Take a deep dive into our new docs, just in time for v4 of the SDK!

We are very excited to share with you our expanded and redesigned documentation! We’d like to give you a quick tour of these new docs, and also want to highlight some of the latest improvements included in the latest version 4.0.0 of the SDK.

Welcome to Decentraland’s Latest Documentation
We understand that the SDK includes a lot of moving parts, so we hope that this improved documentation will help you make the most of the Decentraland platform.

This latest update to our docs will be the first of many. Our team will continually improve our existing pages while making sure that new docs are written for every feature we add to the SDK.

Our new documentation is also completely open source, so if you would ever like to provide some feedback, open an issue, or make your own pull request, visit the GitHub repo to get started!

In this latest release, you’ll find information covering the following topics:

What is Decentraland?
Here you can find a relatively non-technical introduction to Decentraland, with explanations of the project’s philosophical foundation, in addition to our FAQ, and a glossary of common terms you’ll find throughout our pages and tools. This is a great place to get started if you are completely new to Decentraland.
Start reading here.

Building Scenes
This is the heart of our SDK documentation. Here you will find instructions on how to install the SDK, a comprehensive explanation of what scenes are and how they work, and finally a series of tutorials explaining how to create and deploy your very first scene. If you are a developer looking to start building experiences for your LAND, this is the best place to start.

Marketplace
We’ve designed the Marketplace to be as simple and intuitive as possible, but just in case you run into any issues, we’ve included our original video tutorial and step-by-step guide explaining the various feature of the Marketplace.
Start reading here.

Our LAND Web API is an exciting new addition that allows you to pull all sorts of information from the Marketplace.
You can find a complete reference for the LAND API here.

SDK Reference
When you’re ready to dive into the nuts and bolts of the SDK, check out our SDK Reference. We’ve put together a broad introduction explaining what the SDK is and how it works, along with a discussion of scene content, scene limitations, entities, and how to start scripting your first interactive scenes.

SDK Release Notes
We are continually deploying new updates to the SDK, and want to make sure that you have all of the information that you need in order to make the most of these new features. Sometimes these updates will require you to make some changes to your projects.

To help you stay on top of this, we’ve added a new section containing our SDK release notes.

Version 4.0.0 of the SDK
This new documentation has all been released just in time for version 4.0.0 of our SDK. These first few releases of the SDK are laying the groundwork for a more robust platform, so we really appreciate all of the feedback that the developer community has been providing! We’re super excited about these latest additions, and want to share a few of them with you here.

Migration to Babylon.js
First and foremost, our engine now uses the Babylon.js JavaScript framework instead of Three.js! This will result in a much improved developer experience, along with faster and more efficient rendering.

Updates to the Preview Mode
We’ve updated the Preview Mode to include additional information to help you test and debug your scene, like the local IP address, and the metaverse-api version you are running. You can now also prevent the CLI from opening a new browser window by appending the --no-browser flag. Additionally, the Preview and Linker servers will now run on whichever port is currently available, but you can always reconfigure this port using the --port flag.

Finally, we’ve added hot reloading to the Preview Mode for any changes you make to your project!

Improved debugging
When deploying your content, you will be shown a list of all tracked files, and will be able to confirm/deny deployment. You always have the option of skipping this confirmation with the --skip flag.

We’ve removed support for default command aliases. So, for example, dcl start is no longer a valid command. However, you can still set your own aliases using your command prompt or terminal.

We’ve added a new query command, allowing you to check your version of the SDK using dcl -v or --version.

Finally, we’ve added some more detailed error messages to help you solve common (and uncommon) problems.

Expanded support for Windows and Node
We’ve been working on improving our Windows 10 support, and have also added support for Node 10!

For a more in-depth look at changes in version 4.0.0 of the SDK, please check out our release notes!

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The original published article can be found here on our medium blog