Wanted: ideas for a new Tutorial

[Stephen]

Most people will probably agree that the current Tutorial is not very good. It basically consists of a standard Quest for Gems with a few "pop up hints" thrown in.

When I first put the tutorial together, I had limited time so I wanted to put something together quickly, using what we already had. So that's why I based it around a Quest for Gems. However I had always intended to replace it with something better eventually. I think the time has now come to do that.

Now, IMO, a tutorial has to do two things: obviously it has to teach players how to play the game, but I think it also has to be a fun challenge in and of itself. Ideally even experienced players would be able to enjoy the tutorial, to feel like it is an interesting level to play through in its own right.

My idea was to have a pre-designed (as opposed to random) map where there is a series of rooms that you go through in order. Each room would explain some aspect of the game, then there would be a simple puzzle or challenge to solve before you could get to the next room.

For example, probably the first thing we want to teach is how to move your knight. After that there might be a room with a gate puzzle, you have to work out which pressure pads to stand on to open the gates to the next room.

The next room might teach them about combat, and then give them a room full of zombies to kill, before they can move on.

That sort of thing.

Anyway, basically, I just wanted to open up a discussion. What do you think of the above? What sort of things do you think should be included in a tutorial? What is it important to teach players? Any particular newbie mistakes you have seen people making, that they should be taught not to do in the tutorial? Any other ideas at all? :)

[K9]

Your layout so far sounds brilliant!   8)

I will think on these things and get feedback from family to fill in here as the ideas come to mind.

Thank you.

[Stephen]

OK, well, I am starting to build the new Tutorial now.

I guess I shouldn't give too much away, but here are some of the rooms that will be featured:

A fairly plain starting area. Here we will explain the basic controls (movement, opening doors and so on) and teach them about using the hammer to destroy obstacles.

A puzzle room, with gates, pressure pads and levers. (Teaches how to operate levers and also gives them a little challenge/puzzle to solve.)

Chamber of Bats: This will be a large square room with lots of pits. On entry the doors will close/lock themselves, and bats will start spawning from the pits. The player has to survive and kill all the bats. If they succeed, the doors will unlock so they can progress to the next area. (Aim of this is to teach combat skills and also introduce a bit of action into the proceedings.)

After that, it will open out to a large area like the current Tutorial (except the map will be a pre-designed, not random). The idea is for them to wander from room to room, and in each room there will be a new item to try out (like the bear trap or the crossbow). This area will also have a few zombies thrown in, to liven things up a bit :)

Eventually they will be guided back to their starting point where they can exit the dungeon with three gems (which they will have found and picked up along the way).

Obviously this could all evolve as I work on it and try things out, but that's the basic plan at the moment.

[Moo]

Sounds good. If they can make it through that they should be ready for real games :)

I have noticed that people are still having problems with the controls though... Maybe you need to make it very specific about what they need to click to do stuff etc at least for the first part of the tutorial.

Another idea: Make it easily localisable... Lots of Russian players today, and quite a few before at various times. If whoever did the translation kept the English names for things and put the translation alongside, that should help them learn the game but still allow everyone to "speak the same language" when it comes to chat.

[Stephen]

OK, I'll try to keep the explanations as specific and clear as possible.

Given that it's all going to be coded in Lua scripts - which will be shipped with the game - it should be relatively easy to localize. I'll leave it to someone else to attempt though :)

I suppose my biggest fear at the moment is that the tutorial will turn out to be too long and/or difficult, and people might give up half way through it. I suppose we can always cut it down later though... and anyway, if you have a short attention span, Knights is probably not the game for you :D so maybe it will be ok. We'll see how it turns out.

[Moo]

You could divide it up into several sections... Basic controls... Simple quests... Other quests part 1... Other quests part 2... Or something like that. Then they wouldn't need to do it all in one go. It could keep track of whether each part had been done and show a tick mark or something. The existing tutorial could be kept as another part for reference.

[Stephen]

Wow, this tutorial writing is taking a long time. I have a 600 line file just for the messages that will be shown to the players... and another 600 lines of Lua code for handling the special features of the tutorial. (Most of that is for the "Chamber of Bats", which actually turned out to be quite fun.)

