What's missing from the manual?

[Norfenstein]

Thanks for all the great suggestions guys. It's going to take me a while to sort through everything and figure out how to redo the manual (so don't expect anything for a while), but I'll definitely put drafts up for public review once I do have something (I might have more questions to ask all of you before that too).

Also, I don't know who runs it, but I've noticed that www.tremwiki.com is becoming a pretty good resource and is considerably more accessible than the manual (and probably less likely to be out of date), so I'd encourage anyone interested to contribute to that. Even once the manual gets revised a wiki will probably be a better place for strategy stuff.

[benmachine]

I think some kind of mention of the fact that you hit eggs at their base and not halfway up is essential. Everyone gets this wrong initially.

[Vector_Matt]

We need information on how to repair human structures.

[|Nex|TrEmMa]

Some of the mentioned additions are already in the FAQ, maybe find a way of integrating the two?

[Foobicam]

Also, I don't know who runs it, but I've noticed that www.tremwiki.com is becoming a pretty good resource and is considerably more accessible than the manual (and probably less likely to be out of date), so I'd encourage anyone interested to contribute to that. Even once the manual gets revised a wiki will probably be a better place for strategy stuff.

The wiki is great, with both class/structure information extracted from header files and strategy guides.   Perhaps it will be more up to date than a manual could ever be, but a manual has one thing a wiki does not: an editor with control over content.   Plagiarize the wiki content into the revised manual where appropriate, but don't think that the wiki has made a manual superfluous.

What I'd like to see, in addition to the excellent suggestions earlier in this thread:
1) an explanation of sprinting - who can use it and what it does.  I'm confused by a human running at precisely at the speed of a dretch for the full length of ATCS -- humans shouldn't be able to run that fast :-).  I'm confused by l33t goons running faster than my goon even though I've tried pouncing, jumping and sprinting (which appears to have no effect). A column on walk/run/sprint speeds, in addition to the evo and health points columns for various classes, would be great.

2) a description of miscellaneous tricks like dretch punt/catapult (which I've never seen explained) and dretch lifts (I have personally carried a s1 granger up to the second floor in the elevator room in Karith after being told what to do, and have seen a trapped tyrant rescued from the basement shaft in Tremor).  Any other useful cooperative behaviors?

3) an official statement in the manual that alien crosshairs (and other config file edits) are not considered cheats :-).   Lava's position on this is untenable, and the 5 pages of forum discussion on it is, umm, indescribably incoherent.

[benplaut]

how about some explanation of lingo?

goon, inc, nade, decon, etc.

[Norfenstein]

an official statement in the manual that alien crosshairs (and other config file edits) are not considered cheats

Aliens should be getting official crosshairs in the next version so this shouldn't be an issue.

how about some explanation of lingo?

goon, inc, nade, decon, etc.

Excellent idea, I'll do that.


Keep 'em coming if you got 'em.

[Foobicam]

How about how to use demos - playing back at .25x speed, changing follow viewpoint, etc.

E.g. information from: http://tremulous.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=2702&highlight=demo+speed

[vcxzet]

How about how to use demos - playing back at .25x speed, changing follow viewpoint, etc.

cg_thirdperson 1
recording avi

[ShadowNinjaDudeMan]

The manual lacked some inmformation, which is actually really important to using tremulous to the most it can give you.
I found it didnt tell me about:

1. How to set your name
2. How to colour your writing
3. A rundown on how to set up a server and
4. An explanation on what the terms like "Zombie Time" actually mean
5. Different server commands (v. usefull)
6. Info about admins
7. Detailed information on each of the classes and weapons like:
    Damage per second
    Speed
    Range
    Health
    and so on and so forth
8. A guide to voting
9. Maybe for younger players, a guide to ,internet safety (but doesnt matter)

It is quite amazing how much rather essential information  the manual just doesnt tell you.
Sure, it is a nice friendly manual for total noobs, but after a while they will notice servers, voting and coloured writing, and annoy other players byu asking them how to do these thigs.

Therefore, a lot of pain and annoyance can easily be saved by making the manual, an incredibly detailed analysis of the game.

