... or startup tips like tip of the day. GIMP has this sort of thing. It would be nice if WED, MED, and SED all had something similar. It functions as a quick review and is otherwise short, but gives a sufficient description. With Camstudio, one could make video tutorials and share them.

Well doug, for the users who are pros, there should be an option that allows the user to turn off the tips and or lessons. Sonthing like "Run tutorial on startup" would be a good option. The "Lesson" idea could be a seperate application like a learning program. It wouldn't be hard to do at all. I am pretty sure that if everyone in the community contributed somthing, then we could get the lessons and even the program itself done in under a month.

Wow, that ProjectManager tutorial in flash is really good, i've never seen it...
this is why i edited my original post, apologizing to any recent tutorials i haven't seen.
i think what is missing then is to give those tutorials more visibility.
other authoring environments have options to launch tutorials from the Help menu, maybe this would help a lot.
also, organizing the tutorial in 'lessons', where the user has a simple goal to achieve at the end of each lesson, could make it easier to follow...


but again i'm sorry if i was unfair to recent tutorials.


*edited to correct some typos...
and i couldn't see the WED tutorial in your link, it sais "object not found"...

You don't need a full tutorial to run while making your game, more of a "tip of the day" which you can cycle through to see the tips, be able to launch the tutorials and step by step options.

While the tuts are out there, not everyone knows where to look for them. So make it easier for potential customers.

I think Filipe is right. Illustrated movies on how to make a simple level in WED is a good idea. I certainly had a hard time learning from the manual-- it's very user unfriendly.

In fact I -still- cannot make levels in WED using blocks, I have no idea how to make a level without getting 'no concave blocks' errors, despite trying to learn from the manual. And I've been using 3dgs for about 3 years now!

RTFM isn't good advice for beginners just shopping around, because it's a big investment of time. Also for non-technical types with short attention spans.

I can use complicated 3D apps but I've only learned through tutorial videos-- the manual is really impossible to learn from. 3DGS is similar. I only use the manual for the C-Script index.

So I think an intro opening video -or- well illustrated, user friendly slide show which actually operates in the UI is a good idea. Exactly like Flash does when you open it for the first time. And there's a Tutorial section under the Help menu.

Plus, I've noticed that the manual is full of mistakes and some content hasn't changed since A4 or A5. The var actually has a range from -2,097,152.9991 to 2,097,151.9991. I've placed entities well beyond the range stated in the manual, moved the camera well beyond it, and I have yet to see and prove the 999,999.999 value being enforced for anything and the one bit being used for something. fps_max is otherwise unlimited (yes, it works at 3000). Fps_max could use "recommended range" to give the best range, 60-240 in this case. The manual is mainly only decent for covering the C-script functions and what they do, but their ranges can often be exceeded in some form or another.

Video tutorials would be useful or at least some sort of slide-show thing (with audio even). I'd like to make one for MED as I've had on my agenda for close to a half year by now (originally, just a tutorial on my website, but not a video tutorial).

It'd be neat if there were something like Pappenheimer and Gnometech's interactive movement tutorial sections instantly available from the help menu to illustrate examples.

i do hae to say taht the actual manual is incredibly hard to use and takes a lot of effoet to figure out whats going on.. tho possible, not a lot of users like to spend that much effort when they first get a program