Now that Guy Perfect’s Virtual Boy documentation, the VB Sacred Tech Scroll, is out, our Dev Wiki has lost a lot of its importance. In fact, it seems incomplete and outdated in comparison with the new docs.

Originally it was started to maintain an up-to-date community-driven version of David Tucker’s documentation, but it doesn’t make much sense to me to have two documentations, so I am considering to shift the focus of the Dev Wiki towards something more application-oriented, like a collection of tutorials.

My personal favorite would be to have both the documentation as well as tutorials in the Wiki, so the documentation would still be user-contributable in the future, but whether or not the Tech Scroll becomes a part of the Wiki is of cause GP’s decision, which I fully respect.

So, what do you guys think? What should the Dev Wiki become?

Yes, I think the Wiki should become a collection of tutorials. I’ve been following the evolution of GP’s document since the beginning and he made it pretty clear that it is only a description of the VB’s hardware and not a programming guide.

My take on it is that the content on the dev wiki is… not helpful. I look at pages like Instruction Summary and come away from it knowing no more than I do going in. It’s mostly a copy/paste of Tucker’s old document, and as such is quite incomplete, has several factual errors, and most of the pages are stubs.

At the end of the day, it’s easier to look through Tucker’s document and not find what you need than it is to follow links through the wiki and not find what you need. (-:

That’s why I set out to make the Sacred Tech Scroll. Like Martin Korth did with his NO$ projects, it’s a single document filled to the gills with all the necessary details. I’m sure to make edits to it as I’m writing an emulator, but there’s enough in there to make working programs using every aspect of the Virtual Boy… ’cause I have. (-:

That said, I’m working with dasi now to get some programming tutorials written up, and we’re thinking the dev wiki would be a good place for those. The way I see it, if it’s not a good place for hardware details, it could at least be a good place to learn Virtual Boy development.

HorvatM wrote:
Yes, I think the Wiki should become a collection of tutorials.

I agree. I wanted to write some “First-Steps” Tutorials for a long time but I never found the time. I think VirtualBoy development is surprisingly easy as soon as you figured out the basic. If you guys start cleaning up the Wiki I would be happy to write some coding tutorials.

Now that Guy’s document is available I can’t see any reason to keep the wiki where it simply duplicates DT’s out-of-date document, the V810 manual, or the development manual. Any original wiki content can be archived. I’m on board with repurposing the wiki as a comprehensive Virtual Boy programming tutorial.

I wonder if we need the dev wiki at all any more… Tutorials could just as well be made available as html or PDF documents and maintained by their authors.