Best place to host Tilengine tutorials

[Domarius]

Something else I want to do is do a complete but minimum viable example for getting Tilengine set up and rendering with SDL2, under both C++ and C#, on both Windows and Linux.

Would that be something to host in the Tilengine docs or somewhere else?

[megamarc]

Hi,

I think tutorials should be a different subject than the main documentation. Main docs should be a comprehensive reference of all features, a kind of user's manual. Tutorials are a collection of unrelated topics, each one focusing on a particular task or goal shown step by step.

I think that our first task should be deciding how to write them: LibreOffice document? Hand-made HTML? Markdown?

A good option is Markdown, because both Doxygen and GitHub can take it and present them nicely. My forever work-in-progress of the documentation is in Markdown format too. VSCode has built-in support for previews and syntax highlight.

What do you think?

[Domarius]

Yeah I was wondering about the format too! I imagined if I wasn't told either way I was going to go with hand made HTML and keep it real simple, so that it's somehow portable when it comes time to put it somewhere.

But yes I will go with Markdown, it seems to be the best choice in this situation. I'm just reading about it now and it's actually designed to be converted to HTML, and looks like what I've already been using in BitBucket, heheh.

So would they still be hosted on the Tilengine site? Under a new menu option?

Another thing to discuss is videos. My experience is it's better to do them after a documentation version of the same thing and use the documentation as a script once it's been around and refined a bit. And then you can pick just the parts that are giving people the most trouble and do videos for those specific topics.

[megamarc]

So agreed upon markdown

Where to host: being your own work, I think it would be nice that you were able to publish them directly. For me it's not any problem that you submit them to me and I publish to the website (I can't create new users in my current hosting plan), but then you would loose some freedom. Another option is that you host them in your platform of choice, and I add a link to them in the main website documentation menu... anything is fine.

I've never done a video tutorial so I can't provide experience or tools in this subject. They're useful when you're showing a process that is particulary complex and a visual cue of what's happening is useful to understand it. Have you produced video tutorials for other subjects?

[Domarius]

I'd like to try submitting them for you to upload so everything is in one place, but I'll also consider other hosting, to weigh up the options. Maybe on my own website. Might be able to use it to draw attention to my website.

Yeah I'm just starting but each video I feel I'm learning more about how to make it more effective.
Here's one example: https://youtu.be/SqyV9Jmbex0 but I did it a while ago and I think it's a bit long winded, I can do better.
I think my "Setting up Linux Mint" video is more efficient (you can find it on my channel if you really want) but I had to record it with my phone due to needing to record the re-booting etc. so the quality isn't as good.

[megamarc]

I've done a quick watch of your videos:

The "long" Inform7 tutorial has very clear voice and presentation, from technical point of view it's oustanding and the way to go
The linux mint one suffers  the lack of proper recording equipment, both in picture and sound quality, but is the more concise of the two.

The ultimete tutorial would be the presentation of the first with the subject of the second But no doubt that you're talented at doing video tutorials, I can't wait to see a Tilengine one hehe

[Domarius]

Yeah that's my thoughts exactly - I know I can do better by combining what I learned, but I haven't had an excuse to make another video yet. I'm glad you think the voice is clear, because I've been working on that! I even bought a $200 mic so that there is no way I can blame any lack of clarity on anything else except me, to encourage me to keep speaking clearer!