Rethinking tutorials... Thread

It is no secret that the tutorials section on ModDB is a little neglected and perhaps not as great as it could be. One change I am currently considering, is making it so tutorials are linked by engine and not by game. Because whilst many tutorials are catered towards a particular game, i'd guess the majority of the time the same tutorial would work with any game made using the same engine.

It won't be perfect or flawless, but I believe it will help to make the tutorials section a lot richer with content. What are your thoughts?

I think the main issue is purely the wealth of tutorials available in other places like VDC, 3DBuzz, UDN etc, which makes ModDB's tutorial section fairly underused. Theres not much of an advantage for anyone to come to ModDB for a tutorial when there are places of more specialized knowledge.

The tutorial area needs a fair bit of structure - it needs organisation by engine / game, field, difficulty and the ability to serialise and interlink tutorials.

For important reference, especially in codeland, the majority of the time, the same tutorial does not work with any game made on the same engine, since there tend to be a lot of changes that are game specific. The only place this'd really work would be things like the Source art pipelines.

It sounds like you've already been giving this idea some thought.

Since you have been, why don't you do what you think is best. I think everyone is in agreement that the tutorials aren't well organized, so I guess that's a place to start.

It is a tough one, i'll have to think it through more before I start making changes...

because clearly the system isn't as useful at the moment as it could and should be.

Well, I can complain about the core of adding the tutorial, i.e. writing it. It simply isn't efficient:
1) any code containing tags like

<taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaag>

needs to be inserted between special tags. Takes time (especially small snippets take some time), and one can't switch off html/graphics editor completely to have a bit easier job.
2) Then one needs to colourise some important bits of code, which is impossible currently due to Super Html Editor With Super ] Tags [.
Blimey, you can't even colourise it as you like! It's automatically colourised, but the point of tutorial is to highlight the ESSENTIAL parts, not usual syntax structure.

's better to make own website in simple html, and colourise the tutorial properly, plus fix any other issues like vanishing code between ] evil tags [. (Had it TWICE when switching between graphics / html editor after posting a tut. )

This all makes me think thrice before I post any tuts containing any code on Moddb.
Better to make own simple html webpage somewhere in the depths of Internet and show it to friends, than f*ck (really sorry for my language but it can't be helped) with text formatting to begin a nice day with (i.e. some 1h or even 2 hours wasted if one really cares for people who read the tuts).

Edited by: feillyne