To me the worst part of the documentation is that sometimes they are misleading/outdated which is far more worse than lacking. Normally when I can’t find something documented (like those suggested by Pat-Level17) I would go check the source code, but if I am following the docs yet I can’t get it right there goes the nightmare of trial and error (of course sometimes the problem is indeed on my side).
Since the engine is such a large software I fully understand that it is very difficult to keep the documentation up to date with detail (even the release notes in each update is long as hell!). Still in the long run, in view of how UE4 values community contribution it make sense, in my opinion, to also let the community contribute to the documentation too and for such a wiki style doc would be the most suitable option I can think of.
While I understand that you guys can’t just magically convert the docs to a wiki, I think a “comment” feature for each doc page would be a more realistic and helpful compromise you can make in the short run. At lease when I found something in the doc to be lacking / outdated / misleading I have a way to contribute / guide / warn others about the issues that I find.
I’d really really really like it if you didn’t assume that everyone can watch your tutorial videos on YouTube/streamed in all circumstances. I’d love to use my travel time to watch all your videos, but I can’t sit and rip several-hundred videos off YouTube (which I’m pretty sure is against their ToS anyway) or stream them in a WiFi/4G black spot.
I was wondering whether it was possible to have a documentation site where users can add to the existing pages with whatever they think is useful. All additions should not be added automatically but rather be presented to some kind of committee which takes a look and decides whether its appropriate, error-free and understandable (and maybe improve on it a little). I think this would be vey helpful for the C++ programming part - since there are already many C++ code snippets on how to use or set up various classes in the wiki page (I am especcially thinking about Rama’s posts) which provide good examples imho. This functionality would provide a new - and in my opinion a better - place for such code snippets.
But I also think that many people would contribute to the non-C++ parts of the documentation as well, maybe going as far as showing their tricks, providing tipps etc (those should be marked as such, as they do only provide a personal point of view).
What might be interesting as well and could be provided alongside this functionality would be a feature to “mark” specific parts of the documentation directly - saying that something is amiss here or something might not be up to date or whatever - lets say that notes will be injected into the documentation (notes that maybe should be visible only in an “editor”-mode). This way, users who are more experienced and stumble upon minor defects could contribute very easily. I also think that there are people in this community who could qualify for such a committee (if epic does not have the manpower) but that is up to you guys to judge.
Additionally, I think that such a documentation site could be incorporated into the twitch streams by selecting and showing the viewers that here and there are places to improve. There always seem to be a few people who help out the other users a lot and seem to be experienced. If such users were watching the stream but not currently interested in whatever is momentarily being told, they might turn to the documentation page and add some stuff if they feel like that this is exactly what they can answer perfectly. At least: I would do so if I would have the neccessary knowledge. If we develop this thought further, twitch streaming content might actually directly land inside the documentation pages. I mean, they DO tell us useful stuff there
I have noticed that some of the documentation is organized into levels of beginner, intermediate, and advanced, but then other sections are not assigned a skill level. Can I get these topics assigned to skill levels? Keeping new additions assigned to skill levels, makes it easier to assess what documentation should be looked at first when trying to solve a problem.
Your documentation, while extensive, has a major flaw in that you only show examples, never explaining things in a general way.
For example, if documenting a fictious Warp Node Component, you use this style ALL the time:
“A Warp Node Component can be used to warp its target. To create a warp node, right click on your blueprint and select create warp node. Connect it to your Actor by clicking on the box and dragging X to Y. Select the warp type in the dropdown list. Now go to Play and click on your actor”.
While this is nice, it doesn’t tell me what a warp node is, what it is for, when I should use it, when not, and what alternative options or methods may exist.
Instead of documenting a warp node, you have documented how to create a warp node. And that’s of little use to someone encountering the thing for the first time (the average documentation reader).
+1 for above… I have to say, I wish Epic did their documentation like Microsoft… Go review their .NET or C++ documentation, its OUTSTANDING. If Epic could get something like that, it would be awesome. If I was in charge (and I am not) I would simply say, get this **** up to snuff, now… <grins>
I frequently use the docs to as a learning resource so it happens that I frequently bump into code that is not up-to-date, pages with outdated information, pages that are incomplete or simply pages with wrong information or w/e. I would like to be able to report these directly from the page I am viewing with a note stating whats wrong/what could be improved and maybe even giving an example. The Documentation team should be notified of those reports directly, if possible.
I just want to help finishing the docs as quickly as possible somehow So can we get this feature please?
I proposed this once in another thread, I’ll write here short version:
Make wiki version of Documentation, just like existing Epic Wiki. Tutorials section works great and have amazing community which shares great ideas, so why not expand it to Documentation? I often find some pages without any reference - If I could, I would add some function description myself.
The way that Arma 3, which also has a huge content creation community, does its documentation is by adding an “Examples” and “Notes” sections to the bottom of its documentation pages. People leaves quick tips and demonstrations of useful stuff you can do.
Currently, It isn’t grouped in a fashion that is conducive to figuring anything out. You have an API class hierarchy, with nothing that intellisense can’t tell us. You have a list of all component types, several “Getting started with unreal” pages that could easily be combined into their own module. Blueprints, mobile development, and C++ are in their own worlds.
Instead, it would be more helpful to be able to go into a pathfinding/navigation menu and step through all of the features, starting at the introduction and making your way through more complex features.
Actually, as an example, check out Unity’s Navigation documentation vs Unreal’s. First of all, you have to search “navigation” in unreal because the tree on the left doesn’t give you any hints where it might be. Second… the results are not helpful.
