Live Torque 3D Help and Tutorials
by Michael Perry · in Torque 3D Beginner · 02/04/2010 (12:39 pm) · 40 replies
Greetings everyone. We have recently started using Adobe Connect Pro at the office, which allows users to join a session for real time meetings. After playing around with it, I have decided it is the perfect tool to use for live help and interactive tutorials for Torque 3D. Why is that? Well, when you join a session (Flash based), the following features are available:
-Best of all, screen sharing
-Live chat
-Video and audio discussion
-Question and answer chat
-File sharing
-Live notes
-Session recording
The tool is easy to use, and I think everyone would find the sessions extremely helpful. I could use your feedback on how we can structure each session, so please answer the following questions:
1. How long do you think each session should be?
I'm thinking 1 hour or less
2. What kind of content would you like?
Unlike IRC Hour, I would like to run a session more than once a month. I'm thinking one session dedicated to troubleshooting, where you ask all the questions and get answers from the employees. Then another session where I walk through simple tutorials, demonstrations, and show off cool tech
3. What timeframe works best?
This is very difficult to decide on, since we have users in many different timezones. I'm thinking Fridays between 1 - 4pm (PST). I need the most popular preference, but fear not people who cannot make it. I can record an entire session, chat, voice, video, and screen sharing. This video can be saved and shared if you missed it.
I'm very excited about this. I always enjoy helping people during IRC, but was always limited to just text and links. This new tool makes live help so much more useful and interesting, and I hope it will become a steady part of our documentation and tutorials.
What are your thoughts?
-Best of all, screen sharing
-Live chat
-Video and audio discussion
-Question and answer chat
-File sharing
-Live notes
-Session recording
The tool is easy to use, and I think everyone would find the sessions extremely helpful. I could use your feedback on how we can structure each session, so please answer the following questions:
1. How long do you think each session should be?
I'm thinking 1 hour or less
2. What kind of content would you like?
Unlike IRC Hour, I would like to run a session more than once a month. I'm thinking one session dedicated to troubleshooting, where you ask all the questions and get answers from the employees. Then another session where I walk through simple tutorials, demonstrations, and show off cool tech
3. What timeframe works best?
This is very difficult to decide on, since we have users in many different timezones. I'm thinking Fridays between 1 - 4pm (PST). I need the most popular preference, but fear not people who cannot make it. I can record an entire session, chat, voice, video, and screen sharing. This video can be saved and shared if you missed it.
I'm very excited about this. I always enjoy helping people during IRC, but was always limited to just text and links. This new tool makes live help so much more useful and interesting, and I hope it will become a steady part of our documentation and tutorials.
BIG NOTE
This will not be a replacement to our official documentation. The official, written documentation will continue as normal. This is a supplemental service. If it is successful, it will stick around. A big win is that the more popular tutorials and sessions can be converted to written docs.What are your thoughts?
About the author
Programmer.
#22
02/05/2010 (8:09 pm)
Obviously having a detailed lesson plan written down would be helpful - but as an adhoc test I thought it went rather well. 
#23
02/05/2010 (8:09 pm)
Really enjoyed the session. I can see it becoming a highly valuable tool for anyone developing with torque. Thanks! 
#24
Some thoughts:
- Maybe less movement in the scenes (ie flying around, doing high speed stuff) as the framerates were a little sluggish. Which is no fault of your own, just the tech and default settings. Most menu interaction was good, easy for a person to see what you were clicking on and doing.
- Color compression from the video stream might make it difficult to show fine detail for future presentations.
- As you know some of the menus from the toolbar had issues displaying. Another limitation of the Adobe tech, but easy enough to work around
- As you mentioned, maybe having 2 people there might be good, one guy to watch the text chat for you and answer questions, another to drive the presentation.
- Might want to transmit into a smaller screensize in case some people have lower resolution monitors (ie. 1378 x 768). I think with all the extra panes that you can add to the UI that it might expand things a bit too much.
- I think an hour might be a bit too long, but thats my personal take on it all.
02/05/2010 (8:13 pm)
I think it worked out pretty good overall Mich a good test.Some thoughts:
- Maybe less movement in the scenes (ie flying around, doing high speed stuff) as the framerates were a little sluggish. Which is no fault of your own, just the tech and default settings. Most menu interaction was good, easy for a person to see what you were clicking on and doing.
- Color compression from the video stream might make it difficult to show fine detail for future presentations.
- As you know some of the menus from the toolbar had issues displaying. Another limitation of the Adobe tech, but easy enough to work around
- As you mentioned, maybe having 2 people there might be good, one guy to watch the text chat for you and answer questions, another to drive the presentation.
