Tutorials most wished for.

[PokerChen]

If you could create an in-game tutorial on one topic or aspect of the game, what would it be?

Also, to Keith/Chris: I'm curious as to what kind of effort is required to make a tutorial scenario?

[keith.lamothe]

Also, to Keith/Chris: I'm curious as to what kind of effort is required to make a tutorial scenario?

I've never actually made one from scratch, though the framework for doing so certainly seems like it would be easily applicable to new ones.

The main reason I haven't tried to make more is that every tutorial has to be updated for every major version because of how much stuff is changed.  I even have to update them partially several times between major versions in some cases because of major mechanic changes (metal merging with crystal, etc) so as to not leave the tutorials totally broken.  All in all it's a significant chunk of "overhead work" that I don't want to make bigger.

And even with the updating that does happen to un-break the tutorials and update the text, etc, the _concepts_ of the tutorials gets more and more out of date.  For instance, the bit where it makes you manually build harversters.  Why?   Possibly just to make sure you realize what those things are, which perhaps is reason enough.

Or the bit where you raid the ion cannon in the intermediate tutorial.  Yes, it's a good technique to know, but not really all that super-important nowadays.  Though perhaps that will become relevant again if I get around to majorly buffing those and making them rarer, etc.

And I suppose it really needs a bit in there about hacking.  Possibly sabotage-hacking a fort that's guarded by anti-bomber stuff

But for more advanced stuff like "how to use Riot Starships to neutralize surprisingly large hordes of AI ships", "how to get/use golems", etc, ultimately it'd be better if those were available in a form that didn't require the game itself to be updated significantly for those to continue being valuable.  On the other hand, people do seem less likely to watch videos than to play in-game tutorials.  If they wanted to watch videos they'd... well, watch videos.

[x4000]

Creating shortish tutorials isn't too bad overall (like the easy ones), but even there the amount of testing and iteration time is just something that eats up time.  Probably a solid day for the smaller tutorials just because of that sort of factor.

And then, really, the big thing is trying to keep these updated over the long haul.  Making some tweaks to the existing ones to just get rid of that bit about manually building harvesters and instead doing something more useful would not be all that difficult, honestly.  Removing or adding a step is comparably painless, because the amount of testing is a lot less.

All that said, I think that trying to manage those stupid tutorials is one of the most tricky and annoying things with the game, which is one part of why our later titles have that sort of thing integrated into the main game itself, heh.

[PokerChen]

 Overall, I'd probably think of hacking as the one mechanic that could use a tutorial in the current meta-game state. A lot of specific questions can be answered on the forums (in that sense this topic is self-defeating).

 In terms of actually making the effort to create tutorial content, I'm inclined more along the lines of the possibility of community contributions, which are very short (as one would like) and plays out like an interactive manual rather than an actual scenario. After laying down tight boundaries on the core mechanics to be explored, it's mostly grunt work setting up assets.
 - These can be tagged clearly with version number/content, so that it can be auto-flagged as being potentially out of date.
 - You, the dev, don't have to be as responsible for them per se. If I can just download them like a Prison Architect prison and run them.
 - On the other hand, the advance stuff still has the prospect of being covered by someone else.
 - Real example, Kahuna's guide last year: minelaying, beach-heading, setting up defenses. Minefields aren't going to go away anytime soon, and the real thing you want to take away from it is the ability to do line placement, saving you lots of RSI.

 Although, I'm guessing that the tutorial locations are not simply in a locations folder? I haven't actually checked.

[keith.lamothe]

Overall, I'd probably think of hacking as the one mechanic that could use a tutorial in the current meta-game state.

Yep, there's now a big honking new thing on the top resource bar that's visible at all times.  If the official-version tutorial doesn't at least tell you what it is... not so great

In terms of actually making the effort to create tutorial content, I'm inclined more along the lines of the possibility of community contributions, which plays out like an interactive manual rather than an actual scenario. After laying down tight boundaries on the core mechanics to be explored, it's mostly grunt work setting up assets.
 - These can be tagged clearly with version number/content, so that it can be auto-flagged as being potentially out of date.
 - You, the dev, don't have to be responsible for them per se.
 - On the other hand, the advance stuff still has the prospect of being covered by someone else.
 - Real example, Kahuna's guide last year: minelaying, beach-heading, setting up defenses. Minefields aren't going to go away anytime soon, and the real thing you want to take away from it is the ability to do line placement, saving you lots of RSI.

