On 24 January 2011 15:59, Raphael Langella <raphael.lange...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Tell the player she can reread messages also by clicking in the message
> area.
Actually, I was wondering whether to get rid of that behaviour. I
rather like it but the UP report showed that it's not at all what
players expect to happen.
In any case, I do need to reference the command tab, but I haven't yet
gotten around to it. It'll turn up in a lot of places, and I'm not
sure how to handle it. Refer to the command tab every time (like I
currently do for mouseclicks), or start out with the extended
description ("click on the corresponding tile in the command panel")
and later only reference ("or via the command area"). See, I'm not
even sure what to call it. Tab, panel, area, ... Gah!
> Also, I find it really annoying that the message is displayed whenever
> you go back on the square which happens quite often. I suggest the message
> is displayed only once, but if you come back on the blue square, you can
> reread it by pressing ";".
I'm not sure whether that is possible right now. I guess it shouldn't
be difficult to adapt the lua markers to selfdestruct once triggered
(or does something like that already exist?) but silencing them except
for ';' (which involves explaining about this otherwise not-terribly
important command) sounds like more work.
> We might want to spread the info a little bit,
> because telling the player 3 different ways of rereading old messages before
> she has the chance to take a single step is a bit overwhelming.
Yes. Ctrl-P at the beginning is enough. The two mouseclick
alternatives should come later, though I'm not sure where. I expect it
gets confusing if there are so many different ways to achieve the same
thing.
> * Tweak dummy tile to show wielded weapon.
Embarrassingly enough, I tried that and failed. Adding the training
dummy into the weapon offset function didn't work, or didn't compile,
or caused a crash, I don't remember which. Anyway, I had to add a
couple of special cases that most definitely caused a crash. The
caching code scares me. :/
> * If you carry chunks that rots away, maybe add a comment saying that most
> races can't eat rotten meat.
I'm planning to add a trigger if the player tries to eat but is only
carrying rotten chunks.
> * If the player has taken the first dummy club she will throw it instead of
> the darts, and will be teached about quiver only later. Maybe replace the
> club by a non-throwable weapon.
Oh, good point. Any suggestions? It needs to be non-edged, its delay
must be low enough for the dummy to actually be able to get some
amount of hits in, and its damage must be low enough not to kill a
player who never bothers to step back and rest.
> Or... why the heck are clubs throwable to begin with? Can't we remove that?
Or that. :)
> * Tell the player about firing with shift-click.
True, but where? This is running into the "too many options" issue
again. For console, it's simple 'ff', but Tiles additionally already
mentions clicking on the item. Adding shift-click on the monster in
the map or monster panel might end up confusing everybody. So,
probably not right away...
> btw, firing with shift-click shouldn't take 2 clicks.
True.
> * After killing the dummy with darts, you're reminded to rest, but sometimes
> you can't because there is a rat in view.
Thanks, I forgot to check that. Will move the rats outside los.
> * You're told to "rest up!" even fully healed.
Is "If necessary, rest up!" better? It appears the lua markers are
evaluated on level generation, so we can't check for health there. The
best way is probably to let the marker call a function that does the
health check in-place, either in C++ or Lua.
> * You don't need to be in targetting mode to switch ammunition with "(".
You... don't? o_O *tests* You don't...
> * When reaching XL2, you get the same level up message as in previous
> lesson. If possible, just skip it.
Yes, that's on my TODO list, though again, I'm unsure about the best
way to do it. I can either hardcode a set of hint triggers for each
tutorial lesson that get initialised (currently it's a fixed set
shared by all of them) or I can write a wrapper method translating the
hint names -> enum, and then at the beginning of each tutorial pass a
list of hints I'd like to be initialised. Probably best if this is
auto-generated. If anyone has any better ideas, I'm all ears.
> * The trap should probably have a single needle. If the player is curious
> about the other blue square and goes to it after having quaffed the healing
> potion, she'll be poisoned again.
That's a good idea. Can we already specify the number of trap charges?
> Should we also tell the player about disarming it?
Not sure. You don't actually need to do this often (except to train
T&D, but that's another issue).
> * Also, if she's curious about the left upstairs and take it, she'll get a
> message about the secret door before finding it which will be very
> confusing.
Right, I meant to mention searching for secret doors there, but it
somehow got left out. Oops.
> I suggest turning those stairs into an hatch if possible. Also,
> I'm not even sure the shortcut is necessary. If you take it, you won't have
> the scimitar of venom, and killing the jackals is going to be hard. Or maybe
> the shortcuts are only for the devs and will be removed before release?
Undecided. The idea is that if a player has already seen the tutorial
but would like to revisit some part, it can be annoying having to
fight through two levels to get there. On the other hand, the fights
relie on the equipment gained earlier.