And as far as C++/Blueprints are concerned, they should be together in the documentation, similar to how MSDN does it.
Here is my suggestion on improving UE4’s documentation…
I am just a beginner, but I have a feeling that things like this should be documented:
And it’s not.
You cannot get onto the Play Store with a daydream app without a launch image. It’s a requirement according to Google’s documentation.
For routine things, which everyone has to do, and for issues for which there are policy requirements preventing distribution of apps made with the UE4 engine there should be easy-to-find, clearly identifiable documentation. Google isn’t going to pick up the slack in this department. Not any time soon.
Again, I am no expert, but I think this is probably one of the things should be considered the bare minimum when it comes to documentation, and it just doesn’t exist. I appreciate AnswerHub and the staff devoted to answering questions on it. It’s extremely helpful. But I don’t think I should be asking AnswerHub how to do something like this.
I get it. I understand writing documentation is a huge pain and it’s something no one wants to do, and I get that it’s hard work trying to tie the engine into all these various platforms, and things are moving super fast, and I would be terrible at trying to do what you guys do, trying to keep up with all the changes…but you asked for my suggestion and my suggestion, as wannabe low-budget indie developer who looks forward to sharing revenue with Epic, is to actually write the documentation.
Since this is “stickied” I am guessing it is still reviewed, periodically. Just posted in another thread about the non-availability of documentation off line. I am a teacher, trying to review Unreal for possible inclusion in courses I teach (or plan to teach) at my University. But during the summer I am not sitting at my desk, in my office, with most excellent internet access. I am at home, where I live “off the grid”, using solar energy system, etc. (i.e. NO internet outside of limited access on my cell phone.)
The fact that I can download all of the code for the program, but not a simple PDF (or similar) file for the documentation is very frustrating. I don’t need the code. I need to figure out how to do the things I am considering including in a class and that often requires looking up info in a manual . . .
My second comment is somewhat related. I have only had the software for a few days, but already have experienced several crashes of the editor. Of course these all spawn a request to submit a report to Epic / Unreal Engine . . . with no interent access, I cannot submit a report to document the crash and help you identify the issue and improve the code.
Documentation needs two people full time working on fixing and filling documentation, a couple of guys on the and answer forum to unify, fix and review all information and moving useful information to the wiki or documentation pages, and somebody who updates tutorials and organizes all.
Take ideas from, it works like a charm.
Someone really needs to go through the documentation and make sure it provides actually useful information.
Some examples: The “Timelines” page (Timelines | Unreal Engine Documentation), which has absolutely zero information on what Timelines actually do and just copies the description text from the engine. Compare that to the “Using Timers” page (Using Timers | Unreal Engine Documentation), which starts with a description of what Timers are and examples of what they can do, which is what you would expect of documentation.
Another example: The “Animation Sequence User Guide” has some helpful intro text, but the “guide” part just says to put the node in an animation BP and connect the pose. Nearly anyone who’s actually looking at the documentation would already know how to do this. Meanwhile, there’s no information (or links to a page with information) on the properties of the Play node or what they do, or examples of how they can be manipulated to achieve some non-default outcome. The basic instructions should probably not be removed in case someone very new happens to look up the page, but it’s nowhere near sufficient for a “user guide.”
Another example: There appears to be no documentation whatsoever for the Anim Sequence Evaluator or Blendspace Evaluator nodes.
These are just basic examples - there many many more like these.
This is not because I’m moving from Unity but they got the Rolls-Royce of documentation (I found the right answer in 5 minutes in the Unity Documentation, For Unreal… I pass 10 minutes for a thing which is not documented, moving to the Answer Hub, and moving to the , to Google… and 1 hour lost). At each release, the documentation should update all its posts. To be sure that everything is still compatible (which is not the case). For example, I’ve lost 1 hour to find where to change Preview Level to Android because the documentation was obsolete.
Furthermore, for the C++ API part. It should be awesome to have examples with it. And the results in game. For example, the FLatentInfo I don’t know how to use it when, it’s utility even if I’m sure it’s powerfull.
Edit: And the possibility to download it (It could be awesome to have a doc which can be update via GitHub or something)
With regards to search, what term(s) were you searching for when you were looking for our Mobile Previewer? Using just the word “Preview”, the first selection in our search was the option I wanted. To test this out, I did the same on Unity’s Documentation and searched “Preview” and even “Mobile Preview” but was left in the same boat as you that it didn’t return the result I wanted.
We’re always happy to hear suggestions for improving our search and we are actively working toward improving this in the future for better discoverability of documentation.
For the C++ API this is also a large task that we’re working on, but it’ll take time. I don’t have an ETA really but it’s something that is requested often and something we’re aware we need to address.
Documentation keeps getting better all the time… kudos. With such a large documentation base that changes over time, it would be really useful to see recent changes like a “documentation changelog”.
I just noticed that I find the documentation pages a lot more useful than before, good job guys
One thing I still would like to see: I think allowing users to edit documentation pages would tremendously improve the documentation. I know that it’s a bad idea to allow just anyone to update pages, but I think this feature could prove doable if you guys also implement some sort of reputation.
People can only freely update pages when they have enough reputation, otherwise their udpates have to be approved by someone with enough reputation. One can only earn and loose reputations by updating pages, earning reputation when their updates gets approved, none when it gets denied. Additionally penalties could be dealt out for bad updates - whether they have already been approved or not - which would make you loose reputation. The penalties could/should be large enough to scare people off
So can we get this feature please?