I think it would be nice to also have example shaders and example scripts for new engine features...although it's not really a feature...

or like template shaders...

Something like that is allready on the list, check out the forecast:
http://www.conitec.net/forecast.htm

old_bill

... or, even better, documented in the manual. The manual contains practically nothing about shaders. I find it an inconvienience.

Shaders have nothing to do with the engine. You can find tons of information in books and the internet.

maybe so, however it would be nice for the manual to explain this

If you buy a car you don't expect the manual to contain a tutorial on "how to drive", do you?

The engine first. What is a good manual if the product is bad? You can find information on shaders just like level design tutorials on the net.

yeah but what i have seen there is there are different ways of how you can write a shadercode and i dont know if these books are really helpfull for 3dgs because you probably need c++ to program it from the books so it would be really great if there were a tutorial especially for 3dgs and with an example that really works were you just have to put in the code in the main script and assign the action to the model or whatever else.

you either write in assembler or a c like language "hlsl". You can copy shader effect almost 1:1 from all sites on the net. I didn't know anything about shaders until I got a new graphics card. After one day digging into hlsl shaders I was able to write some basic things like display the texture in black and white. The day after I wrote normal mapping. It's not the language you need to learn but the techniques how to achieve the results you want and you can get tons of information on the net. Writing a tutorial about how normal mapping, parallax mapping, environment bumpmapping and the like work is like reinventing the wheel. You don't ask for a tutorial on how to write pathfinding in the manual either, do you?

This is no offense. You guys shall just learn that the time spent on the manual is time missing to improve the engine.

I can't see anything wrong in requesting a better documentation in the manual.

A bad documented feature is less an advantage than a documented one, because it can save you a lot time and some trouble. A feature can appear like a bug, just because it isn't documented properly.

---------
BTW. To hear that shaders are easy to program is laughable. Nobody would wait for Matt's Sphere engine and nobody would have paid a cent for Rhuarc's Outdoor Shaders etc.