Understandable but, Grazer mentioned in the discord server once that there is thousands of views on the main page a week, and 90% of those people don’t even see the forums. Most go on YouTube searching “flowlab.io tutorials” or looking around the main page for help. The manuals can twist your brain if you don’t have background knowledge and yes, I know we don’t need a tutorial for EVERYTHING. I mean covering basics things like:
Timers
Animations
Checkpoints
Movement
Switches
Logic Gates
Properties
Expressions & Globals
Personally, just having a tutorial for those few would be great for new users, I wish I had video tutorials explaining those, rather than asking JR_01 for help or just giving up.
If you need help on something then you go on the forums for help, which is exactly why they were made. For more experienced users to explain certain mechanics to newer users.
I do understand that the tutorials need updating, but I feel that flowlab should undergo more bug fixes as a main priority than working on tutorials, cause like I said, if someone needs help then they could advance to the forums.
But between updates and tutorials, I’d pick updates. And Grazer probably doesn’t want the money or hassle put into hiring people for a job he’s been doing for years.
I definitely don’t expect grazer to make all the tutorials! Heck no.
What I meant is that anyone here who is good at making tutorials (even just written tutorials) and has some spare time to explain something, should put it together and host them in a tutorial category or thread… have the most helpful ones pinned, something like that. And have them clearly labeled so that they are easy to find, like “How to make a sprite use a weapon,” or “How to make procedurally generated terrain,” etc. The community can vote on which ones are the best / most informative to be pinned near the top.
It’s nice having you guys discuss and say what kind of flowlab tutorials you think would be useful and used by new users. Feel free to give feedback and request tutorials.
And yes, I would love to see more tutorials from the community.
Probably so, but they’re scattered. And sometimes you search for one thing, and you find tutorials that are similar to what you want to do, but not quite exactly the same…
Or there are two or three different variations on how to make the functions work… and the explanations aren’t always clear… like the YouTube videos I’ve seen “explaining” how to do something in Flowlab, and they have zero commentary. It’s just a silent video of someone making connections without saying what each one does. Yes I can pause the screen and just copy the code, but then I haven’t learned anything except for how to plagiarize somebody else’s work.
Also, if you copy and paste, what I do is mess around until I understand the concept. That can lead to unique game mechanics too if you learn the ins and outs of stereotyped code.
I know, many of you are super helpful, but what if it’s 4 a.m. and nobody is online, and I’ve been drinking a bunch of coffee and want to finish something like now now now now now and waiting for an answer… wouldn’t it be easier to have a pinned library of “everything you will ever need to know about Flowlab” all in one neat little place, accessible to everyone 24 hours a day?
Unless it’s a game jam, in which nobody will help you except for Jr and the remaining Musketeers, or you’re going pro, in which case we can’t help anyways, the best option is to sleep lol. Sleep will help you solve problems and code faster, anyways.
Believe me, I do sleep plenty when I’m tired. But I’m a night person. I’m usually asleep when you guys are at school or work or whatever it is that morning people do.
