From: <jp...@ze...> - 2009-05-22 13:14:23
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David Ploog wrote: > On Fri, 22 May 2009, Matthew Cline wrote: > >> 1) Currently the tutorial only mentions autoexplore when the tutorial >> finishes at XL 7. I was thinking that it could be mentioned in the >> tutorial intro: "If you find exploring the level and picking up items >> tedious due to all the keys you have to press, you can use >> autoexplore ('w'), which will automate much of this". > > I agree that XL 7 is too late. I would not mention o in the intro however. > We are talking about players who perhaps never touched a roguelike before. > I think we should mention o earlier, similar to how and when we mention > the overmap. Yes. Some time after the overmap trigger (say, 200 turns later) an introduction of autoexplore might be in order, though only if the character is at full health and there are no monsters in sight. (It might make sense to also run the mappedness check I've added for Xom, so as to not recommend autoexplore on fully explored levels.) >> 2) The tutorial intro could mention the #crawl IRC channel on freenode >> as a place to ask experienced players questions. > > Yes. Should happen at the end. Right. More final hints are always welcome, though making the death hints a tad more sensible to context might be more important, i.e. don't hit at trying out unknown consumables if the player doesn't have any in his inventory. >> 3) A new player might wonder about the bloodstains that sometimes >> appear. At first I was going to make bloodstained squares give >> a "Press v for more information", but then hesitated when I realized >> that this would only say something like "Bloodstains are for >> atmosphere only", and saying "Press v for more information" sort of >> implies that there's something actually important about the feature. > > I wouldn't take steps until we are sure that players are actually > confused. I agree. Blood appears doing battle and when examining the square in question you learn that it is "covered in blood". Seems pretty self-explanatory to me. And yes, 'v' is intended as a hint for the important cases. Printing it all the time might have the opposite effect of teaching the player that it's just flavour anyway, and a waste of keystrokes. > Over the time, I have collected some more ideas for the tutorial. As you > are thinking about and coding for it, I may as well bring them up: > > 4) There should be a D:0, for tutorial purposes only. D:0 should be empty > (a single room is enough), with the starting gear littered around and the > player being naked. The player should be guided to pick up the gear and > wear/wield it. > > 5) If we want to be more fancy, I suggest to have a door in that room, > with a rat next to it. This way, we could explain monsters and killing in > the most harmless setting available. This sounds a lot more reasonable than the more elaborate schemes previously discussed. Still, I would like further discussion before anything of this kind is implemented, mostly on the issues of skipping the pre-tutorial and scoring. I also think that said discussion can be postponed until after the release of 0.5. Johanna |