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DarkBASIC Professional Discussion / Very Poor Documentation

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Myth
21
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Joined: 19th Oct 2002
Location: Canada
Posted: 19th Oct 2002 11:20
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I posted this at the "Real Game Tools Forums" and though I would post it here as well, so hopefully the developers will be able to respond :


Besides the various bugs in DBP, I must say that I am extremely dissapointed in the documentation that came with the product. The manual which lists the commands is not detailed enough, and could use some good coding examples, and more detailed descriptions.

The other "pamphlet" that came with the box, is an extremely poor excuse for a manual, as some if the content was copied from DB with and most of is a repeat of the online help in the IDE. Not very uselful at all. I am wondering what the developers have planned to remedy this problem. When I opened the box, (ordered from the UK), I really wanted to return it.

That being said, before you feel a need to flame, I have been a user and supporter of Dark Basic since the original "Downloadable" version, purchased the "New Improved" DB1 with the excellent manual, and tutorial book, purchased Dark Matter and was a 3 month member of DBDN (which I didn't feel was worth the money, but that's besides the point).


I also purchased Cartography Shop (not a DB product, but reccommended on their site) and again found the documentation to be barely adequate.


In conclusion I do appreciate the hard work of DBS, but I truly feel that we have been let down. I understand that patches willl be forthcoming and I can live with a few, bugs I would really like a statement from the developers, about what is going to be done about the poor state of the documentation. I really would like to see a supplementary manual released (in a PDF).

In a thread on another DBP board, the developers state that many errors are caused in programs because the users are used to coding in DB1, and that DBPro is subsantially different. Well if that is the case, let's get some decent documentation for the product outlining these differences, let's get some decent tutorials, and examples.
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The admiral
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Posted: 19th Oct 2002 11:24
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well you are right that it could use more examples and tutorials in the manual nad not enough info but i felt that it explain the commands enough and no more detail could be used. Also i thought it was some good documentation and that db manual sucks more.

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indi
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Joined: 26th Aug 2002
Location: Earth, Brisbane, Australia
Posted: 19th Oct 2002 12:30
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It would be great if someone posted all the commands into a website that allowed ppl to tack on new paragraphs of information.


I know for a fact that I document commands for myself in this way with either a paragraph or take notes or I write myself a snippet.


This interactive manual could be made by either the DBS crew or a forum user.


In return this would make a healthy document for the dbs team to base a new improved articualte manual that could be sold as a new product extension with some good verbose snippets and or functions and available free electronically if u contributed to its creation and Update.

http://www.lunarpixel.com/ is my new site
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indi
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Posted: 19th Oct 2002 12:30
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hehe spelling articulate wrong is a dammed typo from murphys law

http://www.lunarpixel.com/ is my new site
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pathfinder
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Posted: 19th Oct 2002 18:55
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um Guy's already got 3 people on the job, for the online documentation.

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Myth
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Posted: 19th Oct 2002 20:07
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Read the thread over at Real Game Tools Forum, and this is good news:
http://www.realgametools.net/forums/index.php?board=19;action=display;threadid=8693


Would still like to see something like the "Further Tutorials" manual in the Fastrak boxes version fo DB1. I aways found this an valuable tool, as it not only gave code examples "the how", it also gave the theory behind it "the why". Something like this for DBPro might make the product more desireable for people that are new to DB, as well as those making the transition between the 2 products.

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CD On CD
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Joined: 23rd Sep 2002
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Posted: 19th Oct 2002 20:17
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my 2 cents:
yes,,, the docs are really not very well presented at all but documentation is generally 2nd nature it seems and they always say,,,,"programmers make the worse writers" so maybe Guy's efforts will really pay off....get some others that know how to code but dont get too technical in the docs.

i would really like to see many realworld examples,,,step by step instructions of many of the major commands such as working with BSP,, matrixes, terrains, etc. it seems that most everybody here uses those the most so why not put some extra effort into that as well.

success to the editors & keep up the GOOD work!

United We (Still) Stand
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rapscaLLion
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Posted: 20th Oct 2002 00:37
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I won't mince words, the docs are crap, some of the worst I've seen. For many reasons as well, but it's being worked on. Nothing is perfect, especially the first time round the block.

Alex Wanuch
aka rapscaLLion
Get the DB Weekly Newsletter at www.dbwn.cjb.net
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MiRRoRMaN
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Joined: 9th Oct 2002
Location: Netherlands
Posted: 20th Oct 2002 00:48
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Sadly to have to say I agree with Myth. I have been following bambers work since the Amiga (Amos and Amos Pro) and recently have discovered the great DarkBasic. I purchased it right away and I havent tried DarkBasic Pro yet, but with the previous DarkBasic it was the same thing. Poor documentation. This seem to be the case with all great software, LightWaves original manual is also as thick as wednesday's newspaper. With Amos Pro I bought some extra books, does anybody know if there are any good Dark Basic books with examples etc?

Anyway, DarkBasic is really great so no bad words about that, but the documentation could be very very better.

Maybe they should appoint one of the Dark Basic fans to write an extended manual? Or some books? I'd love to buy them.

www.mirrorman.cjb.net, the classic Commodore 64 and Amiga site.
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warzog
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Posted: 20th Oct 2002 07:01
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Y'all should feel lucky!

While DBPro's manual is not even close to the Best, which I considered the Commodore Vic 20's Programming manual to be, it's a lot better than some I've dealt with.

At least the commands are indexed by type, and you can find stuff, eventually.

Try reading the Curious Labs' manual for Poser 4!
It was written by someone on some serious drugs, while they wrote the program, adding another page as they added functions.

You end up with; to do this, you must do that first, but to do that, you can try this or that, but not the other thing, so you need to check if this was done, or if you want, you can do this instead by trying that when you've finished with this.
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Kale
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Joined: 8th Sep 2002
Location: United Kingdom
Posted: 20th Oct 2002 20:27
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yeah, the docs really do suck major ass :/ more source code is needed to explain things. we need something like this [url]www.php.net/manual/en[/url] along with user comments to allow the documentation to grow!

What the flame does not consume, consumes the flame.
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AMD XP2100+, Geforce4Ti 4400, 512Mb DDR, Abit KX7, WinXP Pro
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