Update the documentation too help everyone.

The documentation for unreal engine, and the ingame tips are either limited or non-existent.
Instead of spending as much effort on a “Answer hub” I suggest epic games invests man hours in Documentation.


My primary source of information is the ingame tips(etc…) and documentation.
Does epic games really think I want too take time out of someones day when I could simply find the answers on my own?

This is the fact:
Unreal Engines documentation doesnt do a good enough job of educating people.
Is not about wanting too ask questions, its the fact that often they HAVE too ask questions.

I would appreciate being able too search for example “integer” and learning as much as I can about the way unreal engine handles integer
Can integers go below 0?
How is an integer stored, and what happens if I exceed 256/255?(memory wise, bytes per 256)
What is the most efficient way too store values 3 booleans or one integer that switches between 3 values?(memory/cpu wise)
Whats similar links too integer?(linked by a person not a search engine)

Many questions that blueprint users dont know the answers to that documentation doesnt provide answers too.
Transitioning from blueprints too c++ would be much easier if we had this information.

Anyone aspiring too be a game developer could go on for days with questions, the above are just a small example I made up in 2 mins.

Am I saying your documentation isnt useful?
Im saying you could spend hours and none of your documents or tutorials will answer the game design impacting question.
An epic games dev designs a blueprint node, and often writes comments too help us out.
When making a product its the duty of the designer too tag it, and maybe should be his job too write Docs on it.

For teaching people nothing is more important then the documentation, you can upload tutorials aplenty.
Yes, Questions people have are hidden in the countless tutorials.
But you cant search transcripts in Youtube videos for exact questions you have.

Epic games has been slacking on updating the documentation each update, I know that you guys are behind on it, but moving forward make it a habit.

Lastly dont do as you guys like to do, this isnt a “question” this is feedback, make changes for the better, sooner then later.
Though I know your already typing out “Dats c++/Visual studio, you need go look up dat info, not unreal engine” instead of investing expensive man hours.

I hope you guys also understand the dissconnect between blueprint users and c++ users and that gap could be so much smaller with more detailed documentation, and any documentation linked from the client.
:smiley:

Unfortunately, I think Epic made some effort to make many tutorials and documentation for begginers to give the initial impression of a well-documented engine. Yes, this kind of documentation is very nice and I think they should continue to keep the good job on that, but it’s not enough. It was something very acceptable in the beggining, but now, some years since the first version, I think Epic should make a bigger effort to change that. Or we have to continue to deal with the “Google based documentation”.

Drenchedpuppet showed a very detailed example, but I think it’s worse than that. Many times, there is a lack of basic information. Take this doc about C++ interfaces as example: Interfaces in Unreal Engine | Unreal Engine 5.2 Documentation - we need to know at least 3 things: how to declare, how to implement and how to call the interface. The documentation explains how to declare, how to implement and… forgets to teach us how to call. So, how can I use interfaces on C++ code if the oficial documentation doesn’t have the complete explanation? We have use the “Google based documentation”: ask Google and maybe it will find something in the forums or answer hub.

Also, the API reference doesn’t show some properties or functions of the classes. I gave up and now I only look inside the header files of the engine, using Visual Studio. It’s very tiring. Taking a look inside the engine code is very cool if you have some doubts or want to know some specific detail, but not cool if you need to do this for each basic stuff you want to do.

I always have the feeling I am taking much more time than expected to implement something on UE4, because I always have to search for basic information, instead of simply read about it in some doc.

I think there are a lot of threads about this subject here in the forums, but this one was the first I found and I wanted to agree with Drenchedpuppet. :wink:

[MENTION=22573]Marcio Daniel[/MENTION] made a good point, i spend few days figuring out how interfaces work in UE4 bp and c++, also a lot of user generated documentation on wiki is outdated and now its just misleading, so you spend a lot of time figuring out which bits of it still can be used and what is straight up wrong aproach.