Official TGB Documentation Feedback

#21 Hello!

I went to "Project" and then to "Resources..." and added ParticlesArt to the tutorialBase project and most of the particle effects came up. The very first particle effect you use in the in-game docs uses the rain.eff but its one of the effects not working or showing up. I am sure you are well aware of how frustrating this might be to a complete beginner like me. I expect things to just work especially if I am putting down hard earned cash towards a license. I think the documentation needs to be updated thoroughly before any new version of the software is released. I am not paying to be a tester. Please take this as constructive criticism and not negativity. It's just really frustrating to get excited about something like this and then be let down by an error that could have been avoided.

Thanks ahead of time for any advice on how to get the rain.eff working in the base tutorial project.

#22 Oscar,

Replace your ParticlesArt resource with the downloadable one from here:

tdn.garagegames.com/wiki/TGB/Resources/ParticlesArt

That should have a working rain effect in it.

#23 @Oscar - Thanks for the feedback. So far, I haven't considered any message we've received from any of the feedback threads to be negative.

Negative comments would resemble one liners like "your documentation sucks" or "you aren't doing anything." =)

It's safe to say we have established the tutorials for the TGB docs need a few quick updates to stay current with the latest SDK changes. Thanks for pointing out another error.

#24 Thanks for the quick responses!

I wanted to also second what Shaz said above for the config datablocks section of the Features tutorials included in the documentation.

Quote by Shaz above: "In the datablocks tutorial, the designer is instructed to create a new file called configs.cs and to exec that in main.cs, after which the new datablock will show up in the Script area of the Edit tab. This did not work. To get the datablock to appear in the list, I had to add the code to the datablocks.cs file, not to the newly created configs.cs file as instructed."

I am not familiar with any version prior to 1.7.3 of TGB but I am assuming the datablocks.cs file was added so that the datablocks could be more organized. Great idea but should be noted in the documentation.

#25 In the included documentation that came with 1.7.3, under Tutorials, then Feature, and then finally Resources, I followed this portion to the exact specs and when importing my newly created resource, nothing showed up under the create tab on the right side of the screen. I was assuming all of the resources I copied previously to the testArt folder would show up but they didn't. I think this is a valuable lesson to learn so I would like to get to the bottom of this. Could someone please try to get through the Resource tutorial and let me know if they get the same reaction? I will triple check my work again in the mean time. Thanks!

Edit: Also, in the FileIO tutorial directly after the Resources tutorial, I could get the console to say "File Written" but could not find where the file was written to. I even did a search on my hard drive for any file called "test.txt" and didn't come up with any results. I think that the directory structure has changed since the last time the docs were updated and this may be the reason the file is not being written even though it should create the folder and file if it's not there already. Someone is seriously not doing very good QA before releasing a new version.

#26 I would love to see some updates in the GUI documentation. There are tons of GUI controls with little or no information about them. It would also be nice to know which are internals and which are externals. :)

#27 @amaranthia - I'm with you on that! I'm a big fan of the GUI Editor, and I feel it can definitely use a bit more attention in the docs area. The TDN has a ton of great information that we will be borrowing from, plus some new stuff here and there.

#28 Reference > TGB Glossary > Coordinate System... there's no definition / explanation of Scene Space. The header's there (between Window Space and World Space) but no content.

Reference > TGB Glossary > Enumerated Types... this is pretty confusing if you're trying to figure out some sort of hierarchy of documenatation based on heading styles. "Enumerated Types" and "Image Mode" are in the same font, colour, and style, though I suspect Image Mode should be a child under Enumerated Types. Collision Detection Mode is the same font, but a different colour and not italics like the other two, but I think it should be the same format as Image Mode, as they're both listing/describing the enumerated types within the group. This goes on for pretty much the rest of the list in the Glossary - are they ALL examples of the different enumerated types? Regardless, headings should be consistent.

Reference > TGB Glossary > Collision... an explanation of which collision mode is best/most efficient, or under what circumstances you might use one over the other, would be nice here. Polygon appears to be the default - why was that one chosen?

LOTS of examples would be great - simple one-liners to show how you would set or retrieve a value (eg - limit type) in script. Though maybe the glossary isn't the spot for that - I might find what I'm seeking as I go through the reference area a bit further down.

Reference > TGB Glossary > Layer Order and Draw Order... FRONT, BACK, FORWARD all in upper case, backward in lower case.

Reference > TGB Glossary > Particle Orientation Mode... listed, but no explanations of what they mean.

Reference > TGB Glossary > Terms... Persistent Field has no explanation.

some of these are a bit picky. On to the TGB Reference... stay tuned :)

#29 @Shaz - Talk about thorough =) Very good finds, and I like the attention to detail, such as the "backward in lower case".

