Westernmost
New member
I'm sure this has been kicked around a lot already, but my newest attempt at this begs the question again.
Is there any plan to better organize the Help Wiki for rookies so that it presents a logical journey through the system instead of leaving it to the user to hunt for needed information that may or may not be accessible if he doesn't know what to search for?
There is a nice page on downloading and "getting started." And then it leaves you sitting there, with no indication of where to go next for meaningful orientation into this amazing world you just entered. Without an opening orientation, nimrods like me get stuck and frustrated. For example, I wanted to find info on the concept of "baseboards." But without knowing it was called a "baseboard," it took me several searches to finally find the page that provided a good explanation of them. Ditto a nice, clean flowchart of the process. If you don't know what to ask for, the answers can be very hard to find.
This is in no way to knock all the work that's gone into writing the thing. I'm just saying that all this knowledge needs to be laid out in a logical order, specific to each version. That "getting started" page, for instance, does have a directory of next steps - for the 2012 version, and doesn't say so until you're there. (The fact that it reminds you that 212 had a manual didn't help the situation!)
I also gladly acknowledge the tutorials and YouTube videos that are intended to help with this. But videos have a drawback in that documentation doesn't - I can print out documentation and flip back and forth through it if I need to. Plus, if the game is already aggravating me, I really don't want to compound the stress by fighting with a video.
For sake of context, I came into this from Train Player. TP may have chintzy layout graphics and 2D only, but it has a superbly organized help section. Plus the downloads are almost instantaneous instead of dying after hours of the Download Store's blazing 4K per second rate.
I dig that even one version of Trainz would need a library of manuals to cover everything. But at least something in concise, logical, printable form would be very helpful.
Is there any plan to better organize the Help Wiki for rookies so that it presents a logical journey through the system instead of leaving it to the user to hunt for needed information that may or may not be accessible if he doesn't know what to search for?
There is a nice page on downloading and "getting started." And then it leaves you sitting there, with no indication of where to go next for meaningful orientation into this amazing world you just entered. Without an opening orientation, nimrods like me get stuck and frustrated. For example, I wanted to find info on the concept of "baseboards." But without knowing it was called a "baseboard," it took me several searches to finally find the page that provided a good explanation of them. Ditto a nice, clean flowchart of the process. If you don't know what to ask for, the answers can be very hard to find.
This is in no way to knock all the work that's gone into writing the thing. I'm just saying that all this knowledge needs to be laid out in a logical order, specific to each version. That "getting started" page, for instance, does have a directory of next steps - for the 2012 version, and doesn't say so until you're there. (The fact that it reminds you that 212 had a manual didn't help the situation!)
I also gladly acknowledge the tutorials and YouTube videos that are intended to help with this. But videos have a drawback in that documentation doesn't - I can print out documentation and flip back and forth through it if I need to. Plus, if the game is already aggravating me, I really don't want to compound the stress by fighting with a video.
For sake of context, I came into this from Train Player. TP may have chintzy layout graphics and 2D only, but it has a superbly organized help section. Plus the downloads are almost instantaneous instead of dying after hours of the Download Store's blazing 4K per second rate.
I dig that even one version of Trainz would need a library of manuals to cover everything. But at least something in concise, logical, printable form would be very helpful.