Help beginners ?

[Patate]

A big problem for Tremulous is that it stills really hard for beginners to have fun playing.

- When they start, resolution and brightness are much too low, they make the game look bad
It could be usefull to auto-balance resolution with computer abilities. (It changed a lot since 2006)
Settings aren't in default menu, not easy too find.

- There is nowhere to learn playing, the only way is to join a server a go.
So, as humans, even if aiming looks like other Q3-like games, they die almost instantly because they aren't prepared to avoid aliens. If they try to use ckit, they get denybuild or kicked because noone teached them how to build a strategic base, and not spamming turrets anywhere.
As aliens, it's almost impossible for them to touch humans, again because they never got helped. Building is perhaps easier but stills difficult :/
Also, don't forget those who don't even know how to evolve, change weapon or build :/

So, there could be a training camp, in solo-mode, with different levels in both teams for every alien/weapon, explaining new players how to fight, like in many other fps.
Aim at the head, walk on walls, don't block teammates, buy armour, throw nades, run fast, build in corners, and also change your name, settings, controls, ...
A ghost shows the way and you do the same, that's the easiest way to understand Tremulous.

That would prevent people from 20min testing and uninstall, which happens much too often. 

[Bissig]

The way war§ow trains new players is rather cool and supportive. I do not know though if it can be implemented without coming up with advanced scripting abilities for tremulous.

[Paradox]

If its OS, just hijack it, do a F&r for warsaw and then use tremulous

[your face]

Also, don't forget those who don't even know how to evolve, change weapon or build :/

there is, in the default settings, a little tutorial mode enabled on the bottom left side, that says like "press Q to evolve" etc.

[TinMan]

Kiss you? I'm going to destroy you.

A big problem for Tremulous is that it stills really hard for beginners to have fun playing.

Opinion. I've introduced people to it for the first time at LAN parties, just talked to them ingame, and they got the hang of it right away - it took about 2 games to learn what the classes, weapons, and buildings were, and that's all it takes to understand the game on a basic enough level to have fun playing it.

- When they start, resolution and brightness are much too low, they make the game look bad

The brightness somewhat depends on your OS, video card + drivers, and display, but Tremulous is supposed to be dark and you aren't supposed to be able to easily see things. Turning the brightness up is not recommended, the game is designed to be dark so when you make it bright it WILL look bad.

It could be usefull to auto-balance resolution with computer abilities. (It changed a lot since 2006)

You mean like detect the computer hardware to determine what settings to run? This could be useful, but most computers can max out the Quake 3 engine - the main setting that differs across computers is the hardware, and I don't see any other games detecting what my LCD's native resolution is unless for if it's the same as my desktop resolution. When you get a game and play it for the first time you should expect to have to modify settings for your computer.

Settings aren't in default menu, not easy too find.

There is a ui pk3 out there that puts it in the default main menu.

- There is nowhere to learn playing, the only way is to join a server a go.

Lies, there are tutorials all over these forums and people have put effort into guides on Wikis on other Tremulous forums, you sir, have not looked for them!

So, as humans, even if aiming looks like other Q3-like games, they die almost instantly because they aren't prepared to avoid aliens.

The game is clearly Aliens vs. Humans, when you see the enemy you should go into a combat mindset, if you don't then you shouldn't be playing FPS games.

If they try to use ckit, they get denybuild or kicked because noone teached them how to build a strategic base, and not spamming turrets anywhere.

If that happens to you then you should spend a round spectating builders to see how it's done, read an online guide on human & alien building, or go to a different server where admins aren't so harsh on you.

As aliens, it's almost impossible for them to touch humans, again because they never got helped. Building is perhaps easier but stills difficult :/
Also, don't forget those who don't even know how to evolve, change weapon or build :/

As an alien you are usually very fast and can be sneaky with wall climbing if you actually keep in mind that you can do those things, the dragoon pounce is a very powerful weapon, it makes catching humans almost too easy when they're not in their base or on the edge of it. Building will be difficult until you do it for a couple of rounds and learn to keep your stuff out of sight so humans don't destroy it before being attacked by your base. There's a tutorial thingy that tells you to press Q to evolve, if you can't read the messages that are on your screen then you aren't trying hard enough.

So, there could be a training camp, in solo-mode, with different levels in both teams for every alien/weapon, explaining new players how to fight, like in many other fps.

This is your first good idea. A basic attacking, defending, and building interactive tutorial or video would be very very nice, the problem lies in getting someone to make it.

That would prevent people from 20min testing and uninstall, which happens much too often. 

In my opinion I'm glad that they leave. The last thing I want is to join a server full of impatient players who haven't tried looking for answers on the basics themselves.

That is all.

[Paradox]

Tinman, detecting resolution is not a problem.

Samsung had  a SDK for it somewhere, and they are by no means alone.

[David]

Yes, except that only work on Samsung phones, which covers exactly 0% of tremulous users.
Finding out the current resolution is totally doable.  Working out what resolution you can optimally run tremulous at is not so much.  That's why people are expected to engage their brains.

[Paradox]

Not true David.

MagicTune SDK works with the display im using right now.

[Lava Croft]

Detecting resolutions and setting them automagically is asking for a forum full of people that report about how it's not working for them.

[UniqPhoeniX]

What about a 'launcher', like a window that comes up when you run tremulous and it has options for resolution, fullscreen/windowed and other settings, even a button to tremulous.net. Ofc with a checkbox 'do not show this window anymore', and a shortcut/executable to get back to it in startmenu/program files folder.

