Tremulous tutorials

[Urcscumug]

Talking on the flamethrower thread has given me an idea which I'd like to discuss:

- Tutorial mod (Well, NO. Not few characters of text on screen. Actual ACTION with explanation - and sound - and cookies)

He was talking about the Warsow in-game tutorials (which are most like entry #2, below).

Here are the ideas that have spawned after that:

1) I don't see what's stopping anybody from doing a tutorial video (or an entire series) for Trem. Grab in-game demo, convert to video+sound, edit, add commentary, encode, distribute. I've already seen excellent examples, albeit few:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MEDVF9Xj-Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZJc3p0A8yQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjNf05AeHtY

2) Granted, in-game tutorials are very cool because only the commentary track takes any space, the rest being in demo format (I'm guessing). But I'm not sure if the Trem client is capable of playing demos that switch first-player with spectator (ie. completely free) point-of-view. I'm quite sure it can't play demos that have a custom soundtrack added (there being no such thing).

3) I was actually contemplating another approach to tutorials, one I've seen in games such as the venerable Oni from Bungie: interactive tutorials. It's basically a map which forces you to go through the basics step by step, with console commentaries.

In Oni, the tutorial featured a series of rooms where the player was given simple tasks and the game would detect when they were finished and allow access to the next room. Things like hitting targets with weapons, taking on one, two or three enemies at a time, jumping, running, using switches etc.

It may sound tedious but I think it would be an excellent method of introducing new players to the game.

Now, questions for (3):
* Can the map engine detect when such things happen: all the bots in a room have died, player has reached a certain spot, player has activated a certain switch.
* When that happens, can it make it so that a new door opens, which then shuts forever once the player has passed it?
* Is there an easy way to package such a map for new players? Even assuming it would be a "normal" map (ie. not require any customization of the engine), it would still need the local server to be running and the tutorial map to be installed.
* Actually, forget about there being no customizations. You would need bots, possibly evo/credits manipulations, spawning the player as a certain alien or with certain weapons etc.
* Is it possible that if a player fails a task to respawn in the same room, and the room be reset? Ie. bots respawned, objects replaced etc.
* Detection of "failure". It's correlated with "detect when things happen" above, but reacts if those things haven't happened in a certain amount of time or if the player dies, grabs the wrong weapon, runs out of credits etc.

[gimhael]

When you want bots, you need a custom qvm anyway, and in the qvm you can do all of these things.

Edit: I think you'd have to make a tutorial on how to download the tutorial map (you know, autodownload off by default etc.).

[Ellohir]

In-game tutorials are great. Nice idea. I hope Devs or anyone starts working on it.

About your questions:

1.- I know that reaching places and hitting switches can be done. The bot thing, I am not so sure, but I think so. The problem with bots is needing a new QVM file.

2.- I think this is easy to do.

3.- Bots would need mod, or being installed in a remote server.

4.- Spawning with different than default is posible. I think this could be done by moving platforms that kill the player and destroy the spawns, so next respawn is on a different place.

5.- I don't know about that.

6.- I don't know.

I've seen MissionOne and how the GTKRadiant can make a lot of things to happen in a map. I think this kind of map is posible and, if well done, could be a great success.

[Asvarox]

soundtrack thing is already done with voip. In when you record a demo at server with VOIP support, everything from voip is saved, so you can playback it. No i didn't said that tremfusion is the only one client that can do that

Urban Terror has demo tutorial showing what's new in the game compared to any other similar (sliding etc.). In Americas Army you had to pass the training in order to start playing. But UrT tutorial wasn't explaining much, and AA's training was damn so boring. So I'd be cool if we have nice, Tremulous atmosphere fitted tutorial, like "how to build", "how to move on walls" etc. with voice (for aliens talking Overmind  ). Bot would be really useful, so tutorial could contain things like "build 3 rets properly, so they will kill a dragoon without being destroyed by it". But make it short. Once a player finished the training and he can start play at public servers.

From technical point of view, in addition to voice there should be translatable transcription. Also, server administrators should be able to decide if they want to let noob-players-that-didnt-make-the-training play at their server or not. 

[Bissig]

I don't think mandatory tutorials is the way to go. Just make them optional like in War§ow albeit at the same time pointed out clearly, so most beginners will watch/use them.

[Asvarox]

I don't think mandatory tutorials is the way to go. Just make them optional like in War§ow albeit at the same time pointed out clearly, so most maybe few beginners will watch/use them.

"IRWANTZTOPLAYGAMENAOZ"

[Amanieu]

I was planning on having a tutorial as part of a larger single player campaign mode in Tremfusion. They would be made using lua scripts to customize map behaviour, and with Tremfusion's botlib-based bots. The map scripts would control the bots, play cinematics, play voice hints, etc.

[Urcscumug]

Single player seems the best way to go.

So, it's plausible. OK, some more ideas that could help us further on the way to make this happen:

* It needs to be installed locally, so this means it needs the Trem server installed. And configured to listen on 127.0.0.1 by default. But I'm not sure that's the way to go. Perhaps something like /devmap ie. serveless, would be better.

The way I understand it, a server runs only one map at any given moment, and once a game starts the time and other map characteristics evolve and cannot be undone. The immediate consequence of this is that you can't have common training on a public server, not with the kind of tutorials I've been imagining. It's a single player thing, on a custom map, in a carefully controlled environment.