Do you think it would work to basically have each topic have a wiki article (with text, and screenshots where appropriate) and a linked youtube video (unless for some reason it really doesn't need one), and then in-game have it display an index of these (which could be pulled from a small xml file on our server, perhaps, with info on last-updated-for, authors, etc)?  That way, while they might become out of date, changes to the game will never "break" them in the sense of how the in-game tutorials changes can crash or enter an error state due to changes, etc.

That does mean the player'd need an internet connection, but since it's basically "Advanced Reference Material" I don't think that's a huge problem.

[x4000]

Personally I do think that would work, yes.  That said, doing video integration into the game itself is also something that is a possibility.  Videos take up a surprising amount of space pretty fast, though, so that's a pretty big downside.  We could quadruple the size of our disk space requirements with just a couple of videos.

[Draco18s]

Personally I do think that would work, yes.  That said, doing video integration into the game itself is also something that is a possibility.  Videos take up a surprising amount of space pretty fast, though, so that's a pretty big downside.  We could quadruple the size of our disk space requirements with just a couple of videos.

Clearly they should be procedurally generated!

[keith.lamothe]

Personally I do think that would work, yes.  That said, doing video integration into the game itself is also something that is a possibility.  Videos take up a surprising amount of space pretty fast, though, so that's a pretty big downside.  We could quadruple the size of our disk space requirements with just a couple of videos.

Yea, the main issues in my mind are disk space and that an online video is much easier to update.  Adding 100MB of disk space on the install footprint is one thing, adding 100MB to an update's size is another.

[keith.lamothe]

Clearly they should be procedurally generated!

"Now on {Planet X} you will find {Challenge Y}.  We're going to show you how to solve it with Warheads."

And done!

[The Hunter]

If only there was a way to modify objectives via cheats, user made mini-tutorial saves made with creative ilostit usage would actually be a possibility, haha.

[keith.lamothe]

If only there was a way to modify objectives via cheats, user made mini-tutorial saves made with creative ilostit usage would actually be a possibility, haha.

Scenarios yes, but an actual user-friendly tutorial would really be much more complex.  And they'd be likely to "break" (at least in terms of the conditions/objectives/etc becoming non-sensible) when changes were made to the game.  That's part of the reason I haven't pursued official scenario-editor support.

[PokerChen]

 Yeah okay, links to the wiki can also work. There have been a decent number of individuals who put work into making various tips and guides, which I personally think tend to become inaccessible over time especially if on the forums, e.g., due to being on page 17 of thread NaN.

 In any case, you almost have a Civilopaedia in the AI War wiki, it being the most complete of all the titles. Some limited game integration would not be a bad thing. I suspect that most people playing would have sufficient internet access to be able to pull up a text and image wiki, if not the video.

 = = =
 So, in order for scenarios not to break constantly, I presume the scope is going to be limited to sanbox saves with player notes stuck to planets...

[The Hunter]

And they'd be likely to "break" (at least in terms of the conditions/objectives/etc becoming non-sensible) when changes were made to the game.  That's part of the reason I haven't pursued official scenario-editor support.

Yeah, I've seen that in quite alot of other games, still mod-maker in me can hope...

In any case, you almost have a Civilopaedia in the AI War wiki, it being the most complete of all the titles. Some limited game integration would not be a bad thing.

Thats actually a pretty good idea, maybe could be moved even further to automatically gather data from the game itself and auto-update stats and stuff with manual updating only needed on tips and stuff.

[Nodor]

I agree that some tutorials would be helpful.  But, I think the easiest route to make this happen for someone is to make some explanatory You tube videos and then get a sticky link on the forums.  The best example I've seen of this is Purge's "Welcome to Dota, you suck" introduction videos.    Given that the games have similar levels of complexity and constant change, his focus on tactics and concepts over specific ships has stood up well over time.   In that vein, some intro video ideas:

Building a chokepoint defense system
Fleetball tactics and movement
Hacking setup and execution
Raiding systems to take out high priority targets
How to manage: "Dark Spire, Astro Trains, Exo Waves, Miners, Cookie Monster, etc."
Warhead Usage
Fallen Spire Shard Escort

Slightly less useful as they would need to be kept up to date:
Spire Ship Overview (those from Reptite, etc.)
Golem Overview
Champion Overview
Zenith Trader

[PokerChen]

 I'm sure Diazo would appreciate not being call upon to run his megascript again, applying the 100x down scaling of stats and then doing the mass upload.

 Although a series of defense articles would be nice, I don't believe choke-point games are meant to be forever. That is, planet-caps on turrets have gone a long way in making defense-in-depth and divide-and-conquer strategies competitive, which warrant their own sub-sections on the topic of defense.
 I'm inclined to restrict the first linked topics to ones general enough, dumb enough, to apply to every player.