I added them because for some reason wizmode &d always kicks me out of
the tutorial if I'm standing on the upstairs. (I've just tested it
again and realized that this doesn't happen if I'm not standing on the
stairs, which in turn made me realize that apparently the lua climb
condition also kicks in if I'm moving in the opposite direction using
wizard mode. Bug or feature? Also, this basically means I can remove
the shortcuts again.)
> * Maybe teach about fumbling in shallow water?
Triggered by fighting in water, yes. General comment about shallow water, no.
> * I agree with David's about the pertinence of switching between sling and
> scimitar when fighting bats. While you are switching, they will often move
> making it pointless. I'd rather explain about switching against the jackals.
> You soften them up with the sling when they are closing in, and switch to
> melee when they get next to you. It's a much more realistic strategy and
> doing that, I didn't even have to retreat. I that case, we might want to
> tweak the layout a bit, or else the player will be under the fire of the
> island kobolds when trying to pick up his stones. So maybe remove the bats
> and put the jackals instead. The player has already been teached about
> retreating to avoid getting surrounded anyway.
Oh, that's a good idea!
> * About wall shooting. The wax wall isn't in a "cardinal direction".
> Cardinal = orthogonal, not diagonal.
Oh. According to my dictionary, "cardinal" means "main" and I wasn't
sure whether that included the diagonals or not. Apparently not.
So how can I describe the task? Just colour the tiles and say
something about shooting into the corresponding directions?
> * Going back to shop message has a spacing issue. Also, resuming travel is
> done ctrl-G Enter.
Good one. Much better!
> * The message about the harmful amulet tells you to remove it, but identify
> might not have finished.
Yeah, I had that happen once, too. Not sure how to handle that. Is
there a way to check whether Crawl is currently waiting for input in a
menu or something, so I could delay the message, or something like
that?
> * The stat gain level up message says that strength affects the damage dealt
> in melee. The damage is affected by both strength and dexterity depending on
> the weapon strength weighting. But it's almost negligible, so better not
> bother the player with inaccurate and irrelevant information before we fix
> it. Better tell player that strength help with wearing heavy armour instead.
Okay.
> * About the monster selection of the last fight, I wouldn't go with the "big
> mob" suggested by David. The player has 3 scrolls of recharging, and by
> retreating into the corridor, she can kill a lot of monsters with the wand
> of fire. I find it more interesting to add monsters with rF+ to teach the
> player about monster resistances and how to adapt to it. Might be nice to
> add a melee unique, with a rF+ armour for example.
Doesn't need to be a unique, but yeah rF armour is a definite
possibility, as are monsters natively immune to fire. An imp?
> If you can have guaranteed items in the shop, I'd put in a potion of speed
> and a wand of paralysis.
Customized shops are definitely needed, if only because I once had a
shop whose only (for this purpose) useful potion was healing. All the
rest were brilliance, magic and mutation.
However, I shirked away from task after having a look at the shop
generation code. Allow maps to define custom shops will involve a lot
of refactoring.
> * The player is told to check the religion screen. For trog, the detailed
> description talks about the training of the invocation skill, but up to this
> point, the player hasn't been told anything about skills. Should we add
> something about it?
Not sure. I do agree the screens look pretty intimidating. Maybe we
should filter that line out of the tutorial.
> Skills are an important part of crawl and including them
> in the tutorial seems a good idea to me.
I'm planning to add that for the Spellcasting tutorial, something
about being unable to cast because you don't have the skill yet and
how you can get it to level 1 by reading scrolls.
> Give a message on the first skill
> level gain to tell the player to check the m-screen. I can strip it to make
> it less intimidating and technical: no aptitudes and no "show all". A bigger
> help message that explain about disabling and reading descriptions (I can do
> the menu tweaking of course).
That might be a good idea. I'd love to have a less technical version
of the skill screen for the tutorial and hints mode.
As for message on skill gain, that largely depends on whether we can
get the one-time-triggerables to run, so it only appears in lessons
where we want it (i.e. not for Stealth in lesson 1).
> * Can we start at XL 2 for more MP? Also, boost invo and remove the
> spellcasting skill so you can add a spellbook for Troglodytes to burn
> without having to teach the player about spells.
The more I think of it, having two gods there is probably needlessly
complicating things. Best to either stick with Makhleb or with Trog.
The old tutorial just uses Makhleb for ability targeting, but Trog
doesn't have the stupid MP requirement. Also, having only a single god
makes the message much more simpler because the player doesn't have to
back out of the "Do you want to join" prompt.
I didn't want to include spellbooks before teaching about spells, but
that can be solved by making the spellcasting lesson happen first, as
was the plan all along.
And of course, XL increases magic, right! Not sure about starting at
level 2, we'd need to suppress the initial level gain message.
Thanks loads! You gave me lots of food for thought,
Johanna
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