However most noobs simply do not care about these technicalities, so you could put the simple stuff at the front, and the complicated and techy stuff at the back.

Thx for (if) you reading this

             

[kozak6]

And Sudden Death needs to be explained.

[lpd]

a manual has one thing a wiki does not: an editor with control over content.

Very true - otherwise the wiki wouldn't be a wiki

There is now a "getting started" page on tremwiki:

http://www.tremwiki.com/getting_started

I put into it all the basic stuff I felt stupid for not knowing.  Feel free to add more.

- LPD

[deadoon]

old stuff but a problem i had and no1 helped me with i had figured out after a while
HOW TO GET NEW WEAPONS
most don't know how

and building help and tips section

    btw fix these they look sorta like cellphones (to me at least)

[Nux]

How about..

Congratulations! You are one of the 2% of tremulous users to have actually looked at this manual.

Then it can go into detail about exactly how great the reader is. The rest writes itself!

..oh, and is it possible to put greater emphasis on the fact that letting yourself get killed by the enemy again and again ('feeding') is not good?

[.Long-Range]

I would have appreciated a little paragraph explaining how to earn credits and how to use those credits to buy things such as weapons. My first few rounds were played with only the basic rifle. I then realized that I had to sell  the basic rifle to unlock the ability to purchase better weapons.

[player1]

Replacing Damaged Structures

At what point can you no longer replace destroyed structures? If it isn't sudden death, shouldn't an advckit be able to place turrets/teslas as others are destroyed? Is this some kind of lock on camping humanity's ability to endlessly place defenses? Again: NOT SUDDEN DEATH. Late in S3, not yet SD, server: SST (iirc). Just wondering. I'm usually pretty busy repairing (I just discovered repairing the reactor and am now shocked when others don't do it) but I like to toss down a "that wasn't there b4" tesla to mess with rants. I thought you could do it as turrets were destroyed.

PlayerOne plays the pubservers, where the rules change a lot
and some people seem to have strange & mystical powers  :eek:  :-?  :roll:  

[Norfenstein]

Um, your teammates are probably rebuilding structures elsewhere before you do.

[player1]

Um, your teammates are probably rebuilding structures elsewhere before you do.

I mean like on ATCS where I know no-one else is building. Also, I don't see any alerts that anyone else is building structures (Joe Blow built a turret). Remember, I'm talking about public servers:

http://tremulous.net/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3932

Is it possible to limit the ability to replace damaged strutures? Can the admin set the server so you can't rebuild after you reach some parameter? I got the message that I had to decon b4 I could build. Yet my base was destroyed (like 15 turrets gone), and I wasn't getting build alerts that teammates were building. What gives? Still had reactor, 100% reactor "health". Just wondering. It's hard to learn the game when on some of these servers, because you're not sure how many things they've changed, or are currently mucking about with. It's never the same way twice. :-?  :eek:  

[Dance Commander]

sometimes there is a lag time between the building being destroyed, and the build points being returned to your team's points.  ive noticed it is longer on some servers, and non existant on others.  i dont think its a setting, but it might be... im not a techhead.

[blackelf]

Examples of using command line and basic server configuration.

They should be both in online game manual and in linux man page, and they are in neither.

I would like to see:

EXAMPLES
  tremulous-server +set sv_cheats 1  
    run cheats enabled server
  tremulous-server +set net_ip 19.168.1.1
    run LAN only server
  tremulous-server +set ? foo
    run server starting with map foo

and so on

[Lord Baxter]

maybe having some sort of coding that says that you can only open the tremulous executable if you have at least opened the manual file. secondly, the manual is in pdf format and it looks about as exciting as a sheet of A4 paper, make it look more awsome, like the title screen for tremulous.

[jr2]

A simple strategy guide for both aliens and humans, covering the basics of fighting, and base building / maintaining / moving...  Just my 2c...

[Norfenstein]

Just a note, I am still checking this thread, but to be honest I've put off touching the manual until we're settled with the gameplay. I'll probably be borrowing heavily from the wiki(s) too, especially with regards to presentation.

