Better Documentation Format#22

I know everything is in a WiP state, but one thing I don’t like, and which I think is kneecapping you a bit, is how the documentation is being handled, specifically the one you find here: http://rivals2.com/workshop

At the moment, the link just redirects to a static PDF, with the link changing sometimes to point to a new version of the PDF. It’s great to see that it’s constantly being changed and updated, but I think for that reason, you should instead use something like Google Drive for example.

It would be easier to update on the fly, you can tag the different versions just like you did in the filenames of your PDFs, and most importantly (at least for visual learners like me), you can use animated GIFs to better explain things.

The documentation in general is a bit lacking at the moment, and I understand that will change with time, but I think having more visuals right away, animated especially, would help a lot of people get started more quickly. There are many parts in the documentation where I’m confused on where to click or where I’m supposed to even go, and the screenshots sometimes annoyingly have useful info cut off, like folder paths. Having animated GIFs to show the examples would help counter the more lackluster parts of the documentation.

And btw, regardless if you go with something like Google Drive or stay with PDFs, please add a table of contents.

It defines feels like it’s written with the assumption that you already know how to do a lot of this, especially with how much dev jargon it uses without explanation.

My comment on this is basically the same as Tundra’s. I’d like to add that the single most useful tutorial I used since I started was an unofficial video tutorial that could get your character from Blender to Unreal and set it up to a point where you could start working on animations and attacks on your own.

I think that if video tutorials were made then it would solve the problem of needing to spruce up the documentation with countless clarifications, redirection links and so on to add context for people who may not know any of these programs very well or at all. The doc assumes a lot of prior knowledge in Unreal and it’s an endless scroll that makes one resort to using the find command to find what you need, only for you to not know what word to type in because you don’t know the specific term for the section you’re trying to find answers for next, and any word you can assume is relevant yields no results.

With a video, not only can you see what is being clicked on, commentary can be added at the same time to explain quickly what things are being done and why. I don’t think it needs to be one super long video, it can be split up into a youtube playlist of shorter videos and little to no editing done to it so no visual information is lost (like cutting out key moments where a user can see where you’re clicking). If there is a specific order to setting up a character, you can simply name the videos in parts and make it clear that it needs to be followed in order, rather than someone just picking and choosing which videos to watch in a random order (also why a youtube playlist would be nice).

We are going to be able to focus on documentation improvements in a bit and would like to hear some current sticking point that you all have. Our goal is to improve the sections that would have the largest impact (since we won’t be able to polish everything) with new videos and graphics.

Please share specifics on what you think are the worst parts of the current documentation that people are getting stuck on, or what you got stuck on when you first started and wished was in the documentation.

@George Status effects and how visibility works. It would be great to know if there was a way to turn opponents invisible.

CSP section and skins/color palettes is still a bit hard to understand.

My biggest gripe is less to do with the documentation, but rather that it’s too many times where you miss to put in a dependency or a certain variable and the game just crashes on startup. Why not just let things be missing and have the game continue playing without these missing data’s. I feel like this would help every creator.

I try so hard to make a character, but the wording can be very confusing, and I’ve read many documentations that are far more beginner friendly. Also the tutorial should do a better job of teaching you how to not accidently publish unfinished mods to the workshop xD.

I think having a video of the process would be immensely helpful.