Rewrite of the Get Started section

[ferafiks]

This is quite a large PR, so I'm going to go over everything one by one.

Why?

The get started section is probably one of the most messy sections in the documentation. There is a lot of redundancy, unnecessary detail, lack of important information and lack of structure. This PR fixes that.

Changes

There is quite a lot of them.

1. New section - Install and update

The reason why I wanted to split off the get-started into two sections, was mainly because of the update-stride page. I think, a guide on how to update the engine shouldn't be included in the section for instructing the basics. This page only becomes useful after someone has already started using Stride and by that point, they shouldn't need to consult the "get started" section.

In that regard, having a dedicated section for installing and updating makes more sense in my opinion. For reference, that's how Unity does it.

Why not remove the page?
I think that there shouldn't be a need for a page like that, but for now, Stride has it's quirks and having them documented somewhere is a good idea.

2. Moving the requirements page

I think there are too many things without a section sitting at the top of the sidebar. This section seemed like the best place for this page.

I also moved the page's location and updated it in the major release workflow page, but I can move it back if that causes any issues.

3. Trimming the installation page

The install-stride page was incredibly long and pretty much just boiled down to "press things on the screen until success". Other engines either don't have a page for that (Godot), or keep it very brief (Unity). Having such a detailed guide makes it harder to read through and harder to maintain in case the installation process changes in the future.

4. Removal of Stride Launcher page

The Stride Launcher is an incredibly straight-forward piece of software. The documentation either explained already easy to understand things or re-explained them in a worse way. The launcher is made to be intuitive to use, so I see no point in providing more information on it.

Also, it wasn't under any section for some reason which made it quite odd.

5. Removal of Visual Studio extension page

The page didn't contain much useful information. It made a lot more sense to include it in the install stride page as a section.

6. Removal of Launch Stride page

This page was a rehash of previous pages and the "launch stride" part was located at the very bottom and said to press the giant red button "Start" to start the engine. I don't think having this page is that necessary.

7. Removal of Game Studio, Assets and Scenes

The main reason is that I wanted to write different, more concise versions of these pages/sections that focused more on getting people started, than going in-depth. Also, having multiple items on the sidebar linking to the same page made it a bit weird to navigate and easier to get lost in what section you are reading.

8. Removal of "Remove Borders" section from launch a game page

Why is that there?

I also created a PR that got merged, that included a dedicated page for these sort of things.

New things

Minor:

1. Added more information in the install-stride page
2. Added a section dedicated to the installation location of Stride to the install stride page
3. Added a section dedicated to the visual studio extension to the install page

Before I start going through the major things, I want to explain what the point of the get started section is for me. Get started is supposed to be a basic guide on how to start working with the engine. It is not meant to explain everything the engine has to offer, but only what is needed. After the guide, the user is expected to either: try to create something by themselves in the engine and learn things as they go OR start reading other pages of the documentation.

In addition: I don't think the section is meant to teach a complete beginner that had no previous experience with game development on how to make games. I don't think any documentation is capable of that. It's more targeted at people who only had experience with basic frameworks, only did non-game coding or worked on games in a different engine that we don't have a dedicated guide for (which means everything except Unity).

1. Key Concepts

This page is meant to serve as a introduction to a few key terms and concepts used in Stride.

2. Game Studio

This page is meant to teach on how to use the Game Studio. It's a more shrunk down version of the game studio section, focused on explaining just the basics. This is why it skips over some of the panels.

3. Assets

This page is meant to teach about how to create assets and how they work. I skipped everything related to loading assets or using them in code, as when getting started, they will at most be used when editing a scene in Game Studio.

4. Next steps

This page is meant to direct a user to what they should do next after finishing the section.

TODO:

• - Add images to pages
• - Correct details
• - Add redirecting to moved pages if that's something that can be done

[ferafiks]

Following on the discord conversation:

• Moved: requirements/index -> install-and-update/requirements or it could alternatively be moved back to where it was seeing that it's a bit of a special page
• Deleted: stride-launcher/index -> the page was deleted so either to nowhere or to install-and-update/install-stride
• Moved: get-started/install-stride -> install-and-update/install-stride
• Moved: get-started/visual-studio-extension -> install-and-update/install-stride#visual-studio-integration or without the section link or just to nothing
• Moved: get-started/update-stride -> install-and-update/update-stride
• Deleted: get-started/launch-stride -> the page was deleted so either to nothing or to get-started/create-a-project
• No change: get-started/create-a-project -> get-started/create-a-project
• No change: get-started/launch-a-game -> get-started/launch-a-game
• New: get-started/assets
• New: get-started/game-studio
• New: get-started/key-concepts
• New: get-started/next-steps

08/03/2026 Update by Vaclav: Added Moved, Deleted, New, No Change labels.

[ferafiks]

I'm opening this PR, as except for the redirects, it's ready for review

[VaclavElias]

I am sorry for the delays, this is still on my radar.

[VaclavElias]

Thanks for the updates. I didn't even check if the latest PR caused any merge conflicts. Anyway, I will be reviewing/working on this over this weekend.

