I have been reading the forums, and have noticed a number of times users complain about the variation, inaccuracy or vagueness when reading a tutorial.

As you know MODSonline trys to provide a large number of tutorials for various things, in order to keep the community a top place for support and tutorials i wanted to have a discussion regarding them. The reason for this is explained below.

What i wanted too know was, if we can come to an agreement on the more popular tutorials, the best methods of which to achieve them and create a more detailed step-by-step guides

So this is where you come in, if you can link the tutorials you do not agree with, or having trouble following we can then discuss the best methods and i will update the tutorials with any changes (i will contact the author of any tutorials so don't worry if your tutorial comes up)

So if you could post trying to include some of the key points below.

• Tutorial and link
• Any Mistakes?
• Any Changes? (following discussion)
• Ease to follow?
• Suggestions

Hopefully this will clear up a few reoccuring problems.

Thanks

Maybe, for a good start, you can make a little cleanup, like duplicate tutorials ( the same one ) and 2 - 3 ( sometimes more ) different ones of the same subect ( with errors, insufficient infos, etc )

For example:

Beginner
Custom Textures / Materials
NovemberDobbby shows us how to make custom textures and / or materials.

Intermediate
Custom Textures / Materials
NovemberDobbby shows us how to make custom textures and / or materials.
--------


( This one 5 TIMES!! )
Beginner
Add a helicopter to your MP map
MoGElijah shows you how to add a helicopter to your multiplayer map.

Intermediate
Add a helicopter to your MP map
MoGElijah shows you how to add a helicopter to your multiplayer map.

Advanced
Adding Helicopters to CoD4 Custom Maps
Call of Duty 4: How to add Helicopter Support to your Custom Map
by *MoG*Elijah / mog_elijah@hotmail.com / www.menofgod.us

Scripting
Add a helicopter to your MP map
MoGElijah shows you how to add a helicopter to your multiplayer map

Adding Helicopters to CoD4 Custom Maps
Call of Duty 4: How to add Helicopter Support to your Custom Map
by *MoG*Elijah / mog_elijah@hotmail.com / www.menofgod.us
--------
They are all the same...

+ tons of others.

Just a suggestion!...

Then it will be easier to fix the bad tutorials.

It is the same for the other tutorials of the cod series.

edited on May. 3, 2008 06:47 pm by Nemo06c

Thank you for your reply, i have fixed the duplicate tutorial and reposted the helicopter tut it to only appear in the 'advanced' mapping tutorials.

Its was just an example. There are many other tuts that are duplicated.

They are practicly all duplicated, triplicated, etc....

edited on May. 3, 2008 07:52 pm by Nemo06c

Yes, that's because they fall under different categories... there are tutorials for scripting something in SP... so it might be under intermediate, scripting AND SP...

They are all the same and this cause the tutorials section hard to understand and to reach something. It also caused that we have to open many of them to see if there's something different in all of them.

Maybe the categories are not enough accurate. Beginner, Intermediate and advanced is too large for nothing.

Anyway even beginners will want to add a helicopter path, and smoke custom images and sounds.

Who judged if something goes in beginner or intermediate or advanced sections? Nobody check the tutorials.

Maybe a mapping category, a scripting category, a modding category and a category for Single Player
related should be more accurate.

Having the same tutorial in 3 or more categories is useless. It just shows many tutorials but, in reality, there's not much of them.

Then, a cleanup in the remainings tutorials will have to be done to correct bugs, errors, mispelling, unaccurate tuts. Because, if you look closely at all the forum posts asking for help ( when tutorials are available and used ), then you'll see that there is a major problem with the integrity of the tutorials.

But saying that nobody have the time to check if the tutorial is good or not is unprofessional. You are a maping/modding/scripting web site. Using tutorials to share the knowledge but nothing is tested to see if they are really a help for the community.

Maybe you should hire more staff to help you in your " too much thing to do and we all have a life outside ". This will make a better Modding Site!!!!!!!

You also have to think that when your in bed or busy making the dishes with your wife, somewhere else in the world people are up and mapping!!

When we tell people that you are the best, you should do what its necessary to be the best!

My 2 cents.

edited on May. 3, 2008 09:13 pm by Nemo06c

I said it before and I'll say it again...
A ModsOnline Wiki!

The IW Wiki for CoD4 started off good but the devs only put the 101 stuff on it, I guess they expected the community to add more but everyone does simplistic MP maps and don't dig deeper into scripting, menus, etc...

There are some good games coming out soon that would be worth opening a Wiki for modding:
Left 4 Dead (PC)
Call of Duty 5 (PC)
FarCry2 (PC)
Brothers In Arms (PC)

If there is a Wiki, just be sure to plan out the layout ahead of time... the IW Wiki fell prey to being too complicated to navigate around.

A wiki would be hard to keep up with, you have to watch what people are posing, what images there uploading, and such. it's a big hassle.

I do agree with you Nemo, the catagories are quite vague. At the moment the tutorials are placed in whatever catagory the 'difficulty' is. It's not to say what skill level you are but really just to give you advise on what it's best to attempt. If we get enough response to this thread regarding this ill have a chat to foyleman and see if he would concider a change.

The reason i started this thread is solve this problem.. The reason it's important to ask the community is because i personnally don't really use the tutorials. This can obviously depend on things like, skill level, abilty to follow instructions and patients

So lets say for example (im not picking on this tutorial im just using it as an example)



The above is just an example, so if we could establish a few of these then we can fix any error/mistakes or confusion in the tutorials. You may also only think that a tutorial should be in a different difficulty to where it is now.. Anything your not happy with let me know.

@Sparks

I have a fire and smoke fx tutorial over on the wiki but the submission manner is so strange (to me at least) that Im not sure if anyone has even seen it over there. So I for one have little faith in the wiki as it is styled over there. Im wont say that it is useless as it is far from up Im just saying that for me at least I found it confusing to add to it with new content.