack -

Quote:In 'Quick Reference' could a page be added with a reference sheet like this one? Useful as a summary for quick consultation.

Spot on, you got the purpose of that section. That's exactly what it is dedicated to. I have ported over the operators section of that reference you linked, and we will be doing so for the rest of the keywords, structures, etc. Just need a little more time to port content and write new stuff to go in there.

Quote:In 'What is TorqueScript' OR in 'Basic Usage' I would talk a bit more technically on the language (non-typed, pre-compiled, etc).

Good call. I'll mill that one over.

#192 @Chad - Don't thank me directly. I'm just overseeing it and organizing the content. The rest of the team are the ones doing the dirty work right now. Thank the guys like Rene, Tom, Melv, Chris, and so on. They will be getting full credits in the release blog.

#193 Yay alpha docs! :D Well, first off, as I mentioned before I love the chm format, that still stands for me. I was happy to see the areas that had extra text having comment lines, except for the ones that show the basic structure. That was awesome.

I glanced over it a bit, and there's two things that I did notice that might need changing:

Something that might not be important, but I think this should be changed:

Quote:foreach( %obj in %set )
/* do something with %obj */;

should be:

Quote:foreach( %obj in %set ); /* do something with %obj */

or use // lines

but I might be wrong, there might be a reason that the comment is before the end of statement semi-colon. If not I'd suggest changing because of confusion sake, but it's just my opinion.

Quote: 'abcd' (tagged string

I was confused when looking at this line, I had to look through a bit to see what it actually was saying. It took me a while to notice the apostrophe ('). I'd suggest things like this be done this way:

Quote:$tagged 'abcd' //tagged string

Again, just my opinion.

Either way, I'm looking forward to more alphas and betas and the full release. Good job all you guys. ;)

I have to end out giving props to Novak, because I agree completely:

Quote:Excellent work fellas. But dont get too excited by the praises, back to work!

;)

#194 Michael,

This is exactly what I needed as I have been learning T Script. This combined with the tuts that are in the documentation goes a long way to helping me learn. I read the forums a lot and always see more advanced users giving advice and I wonder where do they look up these script functions etc... This draft allows me to do just that. Now I can see what is available to me and tinker with it to learn.

#195 Very good first real doc!
Keep up this very good work.

Little error in the modulo operator example (quotient is used).

#196 [stupidquestion] How do you open CHM on a Mac? [/stupidquestion]

#197 I used iChm : ichm.googlecode.com/files/iChm.1.4.1.zip : very clean.

#198 Thanks!

#199 Looks very good so far!

Are there plans to document exposed script functions, too? I think this would very useful for binary engine users.

#200 @Stefan - Most definitely, you can already see some of this. Do a search for VectorAdd. We still have quite a few left to do, and some examples, but it's on the plate.