Tutorial stuff

[09:52] KingRaptor: on your tutorial feedback: okay, I take it KISS is the order of the day
[09:52] KingRaptor: only teach the one best way to do any given task, anything else goes into separate documentation
[09:52] KingRaptor: and break up more complex tasks like placing buildings
[09:52] KingRaptor: that about it?
[09:53] GoogleFrog: my approach is to make the player do things so they learn what the things are and remember by doing
[09:54] GoogleFrog: it would be somewhat ok to just give the player a dry list of inputs to do
[09:54] GoogleFrog: that would be boring though
[09:54] GoogleFrog: and not that effective
[09:54] GoogleFrog: so I'd put a sentence before the bare list of inputs and then some explaination after
[09:55] GoogleFrog: it's overwhelming when you tell them several ways to do a thing and let them pick the way they want to do it
[09:55] KingRaptor: "Right click on the target to attack it." "Other ways of doing this: <list>"
[09:56] KingRaptor: or probably just omit the second paragraph there
[09:56] KingRaptor: they'll probably discover those other ways in time on their own
[09:56] Test1234: there are a lot of empty "good word" messages
[09:56] Test1234: these messages are good
[09:56] Test1234: they allow users some rest time
[09:56] Test1234: but you could put the extra information here
[09:56] Test1234: after they do the thing and know what it is
[09:57] Test1234: I recently played the offworld trading company tutorial, it was decent
[09:57] Test1234: screen 1 is similar to what they had but they used less text and more dotpoints
[09:57] Test1234: and there was a picture of the scrollwheel
[09:58] Test1234: it also didn't advance you until you had done something with the cmaera
[09:59] Test1234: hmm I misremembered
[09:59] KingRaptor: I do use the downtime messages for some extra info
[09:59] KingRaptor: you complained about the Shift, Ctrl, Alt and Space + Click one though
[09:59] KingRaptor: (suggestions on that one?)
[10:02] Test1234: http://i.imgur.com/1VSzmba.jpg
[10:02] Test1234: this is a few screens in
[10:02] Test1234: its not great
[10:02] Test1234: but the dotpoints help
[10:03] Test1234: this is actually a confusing part of the tutorial though
[10:03] Test1234: it wants you to select the two little structures on the left and place them on the coloured hexagons
[10:03] Test1234: as per the tickboxes in the upper right
[10:04] Test1234: I think the tutorial is too polite
[10:04] Test1234: tell people to do things
[10:04] Test1234: they learn a thing if they perform the actions and see the outcome
[10:04] Test1234: even if its not entirely clear why or what is the best way to do so from the offset
[10:04] Test1234: onsert
[10:07] KingRaptor: I'll do that for the radar/FoW part at least
[10:07] KingRaptor: which I had a way to enforce line move
[10:07] KingRaptor: *wish
[10:07] Test1234: you can check it in the widget
[10:07] Test1234: with some hax
[10:08] Test1234: ok first thing
[10:08] Test1234: screens 1 to 3
[10:08] Test1234: what are you detecting as the victory condition of screen 2? finding the radar
[10:08] Test1234: why isn't that the victory condition of the camera moving screen?
[10:10] KingRaptor: I wanted the player to have some room to mess around with the camera first before they tried looking for something specific
[10:10] Test1234: the hints are gone though
[10:11] KingRaptor: (also because things like TAB view might mess it up, but I really ought to just fix the mission code)
[10:11] Test1234: is the detection just whether the unit is on the screen?
[10:11] KingRaptor: currently yeah
[10:13] Test1234: do 3 checks
[10:13] Test1234: is on screen
[10:13] Test1234: camera height is sufficiently low
[10:13] Test1234: a GetUnitsInCylinder around the raytrace from the center of the screen
[10:22] Test1234: why do you use markers?
[10:22] Test1234: the widget which points to markers would be much better to use by itself
[10:32] Test1234: KingRaptor the attack section of the tutorial is a problem
[10:33] Test1234: http://pastebin.com/4rjWa3Rf
[10:34] Test1234: I'm not even sure that attack is important
[10:34] Test1234: is it really a thing people need to know?
[10:34] Test1234: I barely give attack orders
[10:34] Test1234: attack orders are physically hard to give on moving enemy units
[10:34] Test1234: attack orders cause stupid behaviour like artillery moving into range because it can't get a clear shot
[10:35] Test1234: and cause your units to clump
[10:35] KingRaptor: well it's needed when you want to focus down a specific target, but yeah
[10:35] Test1234: it is awful to get an army and tell them to attack a unit. The army will all clump trying to get to the unit and only the front ones will shoot. The units behind will push everything forwards
[10:36] KingRaptor: that bit mostly exists as a mechanics introduction
[10:36] Test1234: its just a bad idea though
[10:36] Test1234: and setting your comm to hold fire is really artificial
[10:37] Test1234: if you want to teach force fire then a less arbitrary way is to make them produce a minefield with a wolverine
[10:37] Test1234: so I have rewrites of screens
[10:37] Test1234: http://pastebin.com/4rjWa3Rf
[10:37] Test1234: there is too much random junk around
[10:37] Test1234: give LOS with a completely invisible fake unit
[10:37] Test1234: put markers down in the middle of nowhere
[10:38] Test1234: I think the natural progression for Screen 9 (new numbering) is to go into line move
[10:38] KingRaptor: are there actually any markers in the middle of nowhere?
