Extended and enhanced tutorial

[jayhova]

One tutorial for all ignores the difficulty of people having different keybinds, but I suppose that's surmountable.

In an earlier post somewhere I suggested that using placeholders for keybindings would be effective for this sort of thing. Perhaps something like [%Keybind_Logbook].

The other weakness in the old tutorial is the lack of triggers. Location triggers, Action triggers, etc. The old tutorial runs purely on a timer. A couple of things like gold having weight etc. should be pointed out to the player.

Over all the original tutorial is pretty good but does not contend with how modern players have preconceptions based on other RPG like games.

[BansheeXYZ]

Over all the original tutorial is pretty good

On the contrary, I'm going to show you how historically bad it is. I dare you to find one worse. ITT I review most of classic's tutorial by line-by-line:

The very first thing you want to do is experiment with moving your character around. Don't worry about monsters, there are none in this first room.

Simply moving isn't lesson-worthy. Crouch, jump, climb, run, sneak, swim? Hello?

When this text clears, move the cursor around on the screen. You'll see it change shape. Hold down the left mouse button and watch what happens. If you are using the view based interface, it will change where you are looking. Hint: The closer the arrow is to the edge of the screen, the faster you will move.

Fixed.

I'll be back in about one minute to tell you about arming yourself and fighting monsters.

Why don't you just tell me now? I'm too impatient to practice moving in an empty room. This feels like timeout. Am I in trouble?

Before you brave the depths of Privateer's Hold, you will want to arm yourself. Either click on the bag icon (inventory), or press the F6 key.

Ok. That's 1 key mapping. Only 30 to go.

Clicking on the weapon puts it into your hand. Now you are able to draw your weapon.

Nope. There's a hotkey for that.

Hint: You can have two weapons equipped.

You might want to mention that this doesn't apply to all weapons.

Press the H key to switch back and forth between them.

Why are you telling me this before the draw weapon hotkey? Priorities.

Tutorial Lesson 3
To draw your weapon, click on the crossed blades icon, or just press A. There is a short delay after equipping a weapon, so don't panic if it doesn't draw instantly.

Ah, there it is. 60 seconds later, in the next tutorial window!

Take a few practice swings by holding down the right mouse button and moving the mouse around. This is how you fight the monsters.

I'll give you a minute to practice swinging the sword.

I killed the monsters 5 minutes ago.

Click YES to continue, NO to cancel the tutorial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31g0YE61PLQ

Down the hall and through the door is a giant rat. Let's go kill it!

I got bored. He's dead, Jim.

When you get to the door, get the X shaped cursor on it and press the left mouse button. The door will swing open. This is how you activate things, such as doors, levers, wheels, treasure piles, even people.

If you are using the view based interface, just get the door in the center of the screen and press the mouse button to open it do literally anything but steal.

Fixed.

Hint: This door is a secret door. After you kill the rat, go back to it and click it. The door will shut. Not all secret doors are this easy to see.

He's dead, Jim. Room's way back.

I'll be back in a couple of minutes for the next lesson.

A couple now? You think you're going too fast?

Tutorial Lesson 5
There is a pile of treasure on the black altar in the room with the rat. Get close to it and click on it. This automatically puts you into your inventory. All the stuff in the treasure pile is in the right hand column of your inventory.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXJFsp47NB4

Hint: You can get information on your items an item by using the INFO mode and then clicking the item. clicking 3 to 4 times per item. Because we... hate... your... mouse.

Fixed.

This would be a good time to save the game (assuming you are not in the middle of a fight). Press the ESC key and click on SAVE GAME. Double click one of the empty boxes and it will save your game there.

If you get killed in this dungeon, you can go back to that saved game without having to create a new character.

True of most rpgs ever. From the people who brought you "practice moving."

[jayhova]

As I said the major flaw with the tutorial is that it has no triggers and is on a timer. I also said that the tutorial needs to reference the actual keys used.

An enhanced tutorial should hook into the quest system where once you complete an action you get a response. It needs to be expanded to take you through the other movement keys, crouch, sneak, etc. There are little things like explaining how to use the map to locate secret doors. Also explaining that gold has weight just like in the real world. The yes/no prompt should be IMHO replaced with a continue/exit prompt where enter is continue.

The tutorial is pretty good because it covers most of the bases. It needs to be enhanced because it is running on a timer and ignores your actions. It needs a few things added because modern games tend to work in a different way than Daggerfall did.

[MasonFace]

If a game is complex enough to require one (and I don't think most games are), the most effective method is to have it on the main menu as its own mode with its own levels. You mentioned Turok, and that's one example of a game where "Start Game" and "Training" are different play modes per the menu. Otherwise, the game introduces you as Mr Badass Warrior on a dangerous mission to save the world, who may also need a lesson in how to open doors and kill rats.

I'm not necessarily suggesting DFU do this as the title text is baked in graphically. But moving the tutorial to the console might be a good solution.

I agree with this approach. Ideally it would be on the main menu instead of relying on console commands, but as you said, it's an unfortunately necessary compromise.

It would probably be good to have the tutorial dungeon first prompt the player for their familiarity with DF with choices such as: "I've played Daggerfall before, but need a refresher," "I've played other first person RPGs," and "I don't know anything about RPGs" in order to customize the prompts that come up during the tutorial. For example, people who've played RPGs before don't need attributes and XP explained to them, and people who've played Daggerfall before probably just need a non-interrupting message that displays the keybinding in a given context.

I think Jay_H's design for the dungeon would be great, except the player is named "Tutorial Man" and has all the necessary skills to do everything that's in the dungeon including picking locks, climbing walls (just a short ledge to reach a lever), and casting a basic spell. It might be nice to have a coded routine that quickly revives the player to the start of that particular room/lesson and provides a prompt to help clarify where they might have messed up. To those who picked "I don't know anything about RPGs," the conclusion of the dungeon should remind the player that not every character is proficient in every skill, that it's okay to have weaknesses, and to remember to play to your character's strengths.

[jayhova]

I recently restarted DFU and evaluated the effectiveness of the tutorial. The vanilla tutorial is 85-90% effective in teaching the basics. There are a few things it needs to talk about. But for the most part it says what needs to be said. It does not however trigger based on you doing things in the tutorial. When you move around it does not move on with the next part of the tutorial. It also does not correctly refer to remapped keys. The tutorial should also make notes in your quest log so that you know what action you should take to move the tutorial to the next step. Again, the yes/no buttons are ambiguous. IMHO they should replaced with continue/exit.

I'm not against making a sort of training ground tutorial, however, to make a decent one you'd still need to move away from timed triggers to action based ones or you have all the same problems.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

And if you rest for a few hours, you get a lot of consecutive tutorial messages.

[jayhova]

And if you rest for a few hours, you get a lot of consecutive tutorial messages.

On a timer. The timer is a game time timer. So yeah, if you rest they go off.


I recently watched the opening part of Morrowind and you can see that Bethesda uses a tutorial here. However the tutorial does not advance on a timer. Locations and actions trigger advancement. IMHO the quest system should be expanded to incorporate the tutorial and locations and actions should trigger responses just as in Morrowind. This would allow people to create their own tutorials and make the existing tutorial functional. It's been a little while since I went through the Morrowind tutorial so I don't remember if it correctly displayed remapped keys though I'm sure it must have.