state of caos docs

I've been a bit wary talking about how I feel about the documentation provided and created for CAOS, since I'm certain some things have changed since I stopped actively pursuing it. But as far as I can tell, without time for a super in-depth crawl of the CC, it hasn't?

Most CAOS tutorials I can find are aborted series that go into a few basic types of objects at most, explain how to script them in one specific way (explaining, yes, but much more how than why), and then immediately dive into PRAY and getting the agent packaged. Not that this is a bad thing, necessarily. But there's a reason we have a problem with, say, food that's missing detritus, and plants that don't CA properly. It's a railroad.

Most I can find are also very old. CAOS seemed more exploratory (and inconsistent) more long before DS came out, when there was little to take apart other than the stock code and documentation. This change also isn't a bad thing, but the two factors together make me worry a little.

I've seen very little 'how to' tutorials address how to get comfortable screwing around in the engine -- the console is practically an afterthought.

Of course, that's practically saying 'learn how to read the docs', or worse, 'learn to read the source', which puts everyone behind square one -- no one knows how to do anything and most everyone are too afraid to try. I'm deeply thankful that CAOS is plaintext. The way documentation is now isn't wrong, or bad. I just see holes.

I see very important, basic commands missing wiki articles entirely, also. I think that might be a good metric of who's writing what.

In an interesting parallel, it's easier to find older art books that go into specific (what would likely now be called 'advanced') techniques or subject in detail-- today the market is saturated with 101s.

Maybe I'll write the tutorials I wish I had had growing up.