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Richard Bruns
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NC, USA
Nov 1999
time: 06:17
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I think we desperately need a tutorial. When I opened up Clash I was confused. Even though I read the manual beforehand, I was confused. Despite the fact that I've been on the team for upwards of two years, I didn't know what to do. Mostly this was due to the fact that I have not been heavily involved with the military and econ models, the two main things the demo has.
The current trend nowadays in games is to open the game up and start playing. This is especially the case with demos. None of the professional demos I download have ever come with manuals. They come with a tutorial/walkthrough scenario with some advisor telling me what to do.
This system works. It works well. People expect it. We don't have it. I think that may be a big reason that people who try thr demo walk off confused.
I vote that all manual writing efforts be devoted entirely to creating a walkthrough scenario. Vets don't need a manual and if the walkthrough is good newbies won't either.
Someone would open the game, choose a scenario, and see: Tutorial: Romans. They'd click on it and a popup window would come up, introducing an advisor. Give him a name, like Proconsul Marcus. This advisor tells the player what the game is, what the missions are, and what to click to accomplish it.
He should probably start by introducing the economy, explaining civ orders and square orders. (These should probably be renamed to "city orders" for now.) He would tell the player what all the boxes mean and how to read them. He would direct the player to do something like increase kapital production.
When the game detected that the player did so, Marcus would tell the player how to build a road. The game then checks for completion of that before having the next tutorial come up.
Then the advisor would tell the player how to make units and how to move them around. He would guide the player, step by step, through the capture of a neutral city. Obviously this would require a premade map and not a random one. A real map of central italy, like the one in demo 4, would be great.
At that point the player should know the basics and could finish the scenario. I guarantee that if this is implemented in even a miminal fashion, people would be a lot more impressed with the game and will stick around to make comments.
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LDiCesare
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La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
time: 05:17
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Richard, I agree with you. In fact I had proposed something along those lines to Mark.
Mark, I come back to my events-for-tutorial thingy.
The proposal was: Code a tutorial scenario (needs a map, an advisory button and some reactivity to the player moves).
At the beginning of every turn, checks are made to decide if the player needs some info.
For example on turn 1, they will be prompted to look at the civ econ orders window, and change the figures if they like, plus up some kapital. On turn 2, it could propose to open up province econ orders (or square) to up the unit production on the frontier.
On turn 3, a road orders could be proposed and indeed we can wait until it is built before we go on (or check that a few turns have passed and nothing is being done and reissue the window).
On first turn when an enemy appears somewhere, they will be prompted to up the military production in nearest city.
When the first new unit pops up, the player will be explained how to move it along.
When the second unit comes in, they will be explained how to add them to others to create task forces.
The advisory button I don't really know what to put behind, except a link to the doc.
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LDiCesare
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La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
time: 05:17
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The point is: People don't read manuals.
I think changing a scenario into a tutorial is easy, so I'd vote for doing it.
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Mikael
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Rio de Janeiro
Jan 1970
time: 05:17
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Yes, a tutorial scenario is needed. I myself am a bit confused with the way the econ model works, even though I read the documentation.
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LDiCesare
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La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
time: 05:17
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ris, can you describe a tutorial scenario (what it should be) so that we can code it in (if Mark agrees that's a priority)?
I would like to be able to have a scenario with
1) pop-ups to help the player
2) links to an html reference doc.
(which kind of answers your question in another thread).
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LDiCesare
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La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
time: 05:17
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quote:
My take is we should use the same "scenario events" as for things like changes in diplomatic status on turn X that we were talking about by email |
Yes. That was my intent in the first place. Indeed, I will check with Gary about the architecture.
What about using the Demo4 Italy map? I think I can find the D4 code for it and adapt it for the scenario. Chris, when you have a paper/html tutorial, I'll try to plug it.
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Mark_Everson
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Canton, MI
Jan 1970
time: 00:17
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I have been keen on this for quite some time. It also ties in rather well
with the event system we have been talking about for scenarios. "Event, turn 1, display message1" or some such, or "when economics screen first opened display message 2".
I really do hope to have the scenario input system going very soon, so it
could be synchronized with that. D6.2 looms.
[edit]
Now My post:
Getting the old world map, or at least bits of it, working at some point is a good idea. Probably best done when we have a spec for reading maps into the program. It shouldn't be Too hard to get the map out of D4. But one issue you should know about is that the world map there was originally done in plain Cartesian coordinates, like Civ 1. I then rotated it in the software so that it matches the iso coordinates. When the time comes, if you need help, let me know.