[Lava Croft]

What about a 'launcher', like a window that comes up when you run tremulous and it has options for resolution, fullscreen/windowed and other settings, even a button to tremulous.net. Ofc with a checkbox 'do not show this window anymore', and a shortcut/executable to get back to it in startmenu/program files folder.

Go code it, I'd say, because the chances of any of the Tremulous developers wasting time on such a thing is rather slim, if you ask me.

[David]

This is a prime candidate for someone else to code, as it requires zero knowledge of how tremulous works, and zero integration.  IMO it would also be nice if it could suppress that stupid blue thing and steal the output, check for common errors, and provide instructions for if there's an error not on its list.

[kevlarman]

This is a prime candidate for someone else to code, as it requires zero knowledge of how tremulous works, and zero integration.  IMO it would also be nice if it could suppress that stupid blue thing and steal the output, check for common errors, and provide instructions for if there's an error not on its list.

the stupid blue thing has been gone for ages.

[David]

Awesome.  I've never played trem on windows, so only have people's screen shots to go on

[Bomb]

What's the stupid blue thing?

[Bissig]

This is a prime candidate for someone else to code, as it requires zero knowledge of how tremulous works, and zero integration.  IMO it would also be nice if it could suppress that stupid blue thing and steal the output, check for common errors, and provide instructions for if there's an error not on its list.

Hmm, how would I detect on windows where the application resides?

1. Via registry?
2. Via searching the hdd for tremulous.exe?
3. Bundling it with a tremulous installer so it already knows where the executable resides?

On MacOSX?

No clue at all

On Linux/BSD/Unix?

1. Searching for tremulous.x86 in the users home dir?
2. Bundling it with a tremulous installer so it already knows where the executable resides?

[doomagent13]

Make such a window detect if the user has an autogen.cfg or qkey, and if so, then vanish.

[David]

IMO detect it the same way as tremulous.x86 does, just run ./tremulous.whatever and if they run it from the wrong place then its their fault.
And scanning a 100GB $HOME is never a good idea.

[Bomb]

On Mac OS X?

No clue at all

You could use grep or take advantage of Spotlight. Or, the user could simply put it where everyone else puts it, namely in /Applications/Tremulous/.

[samh785]

I'm a beginner (only been playing for 1 day, and loving it) I found it relatively easy to set the game up, though native wide screen support that can go full screen would be nice. Also, could anyone give me aa example of a good brightness setting?

[David]

1
Making it all bright sucks.  You get used to the dark soon enough and its more fun that way.

[Eeeew Spiders]

- When they start, resolution and brightness are much too low, they make the game look bad
It could be usefull to auto-balance resolution with computer abilities. (It changed a lot since 2006)
Settings aren't in default menu, not easy too find.

The thing is, with the default settings, tremulous starts without a problem (given you have a proper gfx card and it's set up right).
Having tremulous start with automatic resolved settings could give you all sorts of other problems, with cryptic error messages noone understands,
and a black screen you wouldn't know how to get rid off.

Could be overcome though with a "start in safe mode" option to force starting with default settings, and a setup wizard that launches at first start
that guides the user through the important settings. Could be made a lot more sexy, if
....it wasn't that this is an OS game and that you usually can expect for OS games to have to spend a bit more time to make it run well.
But that also implies that it gives you a lot more freedom to tweak every little bit of it. So at some point you are bound to have to dive into the configuration files anyway,
and without all the sexy whistles and setup wizards you'll do that a lot sooner.

[khalsa]

I would prefer that someone revamp the windows installer package instead. So that when you download the exe installer, instead of the simple little ugly thing we have currently we should have something prettier and more functional.

E.g. First screen is about tremulous, second about Licence, Third asks you to input a Name that would be used in-game (ala warsow installer), fourth asks what your resolution is, Fifth tells you in huge letters that if you don't have opengl enabled drivers this won't work, Sixth asks for installation location. Seventh is a big link to Tremulous.net forums/irc/support channels/etc. Then it installs Trem to wherever and writes your options to the cfg file.

And so on and so on

This requires very little knowledge of Trem, and learning the NSIS or Inno Setup scripting systems IS NOT difficult. I think this would be a great project for some community members to pick up and run with and would help tremulous immensely.

This whole post is just as applicable to the linux installer as well. I know there is a way to ask certain questions at install-time in both apt and yum based distro's.

Go make it happen!

Khalsa

[Supertanker]

I'm willing to work on the Windows installer. Is this for the Tremulous 1.1.0.zip? You want it converted into an NSIS-installer? (I have Inno Setup files on my computer as well, but I prefer NSIS)

I've worked with them a bit, I could probably figure it out relatively easily (I found the scripting language to be very simple when I dabbled in it) and am sure willing to try...

[cactusfrog]

Di not include an option to chose your graphics resolution during installation because everyone will set it as high as it can go and when they start trem it will crash. A helpful feature would be if you open 3 tremulous in a minuet then a message will pops up asking if you would like to reset tremulous to its defaults.   

[sticks]

well if we implemented a ranking system (i do realize this complicates things a lot) it would be easy to set up a new player server that would be based off that ranking system for the new players. the less complicated way as i see it is just to read the damn manual that comes with tremulous, pretty much addresses all the new players problems.

[David]

Di not include an option to chose your graphics resolution during installation because everyone will set it as high as it can go and when they start trem it will crash. A helpful feature would be if you open 3 tremulous in a minuet then a message will pops up asking if you would like to reset tremulous to its defaults.   

Cap the list at whatever res their desktop runs at.
Currently the safemode sucks hard.  Would be nice to get it fixed and linked to.