Tutorial Campaign

[Lion.Kanzen]

24 minutes ago, wraitii said:

• Walking around, some light resource collecting, some light attacking.
• It looks cool.

Some Gaia stuff, some wild animals to kill, maybe a wolf.

 

25 minutes ago, wraitii said:

You get diverted by a storm and must pause for repair on some unspecified Mediterranean island.

A shipwreck. That's sounds cool.

[hyperion]

7 hours ago, wraitii said:

I think this Greek Colony idea is good.
Here's a quick rundown of what I'm thinking:

• Start in a small coastal town. You control a unit of some kind, and need to walk around the city, gathering stuff. Maybe at some point you get in a fight with another guy over insurance money 'cause that's showbiz baby. The goal is to get your ship ready, and get underway.
  • Walking around, some light resource collecting, some light attacking.
  • It looks cool.
• You get diverted by a storm and must pause for repair on some unspecified Mediterranean island.
  • More resource gathering, scouting
• You land in you new place.
  • More scouring, more resource gathering, more base building & starting some actual fighting
• And then we'll see where we go from there.

Sounds more like a role playing game, would sure be fun. Could even make use of wow's first person view feature. However, likely on the ambitious side of things considering the next release is near. Maybe go with something closer to a "standard" campaign like the Macedonian one. Polishing a couple of those scenarios and presenting them in a more campaigny fashion will probably unearth quite a few issues in terms of flow and presentation already. Basically something just a tad more then a dry test is already good enough for A25 I'd say. Along the line of a demo for modders instead of a tutorial for beginners.

[maroder]

Just found this video and thought that it is a good watch and also very related to this topic:

 

[azayrahmad]

While we're waiting for the Tutorial Campaign to be finished, can we at least put the link of online tutorial video in the game menu?

I realized it was made in 2012, so perhaps it can be updated? But most of the tutorial is still relevant to newest version though.

[Stan`]

It's one of the demo campaigns in A25

But sure it can be improved.

[azayrahmad]

On 14/07/2021 at 5:29 PM, Stan` said:

It's one of the demo campaigns in A25

But sure it can be improved.

I'm aware of it, they are amazing. Hopefully today's generation interested enough to download 0 AD would be more encouraged to play after testing the tutorials. Although yes, with all due respect to the devs especially everyone involved in creating the tutorial, there are some ways to improve it. 

• The most accessible Tutorial (accessed from Learn to Play > Tutorial) is the Starting Economy Walkthrough instead of the more beginner-friendly Introductory Tutorial.
• As discussed here, the language used in the tutorials can be improved a bit:
• I suggest the tutorial to use in-universe conversation for tutorials instead of the currently more technical language, similar to Age of Empires tutorial. I.e. lets pretend that the player is the king of civilization and the tutorial is coming from a kingdom advisor, like this:

Quote

My archon/pharaoh/king, both our women and citizen-soldiers excel at gathering resources and building structures, but our citizen-soldiers are by law required to take up arms in time of need. Please select the women by left-clicking them.

• In addition to above, I think it's best to refer to units as their in-game unit names, so instead of female citizens we can refer to them as Spartan women to avoid confusion.
• Also in my opinion, at least for introductory tutorial, perhaps we can use special templates for tutorial entities that can only construct what is required in the tutorial, to avoid clutter in structure panel that could intimidate new players.

I'm open for discussion about this. I really think that the tutorial is the gateway for new players before deciding whether or not this game (or even RTS game in general) is worth their time, which is important since we're in a time where thousands of games are easily accessible while RTS games are decreasing in popularity. 

Edited July 18, 2021 by azayrahmad

[Stan`]

They were a lot of plans for the tutorials. @Angen had one @Freagarach had one and likely some other people on the forums but it never came to fruition.

Having custom templates or using the tehcnology manager can be done IIRC. If it makes sense.

The game still lacks some basic tutorial features though like area highlighting or object highliting.

 

[azayrahmad]

15 hours ago, Stan` said:

They were a lot of plans for the tutorials. @Angen had one @Freagarach had one and likely some other people on the forums but it never came to fruition.

I'm not aware of @Angen's tutorial plan, but @Freagarach's one at the start of this thread is very good. However I believe the best and easiest way is simply to improve the existing tutorial, little by little.

For starter, I've made the pull request to replace the Learn to Play tutorial with Introductory tutorial here: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4194. I requested @wraitii to be reviewer for it since a lot of tutorial's commits were made by him.

16 hours ago, Stan` said:

Having custom templates or using the tehcnology manager can be done IIRC. If it makes sense.

For the next one, currently I'm working on the custom template for tutorial entities. It'll take a couple of days, I'll probably finished it on weekends.

Hopefully later we can divide the introductory tutorial as per @Freagarach's syllabus. And then sprinkle some historical context. Peloponnesian war would work, considering the tutorial is Spartan vs Athenians. Will need review by historians (Perhaps @Thorfinn the Shallow Minded or @Genava55 would like to help?). But this can be done much later.

16 hours ago, Stan` said:

The game still lacks some basic tutorial features though like area highlighting or object highliting.

Yes, these are very much needed. We can revise the tutorial once these features are available (I'm sorry I still have no clue how to add these features).

[azayrahmad]

On 19/07/2021 at 8:22 AM, azayrahmad said:

For the next one, currently I'm working on the custom template for tutorial entities. It'll take a couple of days, I'll probably finished it on weekends.

 

Turns out I'm free today, so I finished the custom template.

Here is the patch if anybody's interested: https://code.wildfiregames.com/D4196

Basically with this patch, introductory tutorial would be less cluttered as units and structures can only build/train/research what is required by tutorial and not much more. There are some teasers though (Healers and Storehouse wood gathering tech are unlocked even though not required by tutorial).

For those more interested in testing it as a mod, I have attached it below, A25 only.

The next step would be to fix some tutorial language as some are referred by incorrect name (Xiphos/sidearm tech in Forge is referred as Infantry Training by tutorial instruction). And then my plan is to divide the tutorial into several smaller missions as per syllabus to ensure learning players can skip any stage. 

Please let me know what you guys think!

limited-introductory-tutorial.zip