[UtterNewbie]

I ran tremulous for the first time last night, so at the risk of being flamed by all the "RTFM you noob" types (and since you asked what was missing from the manual), I'll post my observations.

   I took a quick read through the manual (wondering which buttons were the default for "secondary attack" or "activate upgrade" and even skimmed the section on particle stuff towards the end (having no idea what that would be used for -- writing my own mod perhaps???)

  I fired up tremulous and didn't see any obvious way of getting to the options to see what keys would be used for what, and decided my best bet would be to fire up a private server so I could wander around in the maps and learn how to jump, pounce, how to use different weapons, etc.  Only...  Bummer. When I fired up a server, I couldn't see any way to join it. Hmph. Ok, I'll figure that out later as I'm sure there must be a way to run a server (perhaps with no gui console?) and join it on the same machine, or I'll just fire up another linux box to run the server on it for experimentation.

   So I bravely joined a server that I had a sub 100 ping on intending to spectate and try to A) figure out some of the maps and B) figure out some of the strategies, tips, and techniques missing in the manual. It said not to join as a builder (see, I *did* read it) and to start as a rifleman, so I figured I'd try to divine how to play different roles by watching the better players.  Too bad there are no demos -- or at least none I know about from the manual.

   After watching a while, I see the humans are gradually losing their base defenses.  Ok, I decide I'll join and try to guard the builder. Only, I find that I suck trying to kill advanced mauraders and tyrants with a rifle. 'Course I didn't know yet that I should be at least buying light armor and a helmet and ammo before diving into the fray. I could see I was not doing well, so I decided since I knew where the turrets used to be I could try helping to rebuild them.  That didn't go well either.  After we lost I went back to spectating to see if I could figure out why I was so utterly useless with the rifle and why I wasn't (apparently) killing bugs as well as those I was spectating.  But I got kicked for being "AFK" on a full server (12 users out of 24? - ok, whatever).

   So... Time to join an empty server and just wander around the new maps and try to sort out how to use the armory, how to repair structures (is that possible?) etc.  After a few minutes, someone joined. I said "I'm just looking around and trying to figure things out."  I found the same thing.I could blast away with the rifle, and appear to be hammering the li'l bug only to find that it wouldn't die and I would after being hit a few times. (sigh)  Worse, it musta been against the other player's religion to talk or they'd taken a vow of silence or something as they were not remotely interested in offering any tips or even critiques or even just answering simple questions. K, whatever.

   After a while I went to a lightly loaded server to spectate again. This one had two humans and one alien. The humans had built repeaters right up to the room the aliens spawn in and had multiple turrets and tesla generators by every exit from this room. Hmph. Ok, I'll join and try to help the one alien player and see if I can play bugs any better.

   After dying a dozen or so times it was pretty apparent that it was hopeless. The other alien says "Let's start over - this is impossible" to which I agreed. One human replies "No, it's possible I've seen it done". Of course, no details follow on how.

   It seems to me that nobody is remotely interested in helping newbies out. I dunno if it's because so much hinges on the number of kills or what, but rather than taking it easy on a newbie and explaining the way things work or offering help, everyone is more interested in just killing the easy meat to get the kill. Hmph.  

   Eventually the map changed and precisely the same thing happened. I thought I'd try to join the human side to split up the clan-tag-equipped players and perhaps even the game out but wasn't fast enough -- they both joined the human side and I had the choice of aliens or spectator. Bah.

   I went back to a different server and again had to play alien (no ranged attacks as the tiny bug so technique seems to be pretty dang important to get any kills and you can't play any other type of bug without getting those kills... sigh) and after an hour or so I finally got one... 1 kill.  I remember the manual talking about trying to bite the head but I'm damned if I can see how. The little bug can't jump higher than about knee height as far as I can tell.  Other players are able to do it so it's clearly possible to play. I just don't know how and just as clearly nobody is remotely interested in offering tips to newbies.

