Tutorial world !! everyone needed to help!

[flametard]

Ok, we're going to layout a world that, as simply as possible, demonstrates and walks players through various critical aspects of world building. If anyone has any objections to default scripts, allow me to point you to default textures, default heightmap, and other things which come default, might as well make a default script that teaches pl how to build planets, instead of being overwhelmed with a blank world theyre too afraid to mess with.

My idea is a step by step interactive process where planet builders can either choose to continue hearing the script driven "tips" or just ignore the tips and have a largely blank world. it was suggested that there should be games or something that help players have fun learning, but i think this wont be a good idea because we want to keep everything as blank as possible to conserve size (we're gonna try to market this to Mit as a replacement for the default world). the idea is to make having control of a whole world in itself the fun (and not an intimidatingly complex task)

order of operations:
we need to put the simplest and most important things first in the script.
the idea is to have a very simple summary of text which describes each thing, and how it applies to world building and a few examples showing a range of function for each

tip # 1:
player's (not owners) world menu overview
page up, ctrl, end key, building, laying surfaces, walking, camera zoom, etc etc... most important ones

tip # 2:
server window overview
briefly describing the functions of each tab of the server window

tip # 3:
c>program files>the universal>data
describes how to get to the program files and mentions that things in data are customizable.

tip # 4:
settings overview
brief overview of how to get to settings, how to navigate through settings and find descriptions

tip# 5:
world owner commands:
effects, delallmap, plantforest, ( top 20 most important, or maybe the whole list copy pasted from world owner manual if we can fit it)

tip# 6:
b-dat editor, items, namesfile overview

tip# 7:
visual overview describing:
heightmap
textures, tiles, roads, surfaces, texmaps / photo editor, photoshop, gimp etc.
vehicles=modelling / model convertor / modeling programs etc.
book / images

tip# 8:
scripting : brief descriptions
text in the chat
gamescript mts = scripting
serverscript mts = weapons (or did i get those last 2 mixed up?)
osd's
cutscenes

tip#9:
world manual / forums / help

[flametard]

ill be happy to write the text descriptions for the tips, im a decent writer, and whoever writes this stuff, needs to remember to write it like youre talking to someone whos never played TU, knows what a jpg is, or knows what program files are. our target audience are gamers with creative tenancies who want to express themselves through video games.


ok ill just list a quick summary of my opinion of how each tip should be approached:

tip# 1: this could all be in the welcome image, including the command to proceed to the next step. "type &next to continue" event =&next if playervar1=0 then setplayervar1=1

tip# 2: this should definitely be either showbook image, or granted item book image. this needs to be an image (or images) so people know that yes, were indeed talking about this window thingy that pops up when you try to run your world. text and pictures cant be displayed on the same book, so scripted chat text will have to pop up with the book pics, to describe the functions of the tabs.
ending with "type &next to continue"


tip#3:
showbook image + chat text ending with
"type &next to continue"


tip#4:
this shouldnt be too much text so i think we can get away with an osd with text and 2 buttons "ok" (no change in playervar, closes the window) or "next" which takes u to the next step, and changes playervar1 to 4.


tip#5:
probably should be in a book item, since book items can hold a lot of text, which can be scrolled down. that way we could theoretically fit all the commands, or just the most important ones (might wanna stick with the most important 20-40 commands as to not overwhelm players) "type &next to continue"

tip#6:
scrollable book text
"type &next to continue"

tip#7:
scrollable book text
"type &next to continue"

tip#8:
scrollable showbook text + cutscene if possible
"type &next to continue"

tip#9
osd w text " that concludes the tutorial, i hope this helped you figure out planet building, remember to read the world owner manual in detail, and check out the forums and talk to other planet builders about your ideas, and have fun! if you wanna get rid of the tips, delete them out of the script file yourself! but not before you take a good look at the script to find out how to make me say silly things."
9 buttons
8 goes back to each one of the steps
the last closes the osd

