Vantha

Yeah, in the worst case we could resort to something like that. But I really hope we find some suitable history instead.

Massalia would be cool, but it has the same issues as Cyrene, Syracuse, and Tarentum: We don't have the involved civilizations in the game. I know, there is the option of creating entirely new units and buildings just for the campaign. But, firstly, I don't think that would be worth the effort. And, secondly, the tutorial should not only introduce the players to the gameplay, but also the content the game offers. Wouldn't you find it odd if you played through the whole campaign as the "Phocaeans" only to find out afterwards that they're not not even a playable civilization in the rest of the game?

The point is, it's not possible to teach players all basic aspects of gameplay in a single match. That's why we want to spread the content across an entire, dedicated campaign (so, sadly nothing for experienced players). A good tutorial campaign like this would render the current tutorial match rather pointless. Possible, but suboptimal in my opinion. There are so many possibilities, I'm sure we can find one that only (or mainly) includes "our" civilizations. Is this meant as an idea for this tutorial campaign? Or for future campaigns in general?

Yes. There already is a basic framework in place used for the existing tutorial. There's also the idea of adding a "coach" for more relaxed practice matches who only every now and then reminds players if they forgot to do something. Yes, let's make a poll. What are the current options?

That's a certainly good way to connect the different scenarios. But does it provide a logical reason/explanation for why one has to start all over each time? I mean, in a real world situation like this, one would construct a single base and then conduct all expeditions from there. Or is this "flaw" just something to accept in RTS campaigns?

I think this can be used on all UI pages, really. Handling UI scaling on lower screen resolutions is such a hassle and this is a very elegant solution to it. I will also use scrollpanels for the encyclopedia page as soon as the PR gets merged. Great work.

Hmm, in a campaign, players start each game from zero (more or less); they need to develop a base and an army completely from scratch. I know, technically, that doesn't have to be the case, but the tutorial should teach how to play entire games, from start to finish. On the other hand, in the process of establishing a colony there are no such "resets", the city is only build up once. Any ideas to work make that work with the story? How do other campaigns deal with that?

Me too. We should structure our first tutorial scenario very similarly.

To my knowledge, Sparta has turned out as quite an exceptional civ in terms of gameplay. But we can align it to the average civilization by blocking some uncommon structures and technologies. Aeneas, hmmm... more of a mythological character. Though, he lived before 1000 BC which I'm afraid is too early. How much new content can we realistically afford and get for this campaign? For the idea with Tarentum, we'd need at least several completly new units and buildings for the antagonistic South Italic tribes.

What about Tarentum? See https://www.worldhistory.org/tarentum/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Taranto They are also known to have had some bloody conflicts with local tribes. Though, I'm not sure where we'd get units and buildings for those. Maybe we can take something from Delenda Est?

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.