Tips and Tricks page

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

13 minutes ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

Although once the game get's out of alpha I would love to see a physical special edition like those old boxes of Age of Empires with fold out things and thick manuals.

That could be doable. At least in PDF form that people can download and print. Perhaps hard copy versions for a merch store.

[Vantha]

10 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

I was chatting with Stan, and I was thinking I could really expand upon this feature and add an in-game manual of sorts, so scrollbar functionality would be really nice to have. This "manual" would delve deeper than the tips and tricks flipbook does/would and would help supplement the Encyclopedia. But wouldn't be as in-depth as a full hardcopy manual from the 1990s.

That'd be so cool! As @ShadowOfHassensaid, we always hoped to eventually add a big gameplay/strategy section to the encyclopedia.

About the scrollbar, it would require no additional code at all - only adding 'scrollbar=true' to the text field. The biggest effort would be designing the new style - which I think really needs to be done if we decide for it.

I don't know how you're planning on structuring it, but my suggestion would be to use another interface (the encyclopedia page for example) for the in-depth parts and leave the current flipbook as it is (without adding a scrollbar) as a small section of the whole giving quick, superficial tips - most of the current ones are pretty useful already, but can't be directly expanded upon.

 

8 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Sorry duder, you're right. It took me a while, but I figured out it's still in the base game and it's controlled by templates/special/players/{civ}.xml. Indeed it takes a Hero to unlock Civic Centers for Ptol and Sele because of their Military Colonies. @Vantha That should definitely be in a Tip.

Interesting, I didn't know this feature. I have a whole list of possible topics for tips, but currently lack time to create the text and images for them. I'll note it down.

Edited September 1, 2024 by Vantha

[Stan`]

6 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

7 hours ago, ShadowOfHassen said:

 

That could be doable. At least in PDF form that people can download and print. Perhaps hard copy versions for a merch store.

There is a python script that generates that from the templates IIRC.

[Vantha]

On 24/08/2024 at 11:16 PM, Vantha said:

Valid concern. How about adding a subtle brown underlay to the buttons' base texture? Something like this:

 

What do you think of this? Is it indication enough that they're buttons?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

1 hour ago, Vantha said:

What do you think of this? Is it indication enough that they're buttons?

looks fine

[real_tabasco_sauce]

6 hours ago, Vantha said:

What do you think of this? Is it indication enough that they're buttons?

Personally, i think its pretty obvious.

[Vantha]

Ok, cool. I'm gonna leave it as it is then.

[Gurken Khan]

The other day I had the tip shown that higher ranked units fight better; best to my knowledge that's not the case anymore, they have more health and are better at capturing now. Maybe that could be rewritten.

[Stan`]

@Vantha @ShadowOfHassen ^

[Vantha]

Quote

The higher the level of a citizen-soldier (advanced, elite), the better he fights, but the less efficient he is at gathering resources.

Actually, I removed this line entirely here. It was part of the tip about resource gathering which ended up getting too long for the available space in the GUI. It had to be cut down and this line was not directly related to the topic anyway.

That's not to say this information shouldn't be included in the tips. In fact, I believe a separate tip about unit ranks would be quite useful. To my knowledge, players are currently not taught about the game's experience system anywhere. Definitely something to keep in mind for the future.

[Vantha]

I'm glad to announce that the Tips and Tricks page will be part of Alpha 27!

The pull request has been merged this morning. See commit 1792f0d065.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

Could I ask for or suggest an extension?

It would be nice to be able to have multiple images for a tip. For instance, in a tip about Wonders it would be nice to be able to show nice clear images of a bunch of individual wonders rather than packing a bunch of them into one screenshot. In these minor mockup, you see a little 1/2 or 2/2 with arrows to let you cycle through the images for the tip. We wouldn't do this for every tip, but to have that ability would be very nice.

 

 

Would could allow this by letting us use underscores at the end of the image file name. So, wonders_1.png, wonders_2.png, etc. 

[Vantha]

Sure.

This would definitely be worth it (assuming we can collect a reasonable number of secondary images).

I'll see what I can do.

[Vantha]

Alright, here it is: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/7189

I decided to place the buttons and text outside of the image to keep a constant brightness difference to the background.