event &next
if playervar1=0 do commands for tip 2, set playervar1=1
if playervar1=1 do commands for tip 3, set playervar1=2
and so on


event playerlogin
if playervar1=1 then [do commands for tip 2]
if playervar1=2 then [do commends for tip 3]
and so on

sorry about my crappy attempt at scripting, but its so simple yall should be able to figure out what im saying


the effect is that players get the tip they've proceeded to either upon triggeing the command to proceed to the next step, or, just by logging in (tho now that i think of it, welcome screen may mess with a showbook popup, we will have to test and see, if its no good, we'll make the playervar1=0 welcome screen another showbook image, that way no double image pop up) when the player gets time to make his own scripts, he can look at our tutorial script for ideas, kinda reverse engineer it and learn scripting that way, trust me its an easy way to learn scripting.


ok thats my take on it, comments, questions suggestions? anyone wanna help/host a prototype to show MIT? its really not much changes from the current default planet, mostly scripting and book changes.

give me feedback, thanks.

[flametard]

[flametard]

[flametard]

i know that was alot to read, but does anyone else have any other aspects of world building or any other teaching tricks that would be useful for this?


we need ppl to help.

[flametard]

(tho now that i think of it, welcome screen may mess with a showbook popup, we will have to test and see, if its no good, we'll make the playervar1=0 welcome screen another showbook image, that way no double image pop up)

in the following post wes reveals a problem:
http://theuniversal.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8788

I forgot to mention how if the OSD has OSDSet("BlockEscape") in it, then when you land on a world and hit esc to close the welcome screen, you can't. You must close the OSD by clicking on a button in the OSD to close it(which is covered by the welcome screen) before you can close the welcome screen.

tho his problem was with osd, it still is prolly going to be a problem with the showbooks too. unless we wanna make it a book item, then we go messing with default inventory and Mit wont like it.
so i guess we'll have to make that first tip screen into another showbook that displays for players who have playervar1=0 (the default). and have no welcome image.

[wes773]

As far as the welcome screen bug, the way around it is to have a message say "type in &help to start showing tips on how to create a world. then the &help launches the OSD. Also type &next to continue could be replaced with a "Next" button in the osd.

Tips seem like a very unorganized way of teaching. We want to have a plan on how to start making a world so we can do stuff step by step. For example, usually i think of what the concept of the world will be. Then I try to design a heightmap that will fit into the gameplay(ariya has its river around the island to lock newbies on that island).

I was thinking the same thing about letting the world server client actually teach players.

We really do need a good guide to be made, so players who don't want to bother with waiting for the server to help can just skip to sections they need. I guess I'll start one unless somebody else wants to. There's actually quite a lot to learn about world creation, and that will take a long time to actually script into the world. We need to decide what parts are important to include in the tutorial and what can easily be looked up through the site. Players don't need to know how to use custom land texmaps to run a world and there's already information about that on the forums. We have to keep things pretty basic at first and expand as we find that we have more time to add more.

Well, that's all.

[flametard]

do the osd'd have scrollable text?

some of these tips should be either book text or chat text cause i was afraid there'd not be enough room to cover each topic in an osd window. also, we should at least try to use many examples, more than just osd, so players can look at the script as see how they work.

i think the tips would be a good idea, rather than having players read the whole world manual to even start understanding how to build a world. some people arent that patient and we should be nudging them in the right direction gently, hence 1 tip at a time, so they dont become overwhelmed with info.
i remember one time on aryia, there was some floating text on the screen during the cutscenes, maybe we can somehow employ that too. the idea is to cover the basics and provide examples of some of the best simple script tricks we know.

[wes773]

I somehow think that you're the only one interested in making this...

The whole point of an actual manual is so that players can skim through, get what they need, and continue working on their world, not to read it all at once, then suddenly be super-owner and make the best world. OSDs probably don't have scrollable text, I've never had enough text on one to need it to scroll, but i know there's a limit on how many characters can be typed into it.