[10:38] Test1234: no
[10:38] Test1234: you should put them there
[10:38] Test1234: why is there a windgen?
[10:39] KingRaptor: I figure it creates an obvious positional indicator for the move destination
[10:39] Test1234: a flashing crosshair thing is more obvious
[10:40] Test1234: the screen already has a bunch of random units on it
[10:40] Test1234: random units appear too often
[10:41] Test1234: there should be some progression
[10:41] Test1234: to guide attention
[10:41] Test1234: when you move your commander to the location have some new units be at the local
[10:41] Test1234: location
[10:41] Test1234: they could even have existed and been visibly inactive
[10:42] Test1234: like a blue unit but with no LOS
[10:42] Test1234: why is there a lotus and two storages?
[10:43] KingRaptor: partly as decoration (okay, okay, I know) and partly to allow testing of multi-select options like box select
[10:44] KingRaptor: for the move destination I can draw a stippled GL ring on the ground + a ghost unit of the comm
[10:44] Test1234: not that
[10:44] Test1234: it shuld be consistent
[10:45] Test1234: what is wrong with the marker widget?
[10:45] Test1234: make the marker widget respond to WG.AddMarker
[10:45] Test1234: make it take a text argument and draw its own text if present
[10:46] Test1234: it already deals with being off the screen
[10:46] Test1234: and would look consistent
[10:47] KingRaptor: don't use engine markers?
[10:47] KingRaptor: I suppose widget marker is easier to clean up when it's no longer needed
[10:47] Test1234: don't use engine markers
[10:49] Test1234: I think that if a unit is possibly visible to a player then it should either be relevant to what they are doing now or have been clearly relevant to a past objective
[10:50] Test1234: and the active area should not randomly move around the map
[10:51] Test1234: I'd start with a single unit on the map and have the player not looking at it, or perhaps looking off to the side
[10:51] Test1234: tell them to look at that unit
[10:51] Test1234: then tell them to select that unit
[10:52] Test1234: selecting that unit increases the units LOS and 'reveals' more units around it, a commander and a few random structures
[10:52] Test1234: tell them to select the commander
[10:52] Test1234: then tell them how they can select lots of stuff in many ways
[10:52] Test1234: when they continue tell them to select their commander and move to the right, there is a little LOS around the right
[10:52] Test1234: as you get closer you see some neutral units. reaching the location puts them under you control
[10:53] Test1234: then tell them about line move and do some fancy stipple-on-the-map with <click here> <drag mouse> <release here> on the map
[10:54] Test1234: then have some sort of detection of those units being vaugly along that line
[10:54] Test1234: people don't have to actually complete your ideal objective. They need to be told to stop and do something though
[10:54] Test1234: the victory condition could probably be "wait 5 seconds after the user gives all units a move command"
[10:54] Test1234: or even just one unit
[10:54] Test1234: but you can do better than that
[10:55] Test1234: so now they have some units vaugely in a line. That movement revealed and enemy. Tell them about left clicking to attack it
[10:56] Test1234: that movement found a bunch of enemies. Have them give a fight move to clean up the enemies with their small army
[10:56] Test1234: note about fight and line move perhaps
[10:56] Test1234: there is a bit of a story to this structure which guides people into what they should focus on
[10:57] Test1234: now we have a new act. The bit where the commander goes off and makes a base
[10:58] Test1234: except that the commander is a screen away because its busy reclaiming the wrecks from the attack that happened two objectives ago
[10:59] Test1234: idk if you should even have a commander
[11:00] Test1234: maybe the units found should be on the other side of a ravine
[11:00] Test1234: so they are visually related to the single-move order but it is clear the commander is not going with them
[11:00] Test1234: then once they do their battling go back to the commander
[11:02] Test1234: nah
[11:02] Test1234: that is probably it
[11:02] Test1234: economy would be another act in the whole story
[11:03] Test1234: and it is nice to end the story with a small army attack moving through some enemy base
[11:03] Test1234: finish it there
[11:03] Test1234: base building is another tutorial
[11:06] Test1234: mex, what it does
[11:06] Test1234: solar, what it does
[11:06] Test1234: how to build a solar (with a short flavour/general use as to why you want them)
[11:06] Test1234: a sentence only
[11:06] Test1234: everything is a setence only
[11:08] Test1234: since we have a dedicated tutorial for econ it can include both reclaim and repair
[11:09] Test1234: so story.... perhaps you have a commander and a mex
[11:12] KingRaptor: where does LOS explanation go?
[11:12] Test1234: its not really important
[11:12] KingRaptor: it could be a scene in economy tutorial where the con builds a radar and sees stuff with it
[11:12] Test1234: how important is it that people learn about LOS compared to how easy it is to pick up?
[11:13] Test1234: the tutorial has things appearing when they enter LOS throughout it
[11:13] Test1234: players can watch the circle move