Hopefully I will have a beta version that I can show you guys soon.

(And yes, splitting it into several sections is a good idea. However, that is going to be more work so I think I will release an "all in one" tutorial first, and then figure out how best to split it up later.)

[Stephen]

Hi everyone,

I have uploaded a beta version of the new Knights tutorial: http://www.knightsgame.org.uk/knights_tutorial_beta.zip

This is not an installer, just a zip file. To run it, just unzip and double-click Knights.exe. (Windows only at the moment.)

If anyone notices any bugs or typos etc, please let me know. Otherwise, I intend to do the next Knights release this weekend, or maybe early next week.

[ImpassIve]

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You don't have permission to access /knights_tutorial_beta.zip on this server.

[Stephen]

Oops. Please try again now.

[ImpassIve]

I had tested the tutorial and haven't found any bugs.

The only fun fact is what I had "Original Amiga Controls" enabled. Tutorial detected this fact and told me what I will be switched to new control system.
...during tutorial I had both "old" and "new" control systems enabled. Is that a feature?

P.S. I like it)

P.P.S.
Hm... looks like "Premapped" flag is not working anymore.

[Moo]

Very nice :D

One thing not entirely tutorial related that I noticed is that clicking on the scroll bar for the tutorial text counts as a "game click" as well as a click on the the bar.
That bat room is evil  ;D. Not sure how many attempts I needed for level 5, but I had 120 messages in the tutorial box by the time I had finished... The "glutton for punishment" message was number 42...

Very minor, but the "stuff bag" message once told me "you now have 1 gems".

[Worst]

Very nice tutorial,  I think its definitely better than the random generated one.

And nice that it mentions the window size/resizing.. which I guess might seem obvious.. but then again there are many games where you can't do that when its windowed.. so thats why it didnt occur to me before someone told me :P

If anyone notices any bugs or typos etc, please let me know.

Not sure if this is incorrect, but:

THE QUEST

Each game of Knights revolves around a quest.
The object of the game is to be the first player (or team) to complete the quest.

Should it read "objective" instead of "object" ?

[Stephen]

The only fun fact is what I had "Original Amiga Controls" enabled. Tutorial detected this fact and told me what I will be switched to new control system.
...during tutorial I had both "old" and "new" control systems enabled. Is that a feature?

No, it wasn't intended to be like that, but now that you mention it... I like the idea :) I think I will keep it this way (and add a little message to explain it).

P.S. I like it)

Thank you :)

P.P.S.
Hm... looks like "Premapped" flag is not working anymore.

Hmm, it seems you are right. I will look into that.

One thing not entirely tutorial related that I noticed is that clicking on the scroll bar for the tutorial text counts as a "game click" as well as a click on the the bar.

I should fix that. (For the scroll bar at least. I think the title bar is ok since clicking the title bar doesn't do anything anyway.)

That bat room is evil  ;D. Not sure how many attempts I needed for level 5, but I had 120 messages in the tutorial box by the time I had finished... The "glutton for punishment" message was number 42...

Muahahahaha :D

Level 5 isn't really meant to be completable, it's just an extreme challenge for people who don't know when to quit dedicated Knights fans.

Very minor, but the "stuff bag" message once told me "you now have 1 gems".

OK I'll look into that.

And nice that it mentions the window size/resizing.. which I guess might seem obvious.. but then again there are many games where you can't do that when its windowed.. so thats why it didnt occur to me before someone told me :P

That was a last minute addition following last week's game. :) Thank you for mentioning it on Sunday!

Not sure if this is incorrect, but:

THE QUEST

Each game of Knights revolves around a quest.
The object of the game is to be the first player (or team) to complete the quest.

Should it read "objective" instead of "object" ?

I think "object" is OK.

Most board game rules start by explaining what the "object of the game" is. (Does anyone here play board games?)

[ImpassIve]

Also, I saw 2 "fake" pentagrams recently.

"Quest" pentagrams still works, but some random generated pentagrams acts just as a regular floor. I am not sure what this appeared in only at beta, just a notification.

UPD: Hm... I don't see any fake pents anymore...