Isn't it too much? (features vs. documentation)

I somewhat agree but you need to use your own imagination where those features could be used for.

Don’t forget that all the features you see are for their own games (esp. sequencer, lighting etc) so that could be the reason why there’s no documentation and they just simply list them.

I think that what is missing is a real walkthrough instead of just an intro to the engine.
It should start from the basics, like what is a material, how do you create it, how do you use it within the engine, and then keep stacking knowledge on top of that till it reach the latest features.

As for the C++ it’s not just the documentation that is lacking, there are no code patterns and when they are, you don’t know it cause nobody told you that they existed.
For example if you want to call the OnHit event from C++ and expose it to blueprint you should call the related method ReceiveOnHit, so ReceiveFunctionName, stuff like that.
And you never knows what is the proper way to do something till it’s too late and you have to rewrite it.

I think this is one of the problems of the poor documentation of UE4: there is always someone saying something like “but it does the job” or “there are many tutorials and videos made by community”. Why? Because the other engines are worse? I don’t think it is a good reason. I usually find what I want on Google, but it always seems to be a wasted time. Instead of just read on the documentation, where it should be, I have to search on internet in many different links to join the information and get the answers for my doubts.

I will always use the documentation of the C++ interfaces as an example: the page says how to declare an interface, how to implement, but forgets to tell how to call. I mean, the engine is 2 years old and it doesn’t have a full oficial documentation of C++ interfaces yet.

And, of course, the “void DoStuff();” -> “Does stuff” example is also very true.

I think the basic/initial documentation is very good. When I started with the engine, I was like that meme “wow, such documentation, very tutorials”, but the advanced stuff is very poor. And the main problem is that it doesn’t seem to be considered as a problem as it should be…

If you want to program this engine at it’s heart, google won’t help you. The structs and classes you investigate will give you just a handful search engine results and those are from the stinted documentation. You have to reverse engineer everything and this engine is a wild and overgrown beast where everything is connected to everything. Layers and capsulation are rare, references to GUI and blueprint even in the basic implementations.
Having said that, Unreal4 is still the best engine of the world. Hate/Love. :wink:

It’s true that we focused more of our attention on documenting the initial user experience when UE4 was released to the public. We have begun to shift that focus more towards the advanced users lately so hopefully you will see an improvement there over time. We have a great team working on the documentation and I believe the existing documentation for UE4 is really good, but we are also aware there are many areas where we have holes or could improve the documentation, like the API reference that gets mentioned so often. We will continue to work on filling in the gaps and improving the existing documentation, tutorials, and samples.

Please let us know when we do something you like, but also keep telling us where we are coming up short so we can continue to improve.

why don’t you release docs.unrealengine.com on github? that way people could add docs where it is missing, examples, fixes, and maybe someone would even bother adding something like disqus to have some q/a

The source for the documentation is on GitHub:

https://github.com/EpicGames/UnrealEngine/tree/master/Engine/Documentation/Source

You can make pull requests for documentation just like for the engine. That doesn’t include the C++ or Blueprint API reference as those are auto-generated currently, but it includes all of the other pages. Adding Disqus isn’t really something you can do through a pull request and not something we currently have plans to do on our end, but adding or updating pages is totally possible. We would have to review and approve those, of course.

There is also the wiki where the community can easily add topics, tutorials, etc.

Is there an editor to edit .udn files? o.O

They are text files so any text editor should be able to edit them. The syntax is mostly Markdown with some additions we have made. Unfortunately, the tool we use to preview and publish them cannot be redistributed, so simple edits should be easy to make but adding new pages, images, etc. will probably involve some guesswork. We absolutely want to allow you to contribute to the effort to document UE4 and we are investigating ways to make that possible; however, the limitations of the current system make it difficult despite our desire to do so.

Notepad++ is probably as good as you’re gonna get…