[VaclavElias]

I am adding some notes I need to discuss internally, please, don't make these updates yet:

This is currently deployed here: https://www.vaclavelias.com/stride-docs/4.3/en/manual/install-and-update/index.html

ToDo: Vaclav, test https://dotnet.github.io/docfx/docs/config.html#url-redirects

1. Keep: requirements/index at original location but structure the new way, that means it will be under Install and Update in toc.yml
2. Keep: stride-launcher/index but unlink from everywhere, use redirect or read below another option..
3. Keep: get-started/install-stride but set redirect to install-and-update/install-stride
4. Keep: get-started/visual-studio-extension but redirect to install-and-update/install-stride#visual-studio-integration
5. Keep: get-started/update-stride but redirect to install-and-update/update-stride
6. Keep: get-started/launch-stride but unlink from everywhere, optionally redirect

My suggestions:

1. install-and-update/index.html link Stride Launcher (text) to original stride-launcher page, including consolidate stride-launcher/index, get-started/launch-stride
2. install-and-update/requirements.html - Add below .NET SDK - “Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable [see (3)]” Update (3) to: “This will be downloaded and installed by Stride installed”
3. install-and-update/install-stride.html Step 1 mention 55MB size (always good to know how big files we are downloading, some users still don't have good Internet)
4. install-and-update/install-stride.html#visual-studio-integration: Mention: The Stride Visual Studio extension lets you edit shaders directly from Visual Studio. ..to explain the purpose of the extension
5. install-and-update/install-stride.html we need to mention/keep privacy Step
6. install-and-update/install-stride.html we need to include Warning and Step 12 section because people are being confused and this was added recently
7. get-started/key-concepts.html link Scripts to its manual pages (once the pages are available), the same for Script types section. Interlinking docs pages is important for SEO and user friendly navigation
8. get-started/game-studio.html Add section (at the end) to refer a user to manual/game-studio/index.html for more about Game Studio, even though it is mentioned in the Next Steps
9. get-started/assets.html Add section to refer a user to manual/game-studio/assets.html to learn more about Assets

[Eideren]

I agree with the vast majority of those changes, thanks for the work ! Not entirely convinced with the changes related to the extension though; we still need a dedicated page to document it I feel given that it is not part of the gamestudio itself, and does require additional documentation (which doesn't exist yet, granted) around how one is supposed to use it, and existing alternatives like the VS code version being developed by Tebjan.

[VaclavElias]

I agree with the vast majority of those changes

Did you mean my suggestions or generally ferafiks updates?

Regarding the extension, we could keep the wording as it is here: https://www.vaclavelias.com/stride-docs/4.3/en/manual/install-and-update/install-stride.html#visual-studio-integration

and get the original extension page back as 4th item in the Install and Update, so it could get more attention/content in the future (eventually).

[ferafiks]

@VaclavElias @Eideren I'd like this PR to contain everything that needs to be improved in the getting started section, so if the extension page is needed, I could write one

[Eideren]

@VaclavElias both, I like Ferafiks' changes and think your suggestions are sensible

@ferafiks as you want as long as we still have a dedicated page for the extension somewhere in the manual

[ferafiks]

I have re-added the visual studio extension page under a different display name, so one less page to redirect.

@VaclavElias about your suggestions:

• About 1: I don't think I fully understand what you are trying to say, if you are suggesting to re-add the stride launcher then I'm against that. The launcher page is completely unnecessary especially that compared to other engines, it is far more simpler to understand and other engines don't include pages about their launchers. The original page just said what was on the screen, except that it switched certain words around which made it more confusing than useful.
• About 2: I don't entirely understand what you are saying, but I see no issue with adding more info to the requirements page.
• About 3: Typically I would advice against having specific numbers that can fluctuate from release to release, but I don't think the launcher is changing it's size any time soon. Still it would be a good idea to keep track that this information is included there in case there is a major change to the launcher.
• About 4: I already reworded that text.

Aside from those, I agree with most of your suggestions. I can add those if there is no need to discuss them any further

[VaclavElias]

• About 1: Yes, I was suggesting to merge those two pages into one and keep it. @Eideren, please could you confirm if we should keep them (merged) or as ferafiks suggested, we should remove them. @Kryptos-FR , pinging also you because you will be re-doing Launcher in Avalonia. We are talking about these two pages Stride Launcher and Launch Stride.
• About 2: Please ignore. I was suggesting more content but it is outside of this PR and I can make some PR later on
• About 3: The size is a new information, added recently based on the feedback, and yes, it doesn't change frequently, I usually keep an eye on these. We have some instructions here for major releases I should add there also keeping an eye on the size.
• About 4: Thank you.

Let's wait for confirmation on these above 1-4 which might lead to some feedback also on other suggestions.

[VaclavElias]

Latest updates deployed here https://www.vaclavelias.com/stride-docs/4.3/en/manual/install-and-update/index.html

[Eideren]

We can merge the two pages, I think the UX around managing versions isn't perfect, so I would rather we keep at least one of them up

[ferafiks]

@Eideren I think this could just be a separate "changing versions of stride" or "managing versions" page. It would make it easier to search. Additionally now I also think it would be a good idea to include some text in the updating stride page about how that looks like in the launcher

[Eideren]

Sounds good