Finally started watching a (long!) video about the UE Gameplay Ability System. I'd tried to get a sense for it from the written docs, but they just don't go into enough detail on how & why you might use it in practice. More like 1 paragraph on each bit & then "go read the Lyra source". Needing to watch a 3h video has been a blocker on me bothering to dig more before now.

I don't think it's something I'll use on this game, but I can definitely see the utility. Just a lot of moving parts!

Tech industry, please hire more writers. I can happily read docs for 3h and get much more out of them than watching a video for 3h. And while I'm watching the video, I'm making copious notes so that I don't have to watch the video again later to refresh my memory. If it was written down in the first place with good indexing I wouldn't have to do that. Video is such a crap way to document things.

I know that the excuse for this is “young people like video”, but I call BS on that. I think the real reason is that with video you can repurpose your existing dev talent and not have to hire tech writers. Just put the most cogent of your devs in front of the camera for an afternoon, job done right? Shared skill set, no need for writing specialism or ongoing editing / maintenance, just stick the video online and point to that for the next 3 years. Absolutely says cost cutting to me