#30 I can't find commands like mRound in the docs, but it clearly works in script. Also, you can search for a method of an object, but all you find is somewhere where a tutorial may use that command. Why does the search not look in the TGB Reference method headings as well?

Actually, many of the math console functions cannot be found; I usually use the old TGB docs for those.

My complaints aren't nearly as thorough as Shaz's but hopefully you will find them useful.

#31 @Kevin - Every post so far has been extremely helpful! Feedback is critical to improvement, and there is a lot of room for improving the docs. There is also a lot of great info within the docs that some users have not found, so some of the feedback is good for figuring out how to bring out that info.

#32 Big Announcement About Documentation

#33 List my team came up with of errors in the TGB tutorials included with the demo - not sure how many of them have already been mentioned or fixed. Please note that we did not go through all of the tutorials.

* All tutorials:
o When the tutorial says "open the project called TGB," what it really means is "open the project Torque Game Builder\games\TutorialBase\project.t2dProj"
o When doing the first few tutorials, a lot of the particle effects don't show up. To fix this, go to project->resources, and add the ParticlesArt resource. A few of the particle effects, include "rain," still do not show up.
o Whenever they say "level" in the tutorials, they mean "scene."
* Animated Sprites tutorial
o They tell you to drag the image from the webpage - it doesn't work for me. Need to save the images and use the "create new ImageMap" button (top of create tab)
* Particles tutorial
o You have to create the fireball emitter before deleting the untitled emitter.
o There is no fire animation. Use particles5ImageMap.
+ I think the smoke looks better if, instead of "speed base = 0" and "speed variance = 1," you set both to 0.5. Also, set the orientation (in the right-sidebar) to "random"
* Config Datablocks tutorial
o The code must be put in datablocks.cs rather than configs.cs. You can ignore the parts about creating config.cs and editing main.cs.
* Tile Maps tutorial
o When it says games\resources\starterArt\images, it means tgb\resources\starterArt\images.
o When it says games\TileTutorial\data\images, it means games\Tile Tutorial\game\data\tilemaps. The program then creates the tilemap automatically.
o There are no "test textures" when you drag a new tilemap.
* Paths tutorial
o BUG: create a path with no points and hit enter - the screen goes completely blue.
o Snap-to-grid is actually under edit->preferences->scene editor
* FileIO tutorial
o Replace "~/data/files/test.txt" with "./game/data/test.txt" in all places in the code.
* Audio Tutorial
o I didn't bother going over this one, but at the very least I'm sure you need to replace all the tildes (~) in the code with dots (.)

#34 @Blue Raja - Thanks for the compiled list =) There are couple in there I haven't caught/fixed yet. Bueno!

#35 @Blue Raja -

Quote:
hey tell you to drag the image from the webpage - it doesn't work for me. Need to save the images and use the "create new ImageMap" button (top of create tab)

Is this a repeating bug for you? I only encountered it once, but when I closed TGB or maximized/windowed the editor everything worked fine after that.

I think this is getting logged as a bug, so I'm not going to correct the tutorials as this is a feature of TGB that is meant to stay.

#36 There doesn't seem to be much documentation on editing a ParticleEmitterGraph.

This would be a good thing to have in its own section in the html reference documentation but the field/method descriptions for ParticleEmitter and the other particle related classes are just stubs like "sets bla or gets bla", when what someone looking at that page wants to know is "what does this mean and how does it affect my particle emittion?"

I can usually figure it out eventually, but it always starts with "oh crap, what do all these mean again?"

#37 @James - Well, in the feature tutorials there is a section that introduces how to use particle emitters and the EmitterGraphs. This is a good start that kind of sends you on your way to experimentation.

However, I have always been baffled by Torque particle systems. TGB's editor is definitely leagues above TGE/A, in terms of ease of use and power. I'll definitely look into what I can do for expanding the particle documentation

#38

Quote:
They tell you to drag the image from the webpage - it doesn't work for me. Need to save the images and use the "create new ImageMap" button (top of create tab)
------------------

Is this a repeating bug for you? I only encountered it once, but when I closed TGB or maximized/windowed the editor everything worked fine after that.

I am having the same issue, but only when running in a window. Maximizing solves the problem. I think it should work whether the screen is maximized or not.

#39 @Shaz and Blue Raja - The minimize and maximize (or vice versa) will temporarily fix the issue. I talked to someone on the TGB dev team, and we have an idea of what's going on. Because the issue is sporadic, and because it has been logged as a bug, I'm going to leave that portion of the tutorial alone.

#40 Documentation Update

The New Documentation System is live!

Read my blog HERE

Here are the new TGB Links:
Main Landing Page

TGB Landing Page
TGB Official Documentation