The reason I would use OSD is so that players can have an actual navigatable guide instead of just random messages that they will have to wait forever to popup again if they forget something. I could easily make &help launch a Table of contents type thing, players select which chapter to turn to and which mini-section. The drawback is that we'll have to have lots of minisections if a topic covers a lot. Also, keep in mind that we can't have any pictures in the OSD. Books would be good, but having to type something like &continue all the time would get old pretty fast. I'm going to start making an actual guide and we'll see where it goes from there.

[flametard]

these ideas are only to address the learning curve dramaking pointed out.

obviously us, the people whos remained, managed to overcome this learning curve, I'm just trying to help ppl who dont want to ask for help.

lets face it, the vast majority of ppl whove downloaded the world builder never even figure out how to build a world. DESPITE having the world manual.

nobody thinks it a good idea cause theres like 10 ppl checking the forums and theyre more interested in posting the last topic in the forum games section than putting in a bit of work making an automated script which will help short attention span ppl understand and be less afraid of learning how to build a planet.

[wes773]

I'm not saying that this is a bad idea.

I mainly think the problem is that there is no "quick and easy guide" for starting a very simple world. We need images with things labeled and explanations of what goes to what. Our problem is that we don't have decent documentation that is neatly organized. People don't want to go on a scavenger hunt through the forums to find everything. Everyday, people learn how to use complex modeling programs and people here don't know what a bdat does. The difference is that in most programs, there are tutorial videos and quite a few guides about how to do stuff. Videos would be the best way to go, but we'd have to find somebody who is willing to do some.

Also... the people who want guides(dramaking) don't know very much about world creation. That really limits how much people can contribute to a guide of any kind.

That being said... if anybody needs help making a world, just ask. I've told many people that before, but most of them don't last a day into the world before they give up.. without even letting me know what problem they ran into.

[flametard]

hmm i see what youre saying and i agree with you. Video tuts on world creation would be best.. however that requires 2 things, first, someone to make them, and second, the world builders have to go and look for the videos on separate sites.

with the built in tips, world builders can be extra lazy and still "learn" something... hopefully, just by putting a world online and landing on it a few times, which they will do anyway.

what do you think about the order of the tips i suggested? only 9 of them, which i think makes things very streamlined and simplified.

i reallly think we can get away with making a slightly proper tutorial, hidden as "tips" with the tools we already have. it'll just take alot of creativity to get our points across like youre saying, but creativity is something world builders are going to need anyway, so.

[flametard]

after giving it some thought, i agree with you now wes, i think an osd window with like 8 or 9 buttons each going over one of the topics... would be better than the tips idea. this osd could replace the existing welcome image. i think it would be a boon for struggling planet builders to have a built in guide inside the planet.

[flametard]

looks like there was a previous tutorial world idea a while back:

http://theuniversal.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7817

A tutorial / introduction world is (still) top of my list to do before we would attempt any proper advertising for the game. My intention would be to make it an 'offline' starting world that all players have to progress through before they get to space. Part of it would be a tutorial flow to introduce players to the main game concepts and controls, part of it would be a 'storyline', with the intention of setting the player in the appropriate mindset to go off exploring the strange and changeable galaxy out there.
Its also the intention to make it more 'controlled' than normal worlds, allowing us to make a particularly good first impression by setting up scenes and cameras to make th best of the graphics.

I have started a bit of work on it.. :]

[wes773]

How about this?

We start the project small and see where it goes from there. We explain only the things that are mandatory for world creation such as buildings.dat, changing models, creating a custm heightmap, and navigating the settings menu.

after we get the basic explained, we can start focusing on higher-level stuff such as scripting, I'll gladly start atutorial world if anybody is interested in helping... I doubt it though. I might just get a video recording software and make a tutorial video.