   Back in the day when I played TFC, I had two servers -- one was a (mostly) public server and the other was a test server where I'd explore new maps or try new things out. But when my brother or I would run across newbies we'd at least try to help 'em learn and not just pound on 'em. If you discourage 'em, it won't be any fun for them after all and they'll just quit. If they were interested in learning about how to do something, we'd take 'em over to the private "test" server where we could show them (things like how to conc-jump, how to use different weapons better, where to build sentry guns, where NOT to, what was considered rude or cheap,  what sorta things would piss off their teammates (things not todo), etc.

   Thanks to this forum, I just found out about the tremwiki. Good. I'll go there next and see if I can figure out some of the do's and don'ts and how to start up my own private server where I can learn how to do things without being in the heat of battle and having either a gaggle of angry players berating all the newbies or a gaggle of the other side just gobbling up kills and ensuring the newbies have as little fun as possible.

   I'll skim the forums too for the same sort of do's 'n don'ts. Basically, if the manual doesn't have a "read this before joining a game" section of the manual CLEARLY stating what a newbie should and should not do, the uber-players shouldn't be surprised when newbies join and feed the other side kills. This section should be more specific and contain more details than just "don't play a builder on your first game".

   Anyway, please don't see this as a rant. It's not intended that way -- I just thought I'd post the newbie perspective while it was still fresh in mind. I'm off to tremwiki and the other forum posts...

[UtterNewbie]

One other thing just occurred to me.  The manual mentions a gaggle of bindings (commands that can be bound to keys) but no indication of how this is to be done. Anything that avoids that pesky build menu in the game or the other menus should be, IMHO documented clearly in the manual too.

There's also mention of "boost" -- must be a run function of sorts. Something else I clearly need to learn about by experimentation since it's not really discussed in the manual.  That'll be one of the first things I play with once I get my own private server going to experiment on. :-)

Maybe a list of possible, recommended key bindings would be useful in the manual...

[Norfenstein]

Just so you know why the manual failed you so utterly: it was written for Tremulous-the-mod, not Tremulous-the-standalone-game, so I assumed a lot of Quake 3 knowledge. Thanks for describing your experience.

[Plague Bringer]

Hey, UtterNewbie. I find it's easier to get headbites with the little dretchies when you ping lower then 100, so stay on the nice ping servers. What you have to do is look...oh, about a few inches above the human's head. Constult Player1 on these forums for help, he was the last memorable newbie to join the forums but he's advancing greatly! I'm sure he'll jump at the chance to help you out!

Look at that bite range!

[Lord Baxter]

norfenstein your comment puzzled me. the game is a mod of quake 3 and that might entail having a copy of quake 3 to play it on but you didn't change the manual when it became standalone?

[UtterNewbie]

norfenstein your comment puzzled me. the game is a mod of quake 3 and that might entail having a copy of quake 3 to play it on but you didn't change the manual when it became standalone?

I imagine that it was a matter of not having time to duplicate the entire quake manual (perhaps copyright issues too???  dunno)  Such is the nature of mods 'n new opensource projects. Not a big deal now that I know about the forums and the wiki.

Thanks for the tips on headbiting PlagueBringer. I'll give it another go later this week when I get a chance to play again.

The good news is that after skimming the forums and doing some more spectating, I managed to reach double-digit kills (high twenties as I recall) last night and was a bit better than "utterly useless". :-)  Progress, of a sort...

[jr2]

K, I saw how you get headbites, now can anyone tell me how to get a bead on a dretch?  Humans (n00b humans, anyway) are defenseless against them.  When I'm a dretch, any experienced player toasts me immediately, no matter what weapon they have.  When I'm a human, I couldn't shoot a dretch if, err... well, if my life depended on it.  So I die! :p  It's not uncommon for me to be killed like ten times within 5 minutes and not score a single alien kill.  (unless I manage to gang up on a bigger alien with some buddies).

So, what's the secret to aiming?  Heck, I can't even hit a dretch with a pain saw!

EDIT: An idea for the manual (sort of): how about a simple training mission - it doesn't need to have AI or anything, maybe just a scripted spectator walkthrough of a few battles, with a voiceover (ie, have a team of people play out a training battle(s) for the Spectator, whose movements are scripted to watch the fight... then just use a voice over (or text) to explain everything.