Quote: "Yeah there is a market for tools that make things easier, but X10 currently has a pretty small target audience so TGC are probably doing things that have a higher priority like updating X10 instead of making tools for it."
Given that X10 was supposed to replace X9, I don't see how that makes sense. Unless it is properly supported, the audience will always be small. One of the points of this thread is to make it known that one of the priorities SHOULD be making tools or tutorials--that this issue is almost as important as some of the bugs that are being fixed.
X10 is easy to use, but nobody is disputing that. There simply is no knowledge from anyone about some of the higher functions. In other words we don't even have a place to start. A lot of the higher functions don't require programming, you just need to know how to do them. And neither we nor anyone else knows how to use them. Since you keep comparing X10 to programming, let me make a more accurate comparison. Making a new program in DBP in X10 the equivalent is making an FPS game, yes? Writing your own AI or something similar in DBP (something like a sub program or something like that) in X10 the equivalent is custom media and scripts.
Now think of it this way--DBP says it can do this this and this, but for those sub programs, you can only create certain ones and it is impossible to create your own versions of the higher-end ones because the commands that those sub-programs would need in order to function are completely unknown, there's no description or even a list. Instead, you're limited to using only the examples of those sub-programs that were included with it.
That's more or less the X10 situation. We can't make sub-programs (which is the metaphor for weapons, certain custom media and a bunch of the higher functions) because there's no way to even find out how to use them. There aren't any tutorials, no prior reference of any kind. The only way to figure it out would be to start pluging in random commands to see if you could re-create that sub-program and you would do that, not even knowing if the commands you're plugging in are even real commands AND you have no debug system. (Lee has said that a debug system is going to be implemented however, so some of the problem is being addressed)
So yes, I think we really need tutorials or some means to at least know how create/import the custom media that we're supposed to be able to import. And X10, this particular engine sacrifices the ability to have custom features in exchange for ease of use (which I'm not complaining about, I don't have a problem with that). What that means however is that we're limited to the game-play features we can have--basically to a certain extent, all X10 (or even unmodded X9) are the same gameplay-wise (you can't have vehicles and stuff like that). But what THAT means is that the only way an X10 game can truly be unique (being something that nobody has seen before) is through custom media--the one aspect that is truly custom and is mainly limited to the artist, not the engine (the only other aspect that is like this is scripting). So do you see the problem? We have no way to access the very features that allow us to make things that nobody has seen before, or else we don't know how or have any way of finding out.
Of course, this is why I'm so relieved that Lee is giving X10 attention right now so I'm thankful for that.
A picture says a thousand words.
-- H.K. --
http://www.fpscx10-online.com/