[flametard]

we do need a blank world to start this idea with. i really think the only changes that need to be made are to the script. if we do decide to include some images to help world builders we can put those into showbooks.

how many buttons can an osd hold? how much text can each button hold? can we make an osd button close the osd box and open a showbook command?

if we can get away with an extremely simple summary guide set up as an osd welcome image, that would be killer. stuff like scripting can really be described and not gone into with much detail, but just so ppl know what a script is, where to look for it, what it can do, etc etc. plus our work will be little examples of script so they can reverse engineer it and make worlds with osd's and cutscenes just by frankensteining the tutorial osd.

its really not a whole world, just a script that pops up some write ups. ill do the write ups, someone else might have to do any images, but thats just like, screenshot of stuff like the b-dat editor, or the model convertor, or the program files...with maybe some arrows drawn on it or something. zar and bong need to help,

[wes773]

I don't know the exact limits of the OSD, but I do know that it is capable of showing enough text to be helpful(at least 1000 characters) and it's capable of at least 10 buttons on a single page. It is possible to close an OSD and open a showbook, the only thing about that is that the player would have to do something to trigger the OSD to come up again, such as type &ready or trigger a building.

As far as all the scripting stuff, it's prettymuch all explained on the forums. I think scripting should be the last thing that we cover on world creation. People need to know that you can make a decent world without making it all fancy with scripts. All that's really needed for a simple world would be heightmaps, models, buildings.dat, and settings. Scripting is something for more advanced creators.

Like I said, everything scriptwise is already shown on the forums, you just have to do a forum search for "script" and it's all there. There are already small sections of code for reverse engineering and good explanations of what each thing does, thanks to morby.

If you want to get started planning out the world, you can, I don't think I'm actually going to start on any of this until I know that somebody will help. We really need to knock out this world in a couple weeks at most so we get it done. Stim, you could make OSDs if you want, I'll email you a example of my OSDs if you want. All you need is a notepad type program. Let me know if you want to try that. If not, I'll just do it all when we are ready. If you don't want to learn the OSD stuff yet, you can learn it from the world. That would be a good test to see how well it teaches players.

[wes773]

I don't know the exact limits of the OSD, but I do know that it is capable of showing enough text to be helpful(at least 1000 characters) and it's capable of at least 10 buttons on a single page. It is possible to close an OSD and open a showbook, the only thing about that is that the player would have to do something to trigger the OSD to come up again, such as type &ready or trigger a building.

As far as all the scripting stuff, it's prettymuch all explained on the forums. I think scripting should be the last thing that we cover on world creation. People need to know that you can make a decent world without making it all fancy with scripts. All that's really needed for a simple world would be heightmaps, models, buildings.dat, and settings. Scripting is something for more advanced creators.

Like I said, everything scriptwise is already shown on the forums, you just have to do a forum search for "script" and it's all there. There are already small sections of code for reverse engineering and good explanations of what each thing does, thanks to morby.

If you want to get started planning out the world, you can, I don't think I'm actually going to start on any of this until I know that somebody will help. We really need to knock out this world in a couple weeks at most so we get it done. Stim, you could make OSDs if you want, I'll email you a example of my OSDs if you want. All you need is a notepad type program. Let me know if you want to try that. If not, I'll just do it all when we are ready. If you don't want to learn the OSD stuff yet, you can learn it from the world. That would be a good test to see how well it teaches players.

[flametard]

yeah wes, email me a very simple osd that shows a couple of its functions that you feel would be nessicary for me to know. ill try to write this thing, and if i think ive got something ill submit it to someone for more testing

[wes773]

Alright Stim, look for some stuff in your email later. I'll try to get it to you as soon as I can, but that depends on how much time I have to work on it. I'll be willing to test your scripts too, just email them to me. If you want, I'll start setting up a test worl for it that is separate from blackened. Then when you are ready to work on it more, I'll send you the world files for it. Good luck.