You need to make better documentation and video tutorials for your products.

Honestly, I've spent last 15 days trying to learn BOLT and it's extremely hard to do with current documentation. I follow tutorial examples but they don't give you a big picture at all. In 2019 there are still no video tutorials which could clearly explain how to use this product.

Guys, I'm developing software for 10 years and I have a little bit of networking experience. I tried to use PUN, I downloaded and played with Photon Server, I tried Forge Networking, I tried UNET. Even on my job I with a guy who can write his own game servers. And after all this I try hard to learn BOLT and I just can't find information that I need. Maybe it's burried somewhere in documentation but it's hard as hell to understand anything. Yea after wasting hours and hours I can complete your BOLT tutorials. But I'm still completely stuck. I need to create a networking game and write my own server for this. I need to implement matchmaking correctly using Photon Cloud. I need so many things and all I have is a stupid tutorial showing how to move 2 cubes.

Please hire some expert and let him made a 20 hours long video series which will show EVERYTHING from 0 to 100%. People need to see the whole process, the big picture. Otherwise how can you expect your product to be useful for non-experts?

I know I'm writing to people who only work in Exit Games and can't change much. But guys srsly!!! Your documentation sucks. Please do smth about it.

Thank you!

PS. Is it possible to get some paid help on using Photon BOLT? I seriously can't afford wasting months on learning BOLT. It would be great if I could just ask some BOLT expert tons of questions. And these forums are totally not efficient because it sometimes takes 1 week to get an answer.

Please help :)

Comments

  • Escaac
    Escaac
    edited January 2019
    The tutorials are non-existant. Find a youtube video. Everything in Pun. Not a single Bolt video. And Google search doesn't even know what Photon "Bolt" is because there already is a "Bolt" scripting asset that shadows anything on google.

    At least provide real documentation. Javadoc like implementation would go a long way. I can't find anything other than the single page few paragraphs on lag compensation. No implementation use case to demonstrations, and I haven't found any explanations anywhere. Do this, copy paste that and it works.

    Documentation is abysmal at best. The tutorials leave more than a lot to be desired. 2019 video > text my opinion.
  • A lot had to be updated in Bolt, so all the work went into that recently.

    I guess the Photon Bolt doc page is known, as is the Bolt API reference?

    There is now a Photon Bolt Samples Package in the store. As it's not yet complete, the price is reduced.

    Personally, I prefer text over video, as I can search for anything in text. But that's not saying we wouldn't do videos too. However, those are a lot of work and harder to maintain. So, I guess "text first".
  • We are currently updating our samples, that you can find at our public repository.

    Also, other then the documentation page, you can find more information here (it will be incorporated to the main page soon), and if you need some help, you can ask on our Discord server here https://discord.gg/0ya6ZpOvnShSCtbb .
  • OK, guys!

    Thanks for the links, but I've already seen all of it. Also I've purchased the SamplePack and well... its still not enough. The examples are not commented and also they are way too simple. I understand that it shouldn't be done like this in a production environment, and therefore I don't know which part of those examples I can trust.

    That said, I understand that you guys have invested a lot of work into existing text documentation. It helps a little :) Its easy for me to critisize while not offering any solutions.Therefore, for anyone looking to learn BOLT here is what helped me. Just join BOLT Discord server and try to ask people there. I found a guy who spent 4 hours explaining everything to me. It really helped.

    Also, since you guys don't currently have the resources to create video tutorials maybe you would like someone from the community to make these video tutorials for you. You know this Brakeys guy creates such great tutorials on Unity that they now pay him for more videos.
  • OK, guys!

    Thanks for the links, but I've already seen all of it. Also I've purchased the SamplePack and well... its still not enough. The examples are not commented and also they are way too simple. I understand that it shouldn't be done like this in a production environment, and therefore I don't know which part of those examples I can trust.

    That said, I understand that you guys have invested a lot of work into existing text documentation. It helps a little :) Its easy for me to critisize while not offering any solutions.Therefore, for anyone looking to learn BOLT here is what helped me. Just join BOLT Discord server and try to ask people there. I found a guy who spent 4 hours explaining everything to me. It really helped.

    Also, since you guys don't currently have the resources to create video tutorials maybe you would like someone from the community to make these video tutorials for you. You know this Brakeys guy creates such great tutorials on Unity that they now pay him for more videos.

    dont suppose you got the conversation on how bolt works to share?

    Trying to get AI to work but no concreate answer anywhere about NPC's. wasted a good 6 huors chasing my tail with it..

    thanks
    Daniel