Do you like the new tutorial?

[titi]

Latest MG release introduced a new tutorial for MG which is much more detailed for real RTS/MG beginners. Now we think about making 2 more tutorials named "detailed advanced tutorial" and "fighting tutorial". But we need to know if its worth the effort! So please show us your opinion about the tutorial_2!

[will]

Generally, I am very positive to the new tutorial, and to the making of more tutorials.  I did play the original tutorials when I started the game and it was useful.

All my feedback is nit-picking and can be discarded as such:

When asked to return the two workers back to the main camp it then goes on to tell you what to do after then, and I think this would be clearer if it was two steps.

Each dialogue has a single 'ok' button - a 'back' button to go back to the previous message - when several are shown in succession - would be very useful.

The expression 'taken' when describing not being able to place units: perhaps "occupied", and perhaps making the sentence less terse will help convey it better.

When you have finished the tutorial, a useful thing to tell the player is that they can press 'esc' to exit the game at any time.

[Conzar]

I think the tutorials are very nice to have especially for new players.  However, I think there is too much and too broad of information for new players in general.

i think it might be better to break the tutorials up to the following:

• Movement
• Resource Gathering
• Production
• Attacking
• Upgrades
• Faction specific

Movement
The start of the tutorial there is 1 worker.  The tasks are as follows

• Select the unit by clicking on it
• Move the unit to x,y by clicking on the move button

Once the player has finished these tasks, an another unit appears.

• Select both units by left click and drag a box around both
• Move both units to x,y by right clicking

After completion of these tasks, the units are deselected.

• The player must select all workers by double clicking on 1 worker
• Move both units to x,y by using the move hotkey

A new worker is spawned.

• The player is instructed to select the 3rd worker by shift clicking
• The player is instructed to use the 'alt' left click to deslect a woker

End of movement tutorial.

Resource Gathering
1 worker and 1 hq are at the start of the tutorial

• The player is instructed to select the worker
• The player is instructed to click on the mine button and then left click on gold

Once 1 trip to the gold patches is finished, repeat with stone, and then wood but use right click for stone and hotkey for wood (if there is a hotkey for wood ... I don't know).
Maybe for a bonus goal, have the player use the HQ to assign the waypoint to gold and produce 1 unit which automatically starts harvesting.

Production
This should focus on just producing buildings (no resource gathering needed).  Start out with plenty of gold, stone, and wood.

• Build food (building + food units)
• Build tier 1 unit producing building
• Build tier 1 units
• Build tech structure for upgrading
• Research 1 upgrade
• Build static base defense

Attacking
Start out with several tier 1 units. 

• Have player use the attack button to attack a cow
• Have player right click to attack a chicken
• Have player use a hotkey to attack 1 tier 1 unit
• Have player use a ranged unit to attack a non-ranged unit
• Have a player use a spell to attack a cow

Upgrades
This should explain how upgrades work with a select upgrade building (like the blacksmith).

• Have player select an attacking unit to view attributes
• Have player select blacksmith and pick an upgrade
• Once upgrade finishes, have player select unit to view upgraded attributes
• Have player click on a unit and have the unit upgrade (like from a worker to a mage or something)

Faction specific
I think each faction should have an overview tutorial that explains the following: HQ, Workers, Resources used, Food, Tech Structures, Unit producing Structures, upgrades, units and unit abilities.  Maybe even showing a tech tree would help too.
I would expect these tutorials to take the longest to build because there are currently 6 factions....

Thoughts?

[Omega]

Yes, I fully agree, Conzar! I plan to make Military's tutorials more broken up and simplified for even the core basics of gameplay (at the moment, it's based mostly on how to play the faction itself).

My feature request to help make tutorials easier is a Lua command to outline (perhaps have an arrow, etc, anything that makes it noticable) for any GUI element. For example:

Code: [Select]

highlightGUI('attack_button')   -- Highlights the active attack button, does nothing if no unit selected
highlightGUI('resources') -- Highlights the resources at the top of the screen

This applies to both GAE and MG, and would probably be complex to impliment, but would DRASTICALLY improve the tutorials and is commonplace in other game's tutorials.

[ultifd]

I am NOT new to MG and I think its good

[silnarm]

...

Code: [Select]

highlightGUI('attack_button')   -- Highlights the active attack button, does nothing if no unit selected
highlightGUI('resources') -- Highlights the resources at the top of the screen
...

+1

[titi]

Yes thats true but thats just another technical feature which would be of course welcomed.
But the !!boring!! main work is making a tutorial.

Instead of highlighting maybe a pointer arrow( or whatever) can be introduced. This can be moved around on the screen with coordinates.

[Omega]

Yes thats true but thats just another technical feature which would be of course welcomed.
But the !!boring!! main work is making a tutorial.

Instead of highlighting maybe a pointer arrow( or whatever) can be introduced. This can be moved around on the screen with coordinates.

Yeah, that would be great, though I must wonder how coordinates work for various screen resolutions (as well as wide screen resolutions, very important not to forget those, they had some bugs in the past)? Are Glest's GUI elements placed using a percentage, or what?

[Conzar]

Are Glest's GUI elements placed using a percentage, or what?

The GUI elements are placed via a virtual width and height set at 1000 by 800 or something like that.  So the elements are given int x,y coordinates in relation to the virtual width and height.  Does that make sense?

[Omega]

Are Glest's GUI elements placed using a percentage, or what?

The GUI elements are placed via a virtual width and height set at 1000 by 800 or something like that.  So the elements are given int x,y coordinates in relation to the virtual width and height.  Does that make sense?

Yeah, though not sure how that works on wide screen resolutions.

[Conzar]

Yeah, though not sure how that works on wide screen resolutions.

I don't understand why the virtual width and height are used but I know when I tried using the real screen size and percentages based off of the real screen size (this was for the HUD improvements) that it just didn't work for different screen sizes.