Vantha

Cardia's not bad, but I would prefer something historically more significant. Imagine if we can inspire players to do research about the colony they heard about in the game. They should be able to find more than just a short Wikipedia entry, no?

But what specific colony? Or do you want to make one up?

In my opinion, the story has to include... - a single-stranded, easy-to-follow plot. No time or place jumps. - any element that new players can recognize right at the beginning. Could a person, a place, or a civilization. - one clear protagonist (a hero) throughout the entire campaign. Could be the founder of the colony. - one clear enemy (a group of people) fought against throughout the entire campaign. That could be bandits, a tribe, a city, a civilization, etc. And (at least to a large extent) only require units and civilizations that we already have in the game. Unless I'm missing something, the best concrete ideas so far are: Cyrene (or Naukratis), Syracusae, Alexander the Great. I think they could all work out in some way, but we need to come to an agreement and pick one of them.

That's a good point. Maybe controlling a handful of units, leading them across the map, collecting some treasures, building a camp, and fighting off somd wild animals? Something like that? Yes, that is possible. And I agree that it is necessary. I know I'm repeating myself, but I like the idea of a building up a colony as well, Cyrene could work well, as long as we keep the story simple. The only problem I see is that most colonies were founded before 500 BC which means they technically fall out of 0ad's time frame. I'm not sure if that's something to worry about. But I'd also be fine with doing Alexander the Great.

Any features you would include/remove? What do you think of the length of the individual learning blocks? Their number of 3 is not set into stone at all, it just conveniently aligns with the three phases. If you think the learning content is too concentrated at the moment, the three blocks could be split up further. And the other way around too. @ShadowOfHassen @Lion.Kanzen @Genava55 There have been some really good concepts in this thread so far...

Here's the outline I was able to come up with. (I deliberately left out ships and naval warfare for now as I feel like all that should probably be taught in a seperate, fourth scenario.) (Core concepts (marked with a *) need more detailed (skippable) explanations for player new to the genre.) As already planned, the guided tutorial section encompasses three scenarios, the first one focusing on the Village Phase, the second one the Town Phase, and the third one on the City Phase. It is possible to set custom victory conditions from scenario scripts and my idea is to make it the winning goal of the first scenario to reach Town Phase, and of the second one to reach City Phase. And to let them build on each other, so at the beginning of the second and third one to just tell the player "Do what you did before." and start guiding again when the player has reached point they haven't been to before. For technologies, I would not individually order the player to research every single important one, but rather tell the player "This structure has important technologies. Periodically check for available one here and research them as soon as you comfortably can." and remind them to do so if they forget about it. Any criticism/suggestion? Any ideas how to embed the story?

Thanks for the corrections and suggestions. The source I used was this research paper: https://www.academia.edu/1406230/Efficacy_of_the_Ankyle_in_Increasing_the_Distance_of_the_Ancient_Greek_Javelin_Throw. It (among others) mentions the sources you referenced but also conducts an experiment (of a larger sample size) resulting in, to be precise, +27% in speed and +58% in range. I probably did wrong not pointing out the discrepancies between different experiments and should have provided the source. I made a commit addressing all your points. See: https://github.com/indoptogopt/GUI-page-for-0ads-encyclopedia/commit/d24f182841cb14be2de5ee79a1a65eff8d2713f8

This is fully possible in scenario scripts already.

I was able to resolve it, thanks.

I'm trying to bring my clone's main branch up-to-date with the upstream repository. I usually run (after fetching): git pull upstream main or git merge upstream/main But that recently started exclusively throwing the following error: Downloading binaries/data/mods/public/art/meshes/props/sele_wonder_statue.dae (664 KB) Error downloading object: binaries/data/mods/public/art/meshes/props/sele_wonder_statue.dae (52000ef): Smudge error: Error downloading binaries/data/mods/public/art/meshes/props/sele_wonder_statue.dae (52000ef25c318ba5d223843759b9cc4589858851db0e4aedbe2cad86b799abb9): [52000ef25c318ba5d223843759b9cc4589858851db0e4aedbe2cad86b799abb9] Not Found: [404] Not Found

Here is such a list by @Freagarachfrom the above-linked thread: It's a pretty good start. Is there anything you would add/remove?

