DOS GCS: How good is the manual?

[Mystery]

I was thinking about the quality of the manual as a reference. When learning the engine and reading through it for the first time, I found the manual to be a pretty good guide, with a helpful introduction and further chapters that guide the user through the creation of a simple game/level.

However, when you more or less know how the GCS engine works, but need to find something specific, I found the manual to be quite annoying. While there is an index, that contains all relevant keywords, I often found myself going back and forth between the content and the index when I needed some information about a general topic. In addition to that, some more in depth information and of course more recently discovered "tricks" aren't in the manual.

Over the years I've come across several DOS GCS websites, some had small tutorials, but I never found anything that attempted to be a full blown guide to the engine.

Of course it doesn't really make sense to put a lot of time into, but if one were to have a lot of free time (which I haven't), would it be a good idea, and make the engine probably a little bit more accessible, if there was a rewrite of the manual as a reference, aimed at more experienced users? I always found the lack of visual aid in the manual a little bit annoying as well.

I'm thinking of something like a Wiki, that would offer a detailed documentation of the engine.

Have you encountered any information in the manual that was faulty, missing or at least incomplete?

[Saturdaynight]

This would be a lofty project on its own. But perhaps a guide to building a small game documenting all the step by step work with more advanced functions in place.

[Technopeasant]

Well, you could consider opening up a wiki adjacent to this site about Pie3D in general and see what comes if it. A wiki is what people bring to it, so who knows what could come of it.

[Mystery]

Yes, it would absolutely be a pretty time consuming project.

So this is all theoretical

For now I'm just thinking about the overall quality and possible shortcomings of the original manual.
The basic information is all there, but I feel it's not very well structured if you're not using it as a first time user.

[Saturdaynight]

Once I am done with the Mod-G project I will work on a tutorial base project to create this documentation. A simple, start to finish game.

[lgb3d]

I feel that the original Doss booklet manual was great. And the deeper I got into it, the manual became the software itself for example the guards 4th xcetera they always have descriptions and if you look at the text twice you understand what the variables do. Very little trial and error... On the other hand the windows upgrade the book was pretty good but there were a lot of holes you could trip in a lot more trial and err or.