Visionaire homemade Documentation & Template problems: An Endless Story?

First: I really love Visionaire and thank the devs for making it. But there is two things that for me, and I think most of the other users is very frustrating:

1. Documentation:
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When people ask for a official documentation, they often get the answer that the community will somehow help. Well thats maybe "ok" for open-source software but...

1. I think it's not the job of the community to write a documentation for a commercial software. I can expect from the developers to write a complete official documentation for a software they sell for up to 1500 EUR.

2. It's always mentioned there is a wiki. Well, that wiki is a great idea when it's used the right way, but it is incomplete since years and i would say about 75% of the content is either not completely finished or completely missing.
Its like reading a good book where every second page is missing.

3. The small pdf delivired with the software is a nice first step guide, but not a manual at all.

It took me weeks to figure out the easiest things in Visionaire often because there was no documentation, or I only found a fan-documentation that was already out of date or have to watch hours of youtube tutorials just to find a solution for a small question I would normally look up in a proper handbook.

Suggestion:
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Create a proper pdf Documentation for Visionaire. Main things: Explain with an example project all steps of Visionaire and add a reference of all commands that can be used with a description. You can even offer that pdf via book-on-demand services as a printed version. That would be comfortable for the users + you can even make additional money with the book compensating the time & money for writing the documentation


2. Templates
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The second frustrating thing is that most of the template-files the devs are mentioning on their postings or newspage are either only hosted by fans and are not available anymore (nigec) and spread all around that forum here.

Suggestion:
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Why can't you create a batch of basic templates yourselves and also host them yourselves? Maybe even bundled with the documentation. It would make learning Visionaire so much easier. I think about templates for all your Interface-styles described in the wiki for example, Or basic ways of animations or talk-interfaces.

I hope the devs understand that I'm not posting this to offend anyone. I like Visionaire and I want it to be less frustrating to learn. In my opinion this can be easily achieved be solving the problems mentioned above. In the end it would be a win win situation: satisfied developers, and I guess more people buying Visionaire.

Hi battlefox, thanks for your post and these suggestions.

Most of it will change in the next couple of months. We're about to professionalize Visionaire Studio and there will also be some surprises. We work on a new editor at the moment and I will try provide a manual for this. Visionaire Studio will also be published in multiple marketplaces... so yeah, we will need a manual, templates and other stuff.

A good help for the moment are several video tutorials that you can find on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=visionaire+studio

Best Thomas

Thank you for your answer.

A complete new editor or a new Version of Visionaire?

New editor. They are working on a completely custom made GUI instead of using WxWidgets framework.

In regards to the documentation... most of us are busy with other things. The devs are busy with the development side of the engine & other personal things (school, work, life, etc).

I myself am busy with my own stuff too & I don't get paid to provide support or documentation, so I have no contracted obligation to spend every moment of my spare time providing support or documentation.

There's the other matter that wasting time finishing documentation for the current engine would be a waste of time as it would all need to be done again for the upcoming new editor.

As for templates: same answer as above. Creating templates, tutorials (text/video) & documentation all take time to prepare. Planning, gathering or creating of resources, implementation & then debugging, checking over before submitting. The few text tutorials I have written for the wiki probably took me a few hours each as I didn't just write the tutorials. I also provided ved examples & images with annotation.

Long story short, Visionaire Studio team consists of a team of people you can literally count on one hand. 3 developers & Thomas (Marvel). Anyone else, like myself basically just help out when they can.

@battlefox: Exactly the same I have posted on year ago and about 5 years ago. I have learned that Visionaire is as it is. Post your problems in the forum and you got help. But there is no effort to change the situation of outdated/incompletely documentation on the part of developers...

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@battlefox: Exactly the same I have posted on year ago and about 5 years ago. I have learned that Visionaire is as it is. Post your problems in the forum and you got help. But there is no effort to change the situation of outdated/incompletely documentation on the part of developers...

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I do realize that too now, Lebostein.

It really sounds like: "Yes we were to busy to write a documentation for your product, but come back in 5 years and buy our next product, you might get a documentation this time"

I would understand the lack of documentation if Visionaire would be a non-profit open-source project run by some hobby programmers and the software wouldn't cost a penny. But it's a commercial software and we are not just users, but also customers who, in my opinion, deserve at least a complete manual & reference for what we bought.

But I am glad to see that Marvel is planning changes here.

Problems can be easily solved.

More people buy VS, more VS gets updated.

But! In order to succeed that, VS needs more masterpieces.

I mean... internationally masterpieces, not only in German. Then who knows people are willing to buy VS even through its a commercial software.

AND! Who knows? If devs decided to divide free version and pro version, it will be... um... good?

Not about license, about capability. For example, VS's free version doesn't support Spine but pro version does. Or free version doesn't support Shader but pro version does. Yeah, it's better free doesn't support script but pro does.

Free version lets people export and 'release' non-commercial game as any platforms. But only pro version lets people release commercial games.

If it succeeds, then we will see a lot of free games made by VS. Then VS can be POPULAR. We need more people, more information, more engagement, more devs... nah, more community managers!

Anyway if devs make a decision for free and pro version then it would be good previous VS users can use pro version for free or 30~40% discount.

This is trend. Think about why Unity and Unreal and Game Maker ended up providing free version.

BRAND AWARENESS IS MOST PRIORITY.

hah! it always comes back round to the licenses doesn't it? VS has been up to this point (yes, still) a hobby project by a small team of developers that they have worked on in their spare time.

Personally I don't really think the licenses are all that bad in comparison to licenses / prices of various other software (in general > not just game dev software). As for the €1500 license price, it's highly unlikely any of you will ever need to purchase one of those licenses. They were created specifically for commercial companies (Daedalic Entertainment, in particular).

As for the money? I don't get paid. I have no idea if the devs get paid & to be honest there's probably a lot less customers using Visionaire Studio than you think & 99% of them probably purchased the indie single or multi-user licenses. The actual amount of people buying Visionaire Studio is far & between each sale.

If I was actually paid a salary or someone else received a salary to sit at a desk & provide up to date documentation, tutorials & templates then I'm sure I or they would be willing to do so. Unfortunately that's not the case & I'm getting bored of replying to threads like this.

“

Problems can be easily solved.

More people buy VS, more VS gets updated.

But! In order to succeed that, VS needs more masterpieces.

I mean... internationally masterpieces, not only in German. Then who knows people are willing to buy VS even through its a commercial software.

AND! Who knows? If devs decided to divide free version and pro version, it will be... um... good?

Not about license, about capability. For example, VS's free version doesn't support Spine but pro version does. Or free version doesn't support Shader but pro version does. Yeah, it's better free doesn't support script but pro does.

Free version lets people import and 'release' non-commercial game as any platforms. But only pro version lets people release commercial games.

If it succeeds, then we will see a lot of free games made by VS. Then VS can be POPULAR. We need more people, more information, more engagement, more devs... nah, more community managers!

Anyway if devs make a decision for free and pro version then it would be good previous VS users can use pro version for free or 30~40% discount.

This is trend. Think about why Unity and Unreal and Game Maker ended up providing free version.

„

There is already a somehow free-version limited to 10 rooms. I don't think that Visionaire lacks "masterpieces". Having "Daedalic" as reference is already the biggest masterpiece you can get. And there are English-Editions of those games out there too.
There are several other reasons why VS lacks more free games I think:

- missing documentation (alot of people don't know the start in VS, or they get stuck so they gave up)
- deadlinks: About half of the template-games in the shop consists of deadlinks. For example the awesome
Half-Cut template is offline and other helpful stuff too.

the second problem is that most ppl simply don't know about Visionaire cuz:

- no pr: The homepage news was updated 6months ago. No advertising on the important sites
- no social media: Other tools like AGS are linked to adventuretreff-community, irc, twitter, fb. etc..
- no showcase area: Except making a posting here in the forum, there is no showcase section on the website
where you can submit screenshots and description of your game.
So if you wanna find free games made with VS you have to search all postings in the forum.

I believe we do have a facebook page (mostly in German though). We also have a twitter account (I post little messages / links to upcoming kickstarter campaigns for VS developed games). I don't actually use twitter or facebook myself > can't stand them.

Yes we could do with a showcase section, but that would be down to Thomas & his web dev company to sort out. This whole website is running off of a CMS they are developing. The wiki however was setup by myself & David (BigStans) using mediawiki cms & bootstrap.

* edit: people could use the groups section to showcase I suppose or a showcase thing could probably be built around that system.

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I believe we do have a facebook page (mostly in German though).

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International.

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The wiki however was setup by myself & David (BigStans) using mediawiki cms & bootstrap.

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We need to change the forum's interface. I've seen adventurefans forum and this forum run at the same time. Is that necessary? Outdated and confused.

Only Deponia. We need more. Lee suggested other games but... we need something more bigger than Deponia. We shouldn't rely on Deponia.

That trial version is kinda buggy anyway. You can see many reports in this forum.

All your problem can be covered just by popularity.

PR? Devs don't need to do pr if so many people use the software.

Social media? People always want to show something, if they are able to handle VS suitably. Trial's ten rooms are old-fashioned style.

Showcase? It's the point I agree. We need specific forum to promote our games. Well... this forum is not only place to show something. IndieDB, Steam... etc. But I agree with your opinion.