Tutorial spin off

[iamacup]

Right guys, everyone hates reading when you can play, and no one is going to read some 20 page tutorial on spring. I mean, it took me like 20 matches to bother to read the wiki page about how to use the group build thingi (shit alt stuff, duno what it is called) but this is why spring does not retain players. People join the lobby. Go oh this is cool. Ill play a game. Join a game and get completely fucked over because they have no idea about the advanced features.

I will do as much as I can to make it possible to have some sort of tutorial levels in the game launchable via the lobby. This includes engine coding, lobby changes, AI coding etc. However I would like to know how to do this. (no I don├óÔé¼Ôäót need people to teach me c++ or Delphi/Python/lua whatever before the smartarse fools join in, I am doing a degree in computer science├óÔé¼┬ª) what I mean by this is, Currently what needs doing to make this work. Who would like to design the tutorials (what happens when, planning mainly, would ask neddie but he is very busy at the moment) and what people think about this idea in general

I do not want replies that are counter productive. The reason I am doing this is to get more players so I don├óÔé¼Ôäót have to read countless posts by annoying fags about their whiney blog posts. This proves my motivation is good.

I have not posted this in development because I want general user ideas on the tutorial levels at the moment mainly. (this will dictate what needs doing code wise i guess)


EDIT: i would also like to note, i want someone to voice over all written text within the tutorial levels.

EDIT 2: multi language support?

[iamacup]

ps, i would really like it if mods removed counter productive posts from this thread for a change instead of either locking the thread, or letting it get out of hand. (this should be a mod rule really but hey.)

thanks.

[hunterw]

I would only suggest please include an easy way for people to do skirmish battles (pick map & ai difficulty level) out of the box.

Doesn't have to be a current mod or AI. Just has to be something.

[pharoph]

is this an ingame tutorial? if it is, i wouldn't help on the programming but ill help you to design it and what it should do. i have many experiences on helping people to play spring. anybody can design a tutorial but it takes a skilled person to do it right.

[LordMatt]

cuppy is the man!

[Gota]

I can help write what would happen.
In general what would be required are pop up menues that can point on stuff(a way to back track to previous massages as well),all sorts of triggers,voice triggers and just the ability to play voices at specified times.

First of all it should all start from showing the player the basics,like wtf is this game(the tutorial,i imagine will be about ota based gameplay)what is the comander,whats the point of the game,all in a few lines.
Than a brief explanation about the maps and resource sytem(of course it would all be describd in the most generic way possible so it can fit as many mods as possible).
Next thing would be the gui,basic commands and camera movement.
next is units managment and structure building.
Next would be more complex key shortcuts.
All these stages would have to be as interactive and entertaning as possible and include as much action as possible since the advanced shortcut keys are hard to rememebr and noobs would need a lot of practice which means battling all kinds of enemies etc.

Next would come the more general stuff about game tactics and strategy.
If the tutorial manages to reach this stage succesfully its already a job well done.
Suppose it will.
the best thing to do would be to use carefully selected replays or maybe just make it a long chain of small replay fragments for different tactics and than a few fully commentated competetive games.

I can help write how and what happens exactly but of course first some planning is in order,like what mods should be though of while making this tutorial,what widgets(maybe introduce players to a few fundamental and important widgets like the formation widget,defence range etc..)
What gui tools would betalked about.

[pharoph]

instead of doing it in replays, how about doing it in a mod.
as the tutorial starts a voice would come on or somne text would apear in the text box. this would continue to happen until the voice or text commands the player to do something, like scroll left. when the player scrolls left the voice would say "now scroll right" and on and on. this is what a proper "learn to play the game" should sound like.

[KDR_11k]

Gah, these standard control tutorials are fail, at least assume the player has played some RTS before.

[Crayfish]

No, I think it's necessary. I didn't learn some fairly basic commands that are specific to Spring until someone told me. Didn't know about the whole getting units to form a line or formation thing until I was silver star.

Scrolling left and right is a little simplistic, but it could quickly be built up into genuinely useful information. As an optional tutorial, something at this level would be great.

[Forboding Angel]

Please don't make it *A dependent. Otherwise it's useless to the rest of us. Or maybe you could just make the framework for us to do our own tutorials.

[Gota]

Its possible to do it in a very generic manner but than you just need to do a list of mods who will be thought of in the proccess of making the tutorial.
THis can all combine in to a big tutorial tree id me make it moduler enough.

[Imperium]

Gah, these standard control tutorials are fail, at least assume the player has played some RTS before.

Too True, I hate getting a new game and the first campaign mission is moving a unit around, le boooore. It's got to be said I don't think many people will be coming here to play their first RTS.

[iamacup]

ok, in reply to the 'nub tutorial isue'

we can easily have a question, or some menu that states obviously (like in bioshock with the dificulty)

Never played an RTS (everything)
Played a few RTS casually (Group Movement, advanced movement)
Hardcore RTS Fan (Advanced features tutorial only)

(or something to that nature, each level leads into the next)

thus skipping out the dreadful crap.

[Imperium]

Good plan. Tutorials have to be the most irritatingly necessary thing ever. =/

[Lolsquad_Steven]

What a bunch of fucking shit, let the fuckers sink or swim.

[SwiftSpear]

The big things is displaying images/text and feeding voice when triggered by an on map trigger. After that everything would be fairly easy to script with lua. The big ones I'd cover, control groups, formations, building orientation, group/line building, resource and unit sharing, selfD and Dgun (I'm aware these are mod specific, but they are an undocumented hotkey in the mods that use them), and the basic interface controls, like shift selecting, alt selecting, and queing.

Spring's queing system is more advanced then virtually any other RTS short of supcom, you really can't call it a nub tutorial technique. If you've never played a CT RTS you wouldn't know about it.

[Crayfish]

Gah, these standard control tutorials are fail, at least assume the player has played some RTS before.

Too True, I hate getting a new game and the first campaign mission is moving a unit around, le boooore. It's got to be said I don't think many people will be coming here to play their first RTS.

Yeah, that sucks. This would only be an optional thing though, got to be worth having the option there.

[AF]

to be honest a game shouldnt require a tutorial to work properly.

Examples include directions and hints that only display the first time you play that slowly unfold over time so as not to overwhelm the player.

[pharoph]

a new player wants to learn quickly not read a word tutorial thats 40 pages long. noobs dont want to ask a pro for help because there problebly fell shity about it and want to leave because everbodys calling him a nub.

but if the player had a simple tutorial at witch he could learn the commands to the game ingame that would only take 20 or more minutes he/she would get a grip to the game and not die 10 times before the player acutaly learned enough to play the game and we all know who annoying it is to have a noob player doing a complete stupid thing as our ally.

Please don't make it *A dependent. Otherwise it's useless to the rest of us. Or maybe you could just make the framework for us to do our own tutorials.

tutorials are made for people who dont know who to play part(s) of the game.

i do agree with the idea of stepping up the challenge on the tutorial levels and give a player whos already played a rts game. this can skip the basics and tells the players whats so unique about the game.

[imbaczek]

Examples include directions and hints that only display the first time you play that slowly unfold over time so as not to overwhelm the player.

CA has this and TBH it's pissing me off to no end. I'd rather have a tutorial than windows appearing out of nowhere, not to mention that I don't have the time to read them when playing online.