I think the idea with Alexander the Great could indeed work out. Having Aristotle teach the game would be really cool. What do you mean with "quality"? I've heard that the engine supports cinematic cutscenes to some degree and I might look into it eventually, but I think it's best to focus on the gamepay first. Voice narration would be nice to have as well, but with it comes the hurdle of translation. What we should do is create a long list of specific things we want to teach the player over the course of the entire campaign. Then bring them in logical order, divide them into multiple chunks and assign one to each tutorial scenario. And then try how it fits together with the story. Some past efforts:

I want to express again that I believe it would be best to opt for a simpler, single-stranded story. The idea of founding a colony fits well in my opinion. Let's just pick an interesting, and somewhat important colony and follow its rise through the campaign. We don't need a crazy amount of content. Don't you see how these steps fit together perfectly with the establishment of a colony?

I'm also not convinced. Firstly, from my research, the foundation of Naukratis is still debated, the date is not clear, there is no single founder, and there might even have been a settlement before there as well. I don't think it suits a beginner-friendly story. Secondly, I think we lack the resources to afford creating entire civilizations from scratch for single time use in the campaign. Of course, there's nothing wrong with creating a few new units, but, ideally, we only rely on reusing what we already have. The game has enough content for that. And we should worry about that rather sooner than later. For the story you proposed, we lack the Libyans, Carians, and Egyptians (Ptolemies are much later). Thirdly, and most importantly, (I admit my experience with other RTS's is fairly limited) but the storyline in general seems too complex for a tutorial campaign. I think we should avoid time and place jumps entirely. And limit the number of characters as much as we can. Battus, Psamtek, Apries, Amasis, Cyrene, Naukratis, Daphnae... I did a decent bit of research on the topic and still don't understand all connections. If I as a new player encountered this campaign, I would feel helplessly overwhelmed by the story. I believe what we need is one city, one protagonist (the colony's "oikistes"/founder), one conflict, and one straightforward storyline. I like the idea of combining ancient Greece and Egypt. But, all in all, I like @ShadowOfHassen's outline better. The parallel between setting up a colony the process of learning the game is a really interesting concept.

Naukratis sounds interesting, combining ancient Greece with ancient Egypt. I think this concept can also appeal to people new to 0ad's time frame. Greeks and Egyptians are among the most famous ancient peoples, and it's good if new players can recognize something they're familiar with right at the beginning. Is Naukratis' "oikistes" known? I couldn't find a name. Also, we should think about the campaign's map(s). Is anyone interested in making some? If not, I suppose we could also reuse existing ones. For Naukratis, there would already be one map containing a Nile segment and another (huge) one featuring the entire Nile delta.

I'm for enabling all economic and military ships (maybe except fire ships) to collect the treasures. Champions and even heroes can do so too on land. By the way, whether a unit can or cannot collect treasures is determined by the XML tag "<TreasureCollector>" (therefore really easy to change.

Really? I was not aware of this fact. It seems pointless to me too. My guess is that the restriction is not specifically set in the code anywhere, but rather a result of the way that merchant ships vs military shops are coded. I agree. Noted.

I agree with @Lion.Kanzen . It sounds good and fits in the game well. But, in my opinion, when a hero dies one would expect a "stronger" and "darker" sound. I'm sure you know what I mean.

@trompetin17Very cool! I've been wanting this for a long time. It will be really useful for the encyclopedia page.

Hmm. Ideally, players can decide that themselves and progress at their own pace, right? So, why don't we create a large number of optional practice scenarios between the tutorials and provide players with the option to skip forward to the next tutorial at any point?

Not sure about what exactly? The tutorial's general structure?

We have the Prodromoi (represented by "Cavalry Javelineer (Prodromos)") which are essentially the successors of the hippotoxotai. And also the 1,000 Athenian citizens mentioned by the article - see the unit "Greek Cavalry (Hippeus)". I wrote encyclopedia articles about both of them.

I know, I just wanted to reiterate to ensure we're all on the same page. Also, what should we choose thematically? @ShadowOfHassen what's with the idea for an outline that you mentioned?

What think? Pretty good. Cool. It comes in the PR with the new 3D models, correct? For what civ?

That is a good plan in my opinion. I don't think players who've never played an RTS before can learn the essential mechanics only through the self-guided setting. For the practice games, I'd would put hardly any guide rails in place. It should very well be possible to fail at the first attempt. Players should feel challenged, that is part of the fun. What we can do to help those completely off-track, is add some sort of "coach" that notifies the player after some time when too many units are idle, too few houses build to train more, etc. - as it has already been suggested earlier in thread.