- Might want to transmit into a smaller screensize in case some people have lower resolution monitors (ie. 1378 x 768). I think with all the extra panes that you can add to the UI that it might expand things a bit too much.
- I think an hour might be a bit too long, but thats my personal take on it all.
#25
I think the Q&A format is good, as a fresh and useful source of inspiration for the official docs content.
I can also see a library of this videos, where people can be pointed to, as another great tool for consultation.
Still thinking this is better for keynotes more than it is for tutorials, but today proved its an all-terrain beast.
Keep it up, great idea Michael.
02/05/2010 (8:21 pm)
That went really well. The tool is good, and the whole idea has enormous potential.I think the Q&A format is good, as a fresh and useful source of inspiration for the official docs content.
I can also see a library of this videos, where people can be pointed to, as another great tool for consultation.
Still thinking this is better for keynotes more than it is for tutorials, but today proved its an all-terrain beast.
Keep it up, great idea Michael.
#26
People who ask for timezone conversions need to get an app or something for the purpose ;)
I use iStat menus and its clock replacement:
02/05/2010 (8:45 pm)
Lower resolution would help, as it was cramped even with my 1680x1050 screen. Bandwidth was not an issue, as it used 10kB/s if I watched it zoomed out, and up to 23kB/s when I let it follow the presenter's mouse. But it was compressed to hell :/People who ask for timezone conversions need to get an app or something for the purpose ;)
I use iStat menus and its clock replacement:
#27
I was running this on a laptop with 1200x800, and I could not see the text. The zoom in feature zooms in and follows the cursor of the person running the meeting, the problem is that it zooms in too close. It makes it easy to read the text but any movement is too drastic. I again suggest increasing size and resolution, as the people viewing have very little control to do so. I could not really expand anything, or at least I found no option to do so. And the zoom function was basically useless.
Anyway, I hope to see more of these. Thanks Michael.
02/06/2010 (6:02 pm)
I enjoyed the session, and I hope you cover TorqueScript in the future. I was running this on a laptop with 1200x800, and I could not see the text. The zoom in feature zooms in and follows the cursor of the person running the meeting, the problem is that it zooms in too close. It makes it easy to read the text but any movement is too drastic. I again suggest increasing size and resolution, as the people viewing have very little control to do so. I could not really expand anything, or at least I found no option to do so. And the zoom function was basically useless.
Anyway, I hope to see more of these. Thanks Michael.
#28
I like the sound of this tho. Logan's idea of short, topics is a great one. You can cover a topic rapidly with a lot of info that's specific to the topic that way.
02/06/2010 (7:48 pm)
Darn. Missed it again.I like the sound of this tho. Logan's idea of short, topics is a great one. You can cover a topic rapidly with a lot of info that's specific to the topic that way.
#29
02/07/2010 (8:02 pm)
I just saw this thread and think it is a great idea. I would definitely be interested. Most of what the previous posters have offered in suggestions covers any concerns of mine. 
#30
I wondered if these sessions could be used in future to let community members talk about / introduce their projects as well. Something like 30 minutes official GG talk and - when requested and accepted by GG - community stuff afterwards.
02/08/2010 (10:01 am)
It was a good test indeed and I agree with Logan, the screen size should be a bit smaller maybe.I wondered if these sessions could be used in future to let community members talk about / introduce their projects as well. Something like 30 minutes official GG talk and - when requested and accepted by GG - community stuff afterwards.
#31
I think your idea is great, I would love to have more lively help than there currently is. It seems ever since T3D I haven't been able to find much help on IRC.
What would really be great though is if we could get more video tutorials. It would be nice if people could ask questions on the forums and get answers to their questions in the form of a video tutorial from one of the GarageGames folks.
These video tutorials could all be stored in one place (like Vimeo, or where-ever) and thus other people could learn from them as well.
I think this would cut down on people asking the same questions over and over on the forums. Also, I know I have a really hard time finding answers to my questions on the forums. There is so much junk to sort through, it is a real hassle. Often I type a question into the search engine and find ten people asking the same question, but I don't find any useful answers.
If ten people are asking for help in the same area, there are probably 100 people out there interested in the answer. Video tutorials tend to be the first place people look for help as well. So, instead of asking their question for the 11th time on the forums (only to get little to no answers) they would search the video tutorials first. Then the questions on the forums could appear less often. Or when they do appear again someone can paste a link to the tutorial so future people searching for the same question to be answered on the forum could find the thread, the link, the tutorial, and all will be well.
