Vantha

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.

Sorry, but I don't get what you mean. The current menu can do everything we need for now. I'm not denying the fact that we need a new campaign overview menu - we totally do. And I like the design you proposed, but implementing it should come last in my opinion. Creating the UI page is a lot easier when we already concrete, tangible content for it.

Why don't we start with the scenarios themselves? Shouldn't the content itself be of first priority? I mean, we already have a campaign menu - albeit a very basic one.

I can script them. Yes, I had something similiar in mind too. I want to completely honest, even though it hurts: Progress of writing the encyclopedia has been stalling lately, I'm afraid "after the encyclopedia" won't be anytime soon. I don't think it's a bad time to lay that aside for a bit, help with some tutorial campaigns, and after some time pick it up again. For a fresh new start. Maybe even with some personnel reinforcements. The eventual merge of the GUI page will also provide a good boost in motivation. As much as I support all the ideas in this thread, I believe we should settle for something smaller (but not worse) for now. We need to define a clear starting point and set a realistic goal. I hope it works out and I would love to get the stone rolling now.

I love the idea! It's quite easy to implement too. And it could be turned it off in the game options, just like the native names can.

Yep, I'd be onboard

Yeah, observers (during both games and replays) see all living heroes in the top left, I think.

Are you sure? I don't recall ever seeing my allies' heroes there. Heroes are quite game-changing units which is why some players try to target them first. Whether or not an enemy hero has died yet can be hard to tell in a big battle - but pretty significant information since many heroes also boost the performance of units around them. Should we give away that information away to enemies? The ticket also suggests "_____ has been vanquished"...

Cool to see an audio engineer here. I agree with @real_tabasco_sauce. The samples in the dropbox all sound really good, but might be mistaken for existing game sounds. If you could create a new one specifically for hero deaths, that'd be amazing. Personally, I'm against adding voiceline. We don't have anything comparable in the game right now, so it would probably feel out-of-place. And we can't expect players to understand English anyway. And what about that? Is the current message fine? And notifiy just allies and observers? Or all players?

I found this interesting ticket (by @wowgetoffyourcellphone) for a hero death notification. I already wrote the necessary code, but there are still some details left for decision, which I want to discuss in this thread. Firstly, what exactly should the chat notification say? And what players should it be broadcasted to? If more than just the affected player himself, it should be indicated whose hero it was. Maybe by coloring the hero name in the player's color? (Though I'm afraid that might cause some confusion; the hero could be mistaken for a player). Currently, my best pick is "<ColoredPlayerName>'s hero <HeroName> has fallen in battle.", but I'm positive we can find a cooler formulation. Secondly, the ticket also mentions a sound effect. I found the following unused hero death sound among the game files: alarm_hero_fallen_1.mp3 I think it sounds alright, but it's just... rather boring. Here is an alternative I was able to create (supposed to sound more epic), it resembles an ancient military signal horn: alarm_hero_fallen_2.mp3 Which one do you prefer? (Keep in mind that it is not the unit's death sound, but a globally played notification - like the alarm when being attacked) And, yes, as suggested by the ticket, I also created a skull icon that appears over the portrait after the hero dies. Here is what it looks like in the UI:

Yes, absolutely. That would be awesome. Lists and ordered lists can also have scrollbars (and are interactive) but that's just not the same.