Tutorial changes, testing and comments appreciated
Posted: Wednesday, 27th June 2012, 19:21
I've pushed some changes to the first tutorial lesson to master, and would appreciate testing and comments, especially from people who have (since 0.7 or 0.8) used the tutorial to learn the game. The general aim of these and coming changes is to shorten the time required to go through the tutorials, shorten the tutorial texts (so you won't gloss over and miss important bits), and drop introduction to non-essential commands. My view would be that the tutorial only gives you the essentials, so you're equipped to start playing the game without feeling overwhelmed by the basics. There could be advanced tutorial lessons for advanced topics, or the hints mode should cover them.
The changes originally come courtesy of an usability student project (a team called KiSS - short of KiviSopan Sekoittajat - Finnish for "Stirrers of Stone Soup", approximately). I've been a bit selective about including them and made some additional changes of my own.
Here's the commit that went to master. Here's the commit message so you can quickly get an idea what's going on:
(One of the things I forgot to mention is that they added line breaks to some of the tutorial messages. I'm not sure about that, but included them in the commit.)
KiSS also delivered changes to the other lessons, which are available in this commit to a separate branch. I intend to bring their changes (ones that I find agreeable) in before 0.11 release.
Testing and comments, criticism appreciated! The trunk page has not yet updated with this change, but this should happen within a day or two.
--Eino
The changes originally come courtesy of an usability student project (a team called KiSS - short of KiviSopan Sekoittajat - Finnish for "Stirrers of Stone Soup", approximately). I've been a bit selective about including them and made some additional changes of my own.
Here's the commit that went to master. Here's the commit message so you can quickly get an idea what's going on:
Selective changes to tutorial lesson 1 from this year's usability project (KiSS team). Includes my own edits to their changes.
Changes include:
* Added [] brackets around control texts (will do for all the lessons)
* Shorten the first movement tutorial quite a bit
* Combined diagonal movement and shiftmove parts of the lesson, only one message for each
* Shortened arrival to 2nd floor text
* Shortened autoexclusion text
* Greatly shorten/compress 2nd floor (secret doors and water only)
* Remove green crystal and statues. Contradicts with the idea of making the level look exciting. Reasoning: different visuals suggest some sort of significance in the tutorial, instead of eyecandy.
Did not include/further edits:
* Going straight into diagonal movement explanation, kept the go_on message.
* Kept the very first movement part more similar to the original layout-wise, especially kept single-width diagonal corridors to enforce diagonal movement. Reduced blue tile count.
* Undid making the forest path smaller (did not get why that was done - maybe to force you to move closer to exclusions?).
* Shortened autoexclusion text further - first just say that some "dangerous ground" is marked with exclusions, and then only refer to exclusions, not terrain/features/ground etc. This makes it much shorter in all, though relevance to actually features may be lost. (clouds, dangerous monsters..)
Comments/TODO:
* Suggesting to use arrow keys is IMHO bad, should go straight to numpad/vi keys (or mouse). Problems: having to explain vi keys straight away is awkward. The diagram for movement keys is a bit lengthy to show right away. Numlock is troublesome.
* Shiftmove seems non-essential, and KiSS' testers had trouble with it (numlock/numpad trouble). I would move it to an "advanced movement" lesson.
* Finding stairs by level map command (X and <) also feels like an advanced movement material.
* Closing doors also. It's relevant when monsters (or clouds) are around. Move to lesson 2 later, or a new advanced lesson.
* 2nd floor is a little small now, but while playing, it seems all right.
(One of the things I forgot to mention is that they added line breaks to some of the tutorial messages. I'm not sure about that, but included them in the commit.)
KiSS also delivered changes to the other lessons, which are available in this commit to a separate branch. I intend to bring their changes (ones that I find agreeable) in before 0.11 release.
Testing and comments, criticism appreciated! The trunk page has not yet updated with this change, but this should happen within a day or two.
--Eino