Where the game is non-intuitive for newbies

[tomreyn]

I've tried to sum up some of the issues I often see newbies (and sometimes not just them) run into. These are recurring issues which may make the game less attractive to some and can turn them off, so once we have a list, we should probably also think about those can be fixed.Options: way too many options here, need sub menus / separate screens

• Lobby: Generally no idea how to use this. The hard to read light-blue list of servers on top are often not considered servers you can connect to.
• Lobby: They often do not realise this has a chat.
• Lobby: They often do not realise that a chat is a way to meet other players, as is sitting on a server for a while.
• Lobby: They will often start by clicking all buttons, saying something like: "MG_newbie_123MG_someone_42tomreyntiti_linux" (all on a single line) because the purpose of the buttons is unclear. This still happens with some people who have been using the game for a while. Most of the time newbies will also not realise who they are in the chat which can result in them trying to talk to themselves.
• Lobby: Even when they understood that some game servers are listed on top, it remains unclear who can play on them and how they can be played on. They need to find the [>] button placed to the end of the server lines, and understand that clicking those will connect them a given server.
• Game hosting vs headless servers: Many seem to assume that there are and can only be "the official servers", i.e. the headless servers which are listed most of the time. The concept of hosting their own game (and getting listed on this screen, too) is often a miracle.
• Lobby vs game hosting: Sometimes noobies will try to host a game, and even if this actually works they just return to the lobby (after sucessfully announcing their game), then see their game listed and try to connect to it (which won't work, as it is actually no longer available since they stopped to host the game). This is surely irritating.

This isn't fully complete, I may add more later.

[Omega]

I thought I'd further this list.

• In the mod download center, clicking, but not installing, a mod loads an image. However, downloading this image seems to be treated like downloading a mod. If you try and leave the mod download center by clicking the return button, the game prompts that you have files downloading.
• On the options screen, a number of confusingly ambiguous. Take the resolution setting, for example. First of all, the default is 800x600. A newby unfamiliar with the concept of resolution may end up playing on a lower than optimal resolution just because they have no idea what it means. Ideally, we should be automatically detecting this. Anyway, the resolution also includes the bit depth. I could argue that there's no reason for a modern gamer to change the bit depth, but I do have to point out it has nothing to do with the resolution. And options like 3D textures. As far as I know, it basically makes water look ugly with a very tiny performance change (negligible on my computer). I'm not actually sure how that makes the texture "3D", but the label is rather nondiscript. Chat remains active? What does that mean? If it weren't for the fact I pay such good attention to the forums, I'd have no idea (although I had to test it to be sure). It determines whether or not the chat dialogue closes after each message is sent. Newbies have no way to know what these settings do. We don't even have good documentation.
• As a solution to the above issue, and a number of others (for example, before I build a wicker behemoth, I have absolutely no idea what its purpose is) can be solved by implementing tooltips. Ideally, these should be set by the modder in game (the only use I can think of them is to specify what commands do. A produce command summarizes the purpose of the produced unit, an attack command summarizes the attack, etc) and the language file outside of mods. Every button should have a tooltip. What is an internet game and how is it different from a LAN game? What does the games mod menu do (it's actually kind of confusing at first, with these empty sections below and all). What is a tileset? What does the font adjustment button do (obviously it adjusts font, but what does the number mean?)?
• Same applies to scenarios. This has been suggested before, recently. Scenarios would benefit from a description. What is happening in the Amazons scenario (which, by the way, is misspelled in-game). All we know are some settings that are largely unhelpful to us (the tech and difficulty level are the only factors that really matter). What is going on in this scenario? What's its objective? The player doesn't know until they play it (and for simplicity, I could argue that the tutorials don't need to display any information besides their name, since the map, tileset, etc don't matter).

Personally, I think using an auto-configurator on first run could be beneficial. Check the resolutions available and choose the highest. Do the same for bit depth. Provide a slider for "graphical quality", with choices like "low", "medium", or "high", which would automatically choose other settings (for example, the low setting might disable unit and tileset particles, while the high setting might be using shadow mapping and a trilinear filter). And no, not the broken autoconfig, which only seems to touch bit depth, filter, shadows, and the number of lights (and doesn't do a very good job: it thinks my computer can handle shadow mapping with the highest texture size, but can't do trilinear filtering or more than a single light).

