Tutorial Campaign - level brainstorming

EDIT: PROJECT DISCONTINUED.

Hey, I need your help!

As can be seen (and discussed) in the general thread about my tutorial campain, I have started working on small levels that can be played as a campaign and will teach new players the basics about Xonotic. Please read up on this subject there and post your own Great Ideas ™ here in this thread (if you have any ).

NOTE: This is a brainstorm thread. This means:

• You're allowed to think out of the box and come up with any idea you want. Please keep in mind though, that I am no coder. If you think that something can not be done in Xonotic right now, feel free te mention it anyway. There might always be a way around a certain limitation.
  
• Read through other people's ideas to see if your idea has already been mentioned.
  
• Do not judge previous ideas in the thread, either positively or negatively. You can use other people's ideas and give your own version of it "Instead of [X] I would do [Z]". You can also expand upon ideas or use them as inspiration for your own idea.
  

As an example: I have made one small concept map that is about item pickup. Between the start and finish there is a hurt brush that takes 100 health. This means you can not make it to the finish without dying. Down some stairs is a mega health. Easy to find, but not clearly in sight. After picking up the megahealth the hurt trigger does not kill you anymore and you can finish and go on to the next level.

Anyway, to teach rocket curving the player could be required to guide a rocket around a transparent obstacle to destroy a target. Electro combo could be taught by not letting the player move on before he destroyed an obstacle (box/door/whatever) with at least 80% of maximum combo damage or so. Furthermore you could place different kinds of armors on a simple race track and require the player to gather 200 armor in N seconds for example. Accomplishing this should be impossible with collecting shards only, so the player learns that bigger armor = better.

- it needs to be straightforward and immediately playable, nobody is interested in welcomes and xonotic and blablabla, people ingore tutoruals generally
- portal is a good example of tutorials tied directly into gameplay, even though xonotic is not a puzzle it has tricks
- a short hall with a pit (no weapons) that you can jump over only with higher than starting speed to teach bunnyhopping
- giant pyramid like stairs with healths to learn laser jumping
- 2 far targets you need to hit with laser - to learn laser usability and zoom
- hit corridors behond corners with mortar secondary before you can continue
- hit static target with nex, then moving target, then fast moving target and finally randomly fast moving target
- rocket jumping - jump pad that is not powerful enough to throw a player across

- small challenge map after a couple of tutorials that will be similar but with a twist, for example bunnyhopping + laserjumping with reasonable timer to make people understand, ok there is something I don't know yet
- slalom like map for strafeturning (lots of older players do not know this)
- jump pads throwing you slightly off the position you need to land to learn air control

- is it possible to have a bot scripted so he will do the same stuff beforehand?

- is it possible to have a bot scripted so he will do the same stuff beforehand?

An alternative is to have a 'video screen' on which is shown a loop showing another player doing it. This can be done as an animated texture created from a video of a demo.

- hit static target with nex, then moving target, then fast moving target and finally randomly fast moving target

Maybe also a part which encourages moving and shooting at the same time. A friend of me had a REALLY hard time shooting and bunnyhopping at the same time.

- small challenge map after a couple of tutorials that will be similar but with a twist, for example bunnyhopping + laserjumping with reasonable timer to make people understand, ok there is something I don't know yet

Maybe not just repeat with a twist, but just repeat when applicable. Many games like megaman or portal use repetition to make sure a player knows what he's doing instead of stumbling over a solution. I've seen it in three steps most of the time, introduce to problem/challenge/feature/enemy etc, use it another time and finally present a challenge using the gained knowledge.

(Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oXUhLh-mQ0 notice how new enemies and gameplay is introduced throughout the level? Especially the rotating platforms. First encounter relatively safe and shows you can use it to go from point a to b, second one tests that, while also showing you can drop down from one, final time the element of wind is involved. It's subtle but it works.)

- jump pads throwing you slightly off the position you need to land to learn air control

Maybe also use a horizontal jump pad to show the properties of preserving momentum by bunny hopping.

Also maybe an introduction to the various types of turrets?

Some very good ideas already, thanks for your input so far. As this is a brainstorming thread () I won't comment on the ideas yet, but that can be done at a later stage.

Also maybe an introduction to the various types of turrets?

I would love to hear some ideas on how we could do that interactively, or at least fun. Maybe a 'survive the turrets level' or something? :p

Proposals about wepaons, good. That will be hard to keep interesting, so great job on the ideas so far. We already have the bending rockets idea from asyy and introducing zoom using far targets (maybe nexgun would be more appropriate here?).

How you can not only bounce yourself, but also others around could be taught by throwing a non-violent bot into the void from a platform.

Idea for bouncing weapons: Put enemies behind a wall that you can only shoot by using secondary fire on a wall to the side.

I would love to hear some ideas on how we could do that interactively, or at least fun. Maybe a 'survive the turrets level' or something? :p

We could somehow start with "showing" bots get shot by turrets behind glass/out of reach place during another random excersize as a way of foreshadowing what will come. Then maybe let a player destroy one at the end of an early weapon tutorial level as a guard to the exit. And in the end have a level where turrets guard targets the player has to shoot to learn shooting while under fire, shooting on the move, and easy ways to take out turrets, maybe as some kind of recap level for weapon usage.

Also if we have targets or something similar, maybe someone could code a volume that spits out damage numbers when it get hit. Kind of like with borderlands/RPGs in general. That would give new players an indication how much damage a weapon does. (And allows others to experiment easily when weapons are tweaked )

What about using the Assault game mode as a base? This allows you to have the kind of 'get to this point by bunnyhopping', 'now laserjump up here', 'destroy this box by bouncing grenades round this barrier' kind of thing that is being talked about. Add in a room or 2 with bots to clear out as objectives and it could be chained together nicely.