Last edited by Mark_Everson on 17-01-2002 at 18:05
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LDiCesare
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La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
time: 05:17
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quote:
Getting the old world map, or at least bits of it, working at some point is a good idea. Probably best done when we have a spec for reading maps into the program. It shouldn't be Too hard to get the map out of D4. But one issue you should know about is that the world map there was originally done in plain Cartesian coordinates, like Civ 1. I then rotated it in the software so that it matches the iso coordinates. When the time comes, if you need help, let me know. |
I found the relevant code and map. I will have to write some code to read the array of short into a D6 thingy. I guess translating into the persistent format would be good. I think I see where the terrain is, but don't know about the other info. This will wait till we have persistence done if Chris Maeda makes the load stuff soon. Meanwhile, I was wondering if a map editor wouldn't be handy... I am pretty sure it is too much work to considerate, but maybe Gary has some ideas about it, so I think it wise to begin talking about it.
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Gary Thomas
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New Zealand
Mar 2001
time: 17:17
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When I started with Clash I remember pleading with Mark to let me work on a random map generator. He insisted that there were much more important things to do. Perhaps he was right.
As far as the data for a map is concerned, I feel that the data should be in at least two separate sections - the raw map and any improvements. The raw map will not change during the course of the game (see my incremental saves theory in the background?) and hence does not need to be saved.
In the immediate future, it is likely that the only improvements that will be encountered are: cities, roads, deforestation and cultivation (or settlement). Each of these has quite a limited amount of data, and nicely overlays the main map.
The substantive map consists of a rectangular grid of squares (no, I won't mention polygons again in this post). Each square has four (or fewer) parameters. The parameters are: x-coordinate, y-coordinate, landform, and landcover. So an xml file with entries like:
code:
<square>
<x> 11 </x>
<y> 21 </y>
<baseterrain>
<landform>flat</landform>
<landcover>none</landcover>
</baseterrain>
</square>
would cover it. It would be even tider as:
code:
<square x=11 y=21 >
<baseterrain>
<landform>flat</landform>
<landcover>none</landcover>
</baseterrain>
</square>
By allowing defaults, this could shortened even further.
I would have the improvements in the form of:
code:
<improvement x=11 y=21 >
<civilization> roman </civilization>
<city>
<population>flat</population>
</city>
<baseterrain>
<percentagenatural> 0 </percentagenatural>
</baseterrain>
</square>
Writing a simple map editor for this sytem would be no big deal and just involve exporting and modifying the map frame, with a popup menu. Perhaps two day's work. Probably best if I do it, since I am most familiar with the gui. It would also be a step toward completing the xml read in system, which is my next job anyway.
The code to read this in is a really quick job using the parser.
Cheers
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Blakis Maximus
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The "City View" screen is just the window that pops up when you click on a city in games like Civ III. It shows the unit that is currently being built, the improvements in the city, etc.
quote:
A long way down the track. Before that we need things like saving games... |
Ahh yes, saving would be good. Also, any word on releasing the source? Thanks...
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Blakis Maximus
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It's now posted in the Demo 6 Comments and Bug Reports thread...
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Erasmo_Ramos
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Hi everyone,
I'am the new guy who is going to give a shot at writing the manual. My main goal at writing this manual is to make it understandable and cover enough material so people playing won't get lost.
Right now I'am deciding on what the layout of the manual is going to be. My idea is simple:
1. Sections that give info on certain areas of the game.
2. At the end of each section give a small tutorial on how to use what the section talked about (I.E. How to move a unit)
I will also try to make a tutorial for those ppl that don't want to read.
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LDiCesare
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La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
time: 05:17
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You can use message files with tags like <message id="">
Whatever is inside the message tags is shown to the player. The id allows to find the correct message in the file. Actually, it is a goos idea to load the file once and build a hashmpa of messages if you do it that way.
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LDiCesare
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La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
time: 05:17
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I don't know much about tooltips, but I think long tooltips are bad from an ergonomy point of view.
Based on comments by Age Of Wonders designer, tooltips are slow to show and not very efficient for that reason: You put your mouse somewhere, then wait for the tip to appear. They used a text pane in the lower part of the screen to show tooltips instead of popping them up in that game. That means you would have a permanent text zone (in that game, it was one line but it spred the whole screen wodth) in which tips appear. We could use that, maybe make it 2 lines long if you really need long messages. Also, with such a text zone, you could have a Help/Details button or whatever which would launch the online help on the appropriate topic.
That would let you use one or two screen-width of characters, probably around 100-200 characters, plus maybe a scrollbar?
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16-01-2002 08:21
Thanks for the encouraging words! How did you come upon Clash anyway?
, and this is not urgent.
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