Quick showcase:

Spoiler

 

 

 

[guerringuerrin]

Hi, @Vantha. Ty so much for this work. How can we contribute to its content?I think some micro/hotkey/setup would be nice to be included

In another similar topic, I was wondering if there's a way to load the tricks through some remote server instead of being built-in into the game so we can still adding and modifying its content everytime we want instead of having to wait to the next alpha. Just wondering

Edited November 8, 2024 by guerringuerrin

[Vantha]

5 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

How can we contribute to its content?I think some micro/hotkey/setup would be nice to be included

You can just share the tricks (title, text & image) in here and I'll take care of the rest, sounds good?

5 hours ago, guerringuerrin said:

In another similar topic, I was wondering if there's a way to load the tricks through some remote server instead of being built-in into the game so we can still adding and modifying its content everytime we want instead of having to wait to the next alpha. Just wondering

Most files affected by the patches are either newly created or haven't been changed for some years (which makes it possible to port the changes to older versions). I could put together a mod for A26 if that helps. Probably the easier solution...

[Gurken Khan]

On 01/09/2024 at 1:28 AM, Gurken Khan said:

I've only seen it written once in a forum reply that civs with MCs can only build CCs when they have a hero (don't know if had counts, too).

Just to clear it up: "had" doesn't count, they need a living hero to build a CC.

[Gurken Khan]

  

On 25/10/2023 at 11:56 PM, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

the capture mechanic is confusing for new players

@Vantha Do we have a tip for that?

(Can't find the tips in the repository.)

[Vantha]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

  

@Vantha Do we have a tip for that?

(Can't find the tips in the repository.)

No, I don't think so. I guess I could add one, but I'm not sure if it's the right place teach it. I mean, capturing is not really a 'trick', is it? It's a core game mechanic. Maybe it should be included in the tutorial instead.

[Vantha]

1 hour ago, Gurken Khan said:

(Can't find the tips in the repository.)

They were moved to gui/reference/tips/texts/ a while ago: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/src/branch/main/binaries/data/mods/public/gui/reference/tips/texts

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

10 minutes ago, Vantha said:

No, I don't think so. I guess I could add one, but I'm not sure if it's the right place teach it. I mean, capturing is not really a 'trick', is it? It's a core game mechanic. Maybe it should be included in the tutorial instead.

The tip would be how to toggle between capture and attack.

[Vantha]

5 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The tip would be how to toggle between capture and attack.

Oh, the hotkey? Yeah, that's indeed be a good idea then, considering the switch from capture to attack as the default action in A27.

[Vantha]

So, as multiplayer tips are added in #7503 (by @ramtzok1) we plan to split all of the existing tips into three categories (which can be switched between on the tips and tricks page)
Here's a first plan to divide them up:

Quote

beginner:
autoqueue
barracks
barter
cavalry_stable
civic_center
defense_tower
dock
fishing
forge
fortress
gathering
outposts
palisades
resource_counter
spearmen
storehouse
temple
trading
treasure

intermediate:
arrow_ship
biomes
briton_war_dog
catapults
city_walls
elephant_stable
embassies
formations
heroes
map_flare
loot
pikemen
queue_orders
ramming_ship
savanna_biome
siege_ship
snapping
territory_decay
theater
war_elephants
wonder

advanced:
army_camp
building_control
carth_sacred_band
carth_shipyard
celtic_war_barge
control_groups
default_formation
freehand_position
fire_ship
lighthouse
mauryan_worker_elephant
meroe_pyramids
order_one_unit
persian_architecture
select_wounded_units
shrine
spartan_hoplites
syntagma
whales

Is there anything you'd change? (I know there might not be much for debate here, but still)

By the way, if some of the competitive mp players wanted to make some tips on their tricks and strategies, now'd be a better time than ever.
I'd be willing to create the images for them. We could add an category "Expert"...  take that as an invitation
 

[guerringuerrin]

18 minutes ago, Vantha said:

By the way, if some of the competitive mp players wanted to make some tips on their tricks and strategies, now'd be a better time than ever.
I'd be willing to create the images for them. We could add an category "Expert"...  take that as an invitation
 

My two cents:
Use "order one unit" command hotkey to easily distribute each woman to a different berry. This will cause your berries to deplete more slowly, giving you a small food advantage.

[Grautvornix]

Same should be done with fishing boats, right? Isn't there even a recreation rate of fish?