[SUGGESTION] Single Player Tutorial Game(s)

Looks like the link for "basic movement tutorial" is broken.

I added some suggestions, i would also like to argue for blaster movement being included in the beginner level. It's essential in CTF and lately, public vanilla has finally moved from DM to more interesting modes where it helps a lot.

Thanks morosophos and martin-t for your feedback.

@morosophos:
I know the text is sometimes a bit confusing / disappears too quickly.
The plan is to replace the text with voice clips eventually (Antibody agreed to record some clips a long time ago iirc).
Also, some visual representations of the required actions could be made (not by me though, I'm terrible in drawings) , it would be more useful than a plain text.

I will try to remake the shooting range.

@martin-t:
Well, I hesitated to put the blaster run room on Level 1, it would make sense, what do other people think?
I replied to your questions on the pad, I will look again at the button properties but I don't think we can achieve what you'd like :p
However, a playermodel-sized destroyable brush could be used for teaching shotgun slaps (with no ammo of course).

I'll be afk this week, will work on the tut later (

Well, I hesitated to put the blaster run room on Level 1, it would make sense, what do other people think?

I think wpn movement is kinda hard, so better not to overwhelm new users at the 1st chapter with it. There should be a separate chapter devoted to blaster jumps/accel, crylink runs, rocket jumps, etc

Also this might sound strange, but we should NOT focus on noobs which can't do anything. The basics can be mastered intuitively (if someone can't he most likely doesn't fit xonotic and we shouldn't care). Ofc the basics should be covered, but very briefly. We should focus tutorials which would allow to step from mediocre level to top. Personally I'd like to have some hardcore aiming drills (which also might be useful to calibrate mouse sensitivity). I'm a shit aimer myself so I can have only a rough idea of how proper aim training should look like. Guess some drills for tracking moving objects and some drills for doing flick shots.

For movement, can't we just create some cts maps designed for vanilla xon physics and weapon balance? We might even use them on defrag servers (mapinfo can temporarily switch to vanilla physics and balance).

New test version of Level 1: http://beta.xonotic.org/autobuild-bsp/tu...f3fedb.pk3
Changes:

• New exit room, you need to reach a teleporter while a turret is shooting at you. If you don't want to die, you have to pick up health & armor on the way. Thanks martin-t for the suggestion, it should help players to better understand the usefulness of health & armor pickups in-game. The room looks a bit empty though...
  
• Added a shotgun slap practice, however there seems to be a bug and the button can be triggered with shotgun primary too... Pls just pretend you don't have any shells
  
• Replaced the glass with a force field in the shooting range, so you won't hurt yourself.
  

I also put together an initial version of Level 2: http://beta.xonotic.org/autobuild-bsp/tu...274daf.pk3
The rooms on this level already existed in the previous tutorial attempts, it's not perfect and probably needs some improvements

BTW, for proper testing you need Xonotic autobuild or a recent git build.

I updated the previous post with a new test version of Level 1.
There were a few issues with the turret room (the door system was broken, I removed it and simply put a teleporter instead). Also you now spawn in this room with 100 health, regardless of your previous health amount.

Just a note, as I don't have a lot of time for contributions lately (alas).

I continued working a bit on the tutorial campaign last year (based on Freddy's map from 2017), but it's not finished.

Feel free to contribute to this WIP branch, or create your own branch: https://gitlab.com/xonotic/xonotic-maps....quests/125

Current version of the 3 tutorial levels (Xonotic autobuild or git needed):
LEVEL 1
LEVEL 2
LEVEL 3


I hope it can be useful for anyone willing to create a tutorial for this game, so there's no need to reinvent the wheel.

One thing I noticed on the first map:
-you should see the turret through glass from which you have to escape (i wondered what turret when the message popped up just to die to a turret that shoots my back... i assumed the walls would open to reveal turrets)
also it's frustrating to redo everything if that kills you

Also make the tutorial maps cts. This way you get checkpoints and see how fast you make the tutorial. Or checkpoints with map logic like removing/spawning spawnpoints - it works. (somehow i managed it on my battle royale-tron map)

The concepts of circle- and strafejumping etc should be explained ingame. I got something like this in mind:



But else they are really nice!

Good idea about showing the turret before you enter the room, and about the Portal-like signs to explain the required actions (I lack the skill to draw something like that though) !

No need to make the map CTS, there is a checkpoint system already that allows you to respawn on the last room you entered
But it requires Xonotic autobuild (it won't work with 0.8.2), I edited my previous post to point it out.

Hmm me neither but i think about making little orthographic stick animations rendered with blender.
Like animating circlejump with a turning stick figure and an arrow in the foreground while showing the buttons all in like 3-5 frames at 1fps.
Not sure how to do that tho.

Edit: Another thing to consider would be an area with slick surfaces.

I can attempt to do voice lines for the tutorial text if that still sounds like a good idea.
If you want that just let me know.
However, I do think that the text should still exist for accessibility reasons.

A few other thoughts:

The text is rather vague, saying:
"Use the Blaster to accelerate through the corridor"
instead of something like:
"Shoot the blaster backwards after each bunny hop to get through the corridor in time"

A few other improvements like this are:

• explaining what an electro combo is
  
• explaining that you shoot the crylink secondary while running against the wall facing forwards
  
• explaining the secondary fire bouncy grenade with the mortar
  
• explaining how to curve rockets by holding down the mouse button after firing (and what the secondary does too)
  
• a "you've already hit that button" popup
  
• explain how to circlejump
  
• what does "Strafe in the air to get over the pit." mean? (I did a really sketchy ramp jump and barely made it across before I realized it meant strafe jump)
  
• change the wording from "strafe to get to the door" to "strafe jump to get to the door"
  
• explain how to strafe jump
  

Add levels to explain

• how to turn while bunny hopping and keep your speed
  
• how to properly do weapon combos
  

Maybe show what keys to press in order and with what timing, like this newbie corner image, in a sign on the wall (it doesn't need to be a fancy drawing, just functional):

i.e. for strafe jumping: jump forward, keep holding jump and forward, left arrow and look left, right arrow and look right , etc. (but with images of a key press replay thing, and maybe only words saying what direction to look, on a sign instead of this really long description)
I'm thinking something like:

I can also attempt to do a more polished (and not disgusting looking) mock-up, or even final art if nobody else wants to.
This might also work well in a 1fps animation style suggested earlier by _para.

Also maybe add a notice for when you’ve already hit a button but keep trying to shoot it

This tutorial was incredibly helpful in teaching me some skills I never really learned from the newbie corner.
Thanks

Just finished the first level's Portal-like art.

Progress screenshot attached.