Even further, even with tool tips, the options screen seems really cramped. If I enable "advanced options", things get cut off. I'd personally go with a tabbed interface. Graphical options, gameplay options, multiplayer options, and advanced options (but if the Transfix settings are going to be "advanced", things like the FTP port (which, by the way, can't be changed in the menu) should be too. A tabbed interface would categorize the settings, making them easier to find, less cramped, and letting us fit more in (there's really no room to add new settings, like that drag selection fix).

[nig]

I remember my first time in the lobby pretty well. And it is true, i was totally surprised, that there is a chat at all, because I played just scenarios and custom games for years - (and for that I can say, there cannot be too much scenarios.)

I think the lobby is pretty good working if you are a little bit used to it. May be just a short video tutorial talking about chat and hosting should be enough - may be it can be scripted using languagefiles, so that it is running in the users language right from the beginning.
But I think, Lobby can become more functional for players to find each other. I think it would be nice, players names should be visible when they are connected to a server - minimum during the game start is awaited. I think, it would be nice to see playernames during the hole game, because players in the lobby might want to wait for special players ending their game for having a game with them afterwards.
This could be done for example with a popup hovering diffrent servers. For the same reason it would be nice, to have an opportunity to "shout" in the lobby, when you already logged in on a server, but the game have not started.
May be, it would be more cool, if the player remains in the lobby-chatroom, when he is already on the server, but the game have not started yet. So the gamers who are already on a server were still able to look for players in the lobby, dont you think?

The Options-screen is pretty filled, I agree. And I would love some additional options. Maybe its useful to make it switchable between an easy "dummy" screen and an expert-view with more pages. For example I would love an option screen for the free camera mode (moving and turning speed, minimal height above ground) to produce more epic game recordings .

I think the first thing a gamer learns, is to know about resolutions.So i think it should be always accessable. And there is a good reason, to provide low, oldfashioned resolutions:
In general I am a little unhappy, that you need bigger and bigger machines to run MG fluently. I remember times running glest on a single core without problems. It would be great to have an Lofi-Mode to get MG become payable on smaller machines again, because the small machines are those, which are accessable when you are bored somewhere on travel or elsewhere. Its weired that an dualcore Atom 1.6 GHz and an Nvidia ION2 is not enough to run MG. But its propably very difficult to bring cpu-load down again? Please keep an eye on that, how can you keep the cpu-load lower on those mass-attacks, or are there other possibilities to keep those cpu-peaks lower. Network gaming (which creates often bigger amounts of units) would profit from bring down those cpu peaks too.

lots of text... thanks for reading
Greets

[MightyMic]

The Options-screen is pretty filled, I agree. And I would love some additional options. Maybe its useful to make it switchable between an easy "dummy" screen and an expert-view with more pages. For example I would love an option screen for the free camera mode (moving and turning speed, minimal height above ground) to produce more epic game recordings .

We could have Options be basic settings i.e. Screen Resolution, Player Name and stuff like that. Then at the bottom of the page an Advanced Options which takes you to a new menu with stuff like particle effects, number of lights and other stuff most people wouldn't really know about. And splitting this into two menus allows you to have more options and a less cluttered view

[titi]

The only problems for newbies I see is the fact that there are people who think MegaGlest is an onlinegame in first place!
It is not! The online mode is just meant for people who already know a bit how to play and MG is so much fun in singleplayer. And I don't think those are confused too much.
So we should make clear to people that the online mode is not meant for complete newbies!

Maybe we should block the online mode until they won a special scenario  .

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offtopic, but nevertheless: @nig: MG is not slower than glest!
some things to keep in mind:
- Switch down the resolution to original glest size ( 800x600? )
- play only small 4 player maps
- use only simple tilesets ( original glest and Desert2 , "Dark Forest" is slow too ).
- only use normal CPU with raised multiplier
- play only singleplayer
You will see, MG is faster than original glest!

BUT: MG has some more caches and buffers, so it runs faster, but its size in memory is bigger. Maybe that causes some slowdowns if there is not enough memory.

[nig]

...  won a special scenario

you are so cruel!

yeah, it can be true, that my experiences with performance-issues go synchron with playing MG in network and that the big ammounts of units slowed down the machine - but anyway: the lower the specs of the machine running MG are allowed to be - the more network players we get.
I remember recognizing the first performance issues on my old machines by playing faction dwarves. Suddenly evrything slowed down - (was this caused by graphics-adapter)?
And I loved dwarves... by the way: where have they gone?

Greets