Tutorial

I hope I havent made a duplicate Thread.

But I was wondering what the idea around the Tutorial was? I myself do not really like categorial tutorials, but rather something that BF2 did. Which was basically a commander stating stuff like "Walk up to the ladder to climb", "create a squad, by clicking the create squad button"

Basically lots of stuff most games put in their loadscreen. It can, when the game is first installed have lots of these voice overs that go "herp a derp to get more resources" or "for a more effective assault, try using artillery to soften up targets as they appear", "To build simply click this and dat, and then there"

So with the amazing dude who rips his shirt of in the promo, he has a pretty badass voice. Make him introduce the game to you, in your first whatever game. If its multiplayer or single whatever. Just have those instructions wait for you, doesnt pause the game. Doesnt limit your options, just tells you what to do if you want to do it. I belive the sounddesigner said he wanted to know about places in the game where he could put sound. Well basically this is one of those things.

A tutoral would be nice
I guess to get new comers in to play the game with a more smother learning curve if broken in to sections with the not sure we need a "i haven't played a rts ever" tutoral
The rest more in to learning the new controls and basic stratergy ideas so new people get smoothes learnig possible with out borring the hell out of them and strait in to the action asap.

Back when TA came out, playing PC games was a much more niche pursuit than it is now, and people were more willing to spend a few hours learning a game through trial and error.

Today we've been spoiled by hand-holding tutorials and having everything we want as soon as we want it. One of the biggest hurdles to getting people involved in Forged Alliance is the brick-wall learning curve, so I believe that a decent tutorial is essential for PA.

Probably also some scripted challenge modes: much less labour-intensive than a proper campaign, these would give you a task like making 50 of unit x in as quick a time as possible, then use them to destroy a small base or other group of units. If these has leaderboards attached to them, people would learn to play better without even realising it.

Well, we know 'scenarios' are going to be possible. I imagine a good way to introduce people to the game is to have scenarios that promote more than 'annihilate the other guy'.. like 'Get to 100 metal production within 10 minutes', or 'Produce 250 heavy tanks in 15 minutes'

The challenges in starcraft 2 are a good thing to mimick, and are basically what eukanuba described

I think a in-game tutorial like in supreme commander would be perfect for new players.

Or good campaign

The tutorial in SupCom was pretty abysmal, I can't see a brand-new RTS player being able to make head or tail of it.

Many SupCom players didn't need the tutorial as they'd played TA. I wonder how many people who'd never played TA gave up in confusion? I bet it's a pretty large number.

PA should aim to have a tutorial that can be understood by somebody whose only experience of computer games is Wii Bowling and FarmVille.

I have think that is going to frustrate the existing player base. I like how total war does its tutorials actually might be some thing to look at maybe.

The best way is to just start the tutorial like this;

Select what applies to you:

- I've never played games on the computer before
- I have played some games on the computer before
- I have played real time strategy games before
- I am very familiar with real time strategy games


Then just jump the tutorial to whatever the player selects. That's generally the best way to move beyond the nonsense of "click a unit to select it" for those that don't need the info, while still explaining how to control a camera to people who've never played a game before.

This.

Every Starcraft campaign was basically a set of tutorial missions that introduced you to new units. It was more explicit in SC2, where they TELL you the unit to use.

TotalA had some of this in the campaign. Most notable was the spider bot, which had explicit missions to rescue and use them.

Supcom provided some insight into units through the game missions. Mostly, they just encouraged you to turtle and spam the biggest unit before a-moving to victory.

Doing this in PA would be a bit unusual, because the basic Commander already has everything you ever need. It would need to start off as a heavily flawed or low ranking unit, lest a newbie chokes down on every gameplay element at once. Wait, isn't that how the TotalA and Supcom commanders start out?

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I'm not entirely sure that campaign design and unit design are really all that different. The unit design creates a test map, and the test map makes sure the unit design works. Then you slap on some John Patrick Lowrie, and it's a campaign!

The only problem is the cost associated with an entire campaign vs a tutorial. I'd definately dig a campaign, but I think they were pretty explicit when they said it wouldn't happen due to budget constraints.

But you're already building the maps as part of the testing. The campaign story is just a sugar sweet candy coated wrapper.

For example, take a scout that is equipped solely with a reclaim beam. The test map? You have 2 extractor points and wreckage EVERYWHERE. The mission? "Hurp durp, here's an urban world, we're giving you scouts, now go kill stuff".

It may not be AAA, but then again we weren't promised a campaign at all.

I wish it were that easy. But it isn't.

But it's not as difficult as you think. Even Google knows the score.
starcraft medic mission
starcraft bunker mission
starcraft reaper mission

So many parts of the Starcraft campaign were ways of testing the units, testing the map tools, and making sure that the modding features work. When you add it all together, Uber is going to design half a campaign just by building the game.

But we, as fans, can make our campaing. We have almost a year.

I would love a campaign, even if it came in the far future, but at the same time a solid tutorial is the bare-bones most useful thing to accomplish. If you can get the player to understand the key concepts of the game, everything else can fall into place.

As an example: One thing I'd be worried about when using a campaign as an introduction is that it can encourage the WRONG mindset in a new player. In TA, SupCom, and even Starcraft, it was relatively easy (bar a mission without base building) for a new player to simply turtle until they had built up a massive force or superweapon, rather than seek a solution based off the newly introduced features or improvising. Its an effective strategy for the campaign, but it doesn't translate well to co-op games or multiplayer. Albeit the campaign can teach you the ins and outs of various strategies and units, but only if the new player really works to follow the 'lesson'.

A tutorial is shorter, sweeter, and explains everything in a simple format. From there, the new player has all the basic tools they need to get started with skirmishes against an AI or co-op play with someone else. Ultimately however, the only way to become good at any game like this is to learn by doing, and seek advice from the experienced players.

Sadly, a tutorial won't have a huge amount of backstory compared to a campaign... but does PA really have much of that? I dunno, hopefully.

Yes, but they were designing for there to be a campaign from the start. If you're just going to test the units and don't plan to have a campaign at launch, you're probably going to skip on a lot of stuff.
Also I think it's better to have no campaign over a crappy campaign. And that's what you'll end up with unless you put some serious care in there.

I've no doubt we will, and it'll be awesome. But that's too late to be able to afford not having an excellent tutorial.

They were designing a movie from the start. A great deal of expense was due to the high quality storytelling (0:00-0:35) and million dollar cutscenes. Neither of those apply here.

What IS relevant are the high number of modding and design features being built into the game engine from day 1. The best stress test is to build a scenario, play the scenario, and work out all the kinks. If you change something major, you have pre fabbed scenarios to test and make sure it works. That's not very different from building a set of missions for players to use.

It's all about working smarter, not harder.

What's the difference between a tutorial and a campaign?

One tells you how to play. The other tells you how to play, using a story.

A series of test maps becomes tutorials. A series of tutorials becomes a series of short stories. A series of short stories becomes a campaign. That's all there is to it.

What about a mode of Galactic War that acts like a tutorial? You would start out with a limited tech tree, just like the AI, which would be rigged to build more of whatever is weak to the player's newest units. Add a little text-based blurb to each loading screen about the new units or possibly a help button then BAM! It's a tutorial. And a campaign, I guess.