So, a naive question: doesn't it seem more like /devmap? Could it be possible ie. a serverless mode? Would it be better? Easier to achieve?

* It will need different tutorials for aliens and humans, and different for soldier and builder.

The soldier tutorials would need to point out the particulars of certain weapons/classes and make the player use them to achieve certain tasks. The builder tutorials would need to point out common do's and don't's. Both types of tutorials would need to pit the player against bots at some point.

We need to start thinking up some actual training scenarios.

Think "absolute newb" ie. doesn't know any of the things we take for granted.

Some of the biggest issues I've seen new players struggle with on the newbie server (in no particular order):

* They don't know an acid tube from a defence computer. They need to be taught the structures.

* They have a hard time understanding that they need armor, that they need it every time they respawn, and what armor they need.

* They tend to go for the flashy/cool weapons and misuse them horribly. They need to be taught the finer points of each one, weighing the cost to usefulness ratio and what situation each weapon is appropriate for.

* They panic during combat and react stupidly: empty their weapons at nothing, try to run away blindly and bump into walls or get stuck in corners or bends, shoot/slash at their teammates.

* Involuntary TK, team bleed, wasting ammo, ejecting half-empty clips and generally all kinds of dont's. Same goes for aliens.

* Alien wallwalk is a particularly tough one, esp. if the walls are full of decorations. Even after the 1st shock wears off and they start wallwalking better, it's very hard to make use of it properly. And when they've started wallwalking around semi-well, they have no idea how to combine just moving around with attack.

* Don't get me started on building. Well, you can imagine how bad it is. Human newb builders seem to have a soft spot for turrets and pile them all happily in one place, like the lower entrance in ATCS. Whereas the alien newb builders seem to prefer blocking entriances with barricades. I can understand the feeling of insecurity that makes them react like that. They need to be taught better.

I can go on. If anybody has questions regarding newbie behaviour please ask, on the Newbie Training server you get more than the usual share of absolute newcomers.

[Ellohir]

I'm not a mapper/dev, but I have an idea of how to do this.

To create the map, guides could be sounds or CP messages. The "Tutorial mode" would be always ON, of course. How to implement this, whether if it's better one map for all, one for each race or one for each class/weapon... I think devs would prefer the last option and simply make the "tutorial server" change between this ones.

To enter the tutorial mode, we could have a new interface. I know some HUD's have very improved menus, which allow to see the screenshots and demos made. This tutorial would be another "main menu" button. The submenu would show all the mini-tutorials. Clicking over it would create a new localhost server with the maps and connect us to it. When finished, it would come back to the tutorials submenu.

I do really think this is the way to make it and it doesn't look too hard. Just need some mappers with good imagination and someone good at HUD's. Doesn't require mayor code modifications.


EDIT: I'm happy to hear that Amanieu is interested on it. That guy knows how to do good stuff ^^

[Urcscumug]

What you describe seems more like demos (which you pick from the HUD). I agree that's probably the easiest option. But it still misses the ability to combine 1st-person view with free (spectator) view. No demo is really complete without both, IMHO. And I don't know if such demos can be done.

If there will be tutorial-maps, one issue I see is that you won't be able to pick the one you want. You will have to connect to the local server and it will give you whatever map is in rotation at that point. Sure, you can request a map change but it's not exactly intuitive.

We're talking complete newbies. You can't expect them to know console commands. They can be expected to see a main-screen entry called "Tutorials", and beyond that a list of, say, six entries: "Basics", "Soldier", "Builder" (and perhaps "Advanced"), in both Human and Alien varieties.

[Ellohir]

I was not talking about demos but playing real maps. And you CAN pick the tutorial you want, you just need to create a new local server for each training. If you create it just when you click at it, it will allways give the very first map on the map rotation.

[Urcscumug]

So, as many servers as tutorial maps? Because I really think you should be able to jump to any of the tutorials at any time and not wait for rotation.

On the other hand, having 8 servers if you have 8 tutorial maps is not really very nice, is it? The middle ground would be starting a server from the client, which server would run just the indicated map and die when the client disconnects.

It sounds like a dirty hack but then again I don't know much about the Trem server innards.

You can probably see why I thought that something similar to /devmap (ie. exclusively in-client) would be a "cleaner" approach.

[CreatureofHell]

I was not talking about demos but playing real maps. And you CAN pick the tutorial you want, you just need to create a new local server for each training. If you create it just when you click at it, it will allways give the very first map on the map rotation.

The create server button can be used in this respect as it creates the server on the LAN so you can close it and restart it any time.

[Amanieu]

Starting a tutorial will be the same as /devmap tutorial1 (but from a nice ui). It will run inside the client and won't require an external server.

[Urcscumug]

On a sidenote, if something like that will be possible, it will probably also be possible to start a bot game in the same manner, right? I miss that from other games, where you can use the UI to quickly start a game with a custom amount of bots placed of teams and skills of your choosing.

I'm not saying bots are a substitute for online play against other humans; but they're useful for shooter training and for those dreadful times when your Internet connection drops.

Right now, in order to get bots I have to get a QVM and run it in a local server. I'm not exactly an unskilled person, yet I've been planning to do that for a while now and somehow haven't got around to it. I'm just reluctant to put the effort in.