Echo #13

Posted by Phoebii on Nov. 1, 2015, 4:26 p.m.

This week I was working on new tutorial.

I haven't finished updating it, because I was busy IRL and also because making tutorial is really hard!

It is so because I need to lock all features except those I want player to do during tutorial.

Also it must be fun, quick and explain almost everything, because I don't want player to be bothered by explanations after tutorial.

​So, yeah, a lot of trouble.

Another thing that gets in a way is my poor programming.

Sector Six is more or less gigantic if tree and when I need to change something, I have to rewrite lots of code.

Anyway, next week I'll probably finish tutorial.

It means that there's nothing much left on my to-do list.

And that means I might release version 0.3.0 this month!

Yesterday I tried playing old Sector Six version.

I was shocked when I realized how much game has improved during those months!

Can't wait to let you guys play monster that is Sector Six 0.3.0!

End of the echo!

Comments

twisterghost 9 years ago

Looks hype. Tutorials are hard, not just from an implementation perspective, but from a design perspective. Its hard to design a tutorial to introduce players to the game when you've been playing it all this time. Be sure to playtest it thoroughly with total newbies.

Acid 9 years ago

And make sure you try to pander as little as possible. Play it like a normal story mission but with tool tips and pauses to let the player ease into it. I hate when tutorials are both unskippable AND obviously just a tutorial instead of feeling like an introduction to the game, the world, and characters.

Being organic is key to making it not suck.

twisterghost 9 years ago

Quote:
Being organic is key to making it not suck.

To emphasize that, and I don't mean to pick on you, but based on your screenshot…

Quote:
Press spaceship button

Probably already down that path. You should consider just throwing them into the game, but disable / fade out everything but the viable button, allowing them to do it for themselves rather than from a prompt. Or, show a click animation over the button rather than text.

Just suggestions, from recent UX testing we've done at my work, we've seen people respond more to direction than chunks of text. That, and tooltips. Tooltips everywhere. Iconography gets you nowhere, despite designer's best intentions.

Phoebii 9 years ago

Quote:
Looks hype. Tutorials are hard, not just from an implementation perspective, but from a design perspective. Its hard to design a tutorial to introduce players to the game when you've been playing it all this time. Be sure to playtest it thoroughly with total newbies.

Aye, newbies can be quite impressive.

Once one Sector Six player said looking at health bar:"I wonder what is this? It's red, so it must mean something bad."

Quote:
And make sure you try to pander as little as possible. Play it like a normal story mission but with tