This forum is excellent and is really helping me learn the tools. The emails linking us to questions that we may be able to answer is a nice touch, makes you feel like you can maybe help, as well as learning from others.
One thing though, I’ve got an idea that may improve it- sometimes, for those of us who are new to it, as we wrap our heads around complicated stuff, we may ask a question thats based on a misconception of something quite fundamental. Bad problem decomposition, combined with a misunderstanding of how it works. I’ve done it a few times. Once I’ve realized that I asked the question because I’m approaching the problem in completely the wrong way, it would be nice to be able to delete the question. It’s just chaff thats in the system. Potentially that could be more of a problem than duplication, in the long run. If other people who’re in the process of learning it land on those questions, it may lead them to think they’re on the right track, if you see what I mean?
I believe the only problem with a post like this is that the answer might not be what you’d expect. It’s well within the framework of learning to approach a problem from a bad angle only to find out you should start over in a different way and while these attempted solutions may be fruitless the answer is still as valuable to others as an answer to a “more correct” problem would be. After all this is all part of your process so chances are it’ll be part of someone elses as well.
As part of the support staff for the engine we monitor AnswerHub and the forums primarily for user assistance. You may or may not have noticed that we do edit the questions to better reflect the point of the topic that is being covered if we feel the user has not conveyed it in a easy enough to understand way.
Dieselhead is right that this is a learning process for many users and even though you may feel the post doesn’t reflect he original intent of the question there may be helpful information. I can tell you from experience that a lot of the questions with shadow errors are simply lightmap resolution issues. All of those questions are not just simple answers to up the lightmap resolution. There are often time other information or tips from users that may be more beneficial than the answer I or other support staff can provide. We try to give the best solutions for what the user may need. The honest truth is that we are not working in the engine making strange new world on a daily basis. So it’s certainly more likely for someone to have a piece of advice that I wouldn’t have thought to ask.
I love having fun in this engine when I can and it’s fun to playaround but I’ll tell you I’m not a level designer by any stretch of the imagination and I’ve seen people come up with some cool things! Things I wish I could figure out how to do! We leave these things up for other users to benefit from these tips and tricks that you find by discovering by browsing.
I hope this helps explain a little of our reasoning behind it. If your more curious let me know and I’ll help clarify where I can.
I think you guys are further in to the engine and the culture of it than I am. I hope to be where you are, as fast as possible.
I’m massively enjoying the process of learning, but I sometimes feel like I’m leaving a trail of destruction behind me. I ask questions, and when I’m on the right track and the question is answered, I leave something useful. But sometimes I’m just asking the wrong question. Answering it would be computer science 101. it seems like, when I’ve arrived at the answer, what i’ve put up there is literally just a by-product of my own learning process and not very useful to anyone else. Beyond (or more accurately behind) the scope of the forum.
I feel exactly the same. Over the years I’ve learnt to refine the questions I ask. At first I thought explaining the background of my issues before explaining the issue was helpful to the reader but at the end of the day, noone wants to read through screeds of text to get to the point. I currently have 3 ongoing questions which have all been explained in different ways but are essentially the same questions with progressively better explanations. Would be great to remove the first 2 I posted, so everyone else following along gets straight to the heart of the issue at hand.