Video Tutorials are also great because they can reach a wide audience asynchronously.
02/13/2010 (6:27 pm)
I'd like to see more video tutorials...I think your idea is great, I would love to have more lively help than there currently is. It seems ever since T3D I haven't been able to find much help on IRC.
What would really be great though is if we could get more video tutorials. It would be nice if people could ask questions on the forums and get answers to their questions in the form of a video tutorial from one of the GarageGames folks.
These video tutorials could all be stored in one place (like Vimeo, or where-ever) and thus other people could learn from them as well.
I think this would cut down on people asking the same questions over and over on the forums. Also, I know I have a really hard time finding answers to my questions on the forums. There is so much junk to sort through, it is a real hassle. Often I type a question into the search engine and find ten people asking the same question, but I don't find any useful answers.
If ten people are asking for help in the same area, there are probably 100 people out there interested in the answer. Video tutorials tend to be the first place people look for help as well. So, instead of asking their question for the 11th time on the forums (only to get little to no answers) they would search the video tutorials first. Then the questions on the forums could appear less often. Or when they do appear again someone can paste a link to the tutorial so future people searching for the same question to be answered on the forum could find the thread, the link, the tutorial, and all will be well.
Video Tutorials are also great because they can reach a wide audience asynchronously.
#32
I also like the idea of some video tutorials as suggested above. I feel like I need to know some more about this engine before committing myself to a purchase.
02/18/2010 (12:36 am)
This sounds like a really cool idea. I'm all for attending the next one. I'm currently using the demo and I think this would be a great way to help me decide on whether or not to purchase it.I also like the idea of some video tutorials as suggested above. I feel like I need to know some more about this engine before committing myself to a purchase.
#33
02/18/2010 (12:54 pm)
any more updates on this idea? will there be a nother session soon or scheduled?
#34
*Create a schedule
*Develop a tight structure of each session
*Improve video quality and speed
*Tweak resolutions so users can see text better
*Start writing detailed lesson plans, so it's not so unorganized
*Create a smooth conversion from live session to tutorial, and vice versa
02/18/2010 (1:01 pm)
@Donald - Certainly. I've carefully reviewed the recorded video from the event so I can better plan the next one. The issues I need to address are:*Create a schedule
*Develop a tight structure of each session
*Improve video quality and speed
*Tweak resolutions so users can see text better
*Start writing detailed lesson plans, so it's not so unorganized
*Create a smooth conversion from live session to tutorial, and vice versa
#35
03/07/2010 (10:13 am)
This looks really good I think having an archive of video tutorials of how to start from scratch and show everything you need to know to get a basic game wraped up. Ai damage given damage taken getting your own player to work in Torque ( not the whole modeling just what you need to have in the model and how to get it working in Torque ) and the list goes on even some of the basics of using the world editor and stuff. 
#36
03/18/2010 (4:28 pm)
Fantastic concept...I am sorry I missed the first one...looking forward to seeing the schedule of events for future classes!!!
#37
03/18/2010 (4:55 pm)
Will we be able to download the recorded sessions soon? 
#38
There haven't been any sessions yet. The only one we've had so far was the test pilot session to see how it would work. When we start doing the sessions they will be recorded so they can be made available to people who aren't able to attend the live sessions.
03/18/2010 (6:38 pm)
@JarenThere haven't been any sessions yet. The only one we've had so far was the test pilot session to see how it would work. When we start doing the sessions they will be recorded so they can be made available to people who aren't able to attend the live sessions.
#39
03/18/2010 (10:26 pm)
Ok great Ty 
#40
Start with your tutorial topic and complete the demonstration in the first 20~30 minutes, then continue with a Q and A or clarify on anything that might have been fuzzy. Admittedly, sometimes this can lead to shorter-than-planned sessions if you're particularly clear or the topic is especially easy to grasp - presentation length can be adjusted accordingly.
Just throwin it out there - I used to teach English as a Second Language and believe me, there are usually plenty of questions in those classes....
03/22/2010 (8:11 am)
Someone mentioned timing in the sessions and I have a suggestion:Start with your tutorial topic and complete the demonstration in the first 20~30 minutes, then continue with a Q and A or clarify on anything that might have been fuzzy. Admittedly, sometimes this can lead to shorter-than-planned sessions if you're particularly clear or the topic is especially easy to grasp - presentation length can be adjusted accordingly.
Just throwin it out there - I used to teach English as a Second Language and believe me, there are usually plenty of questions in those classes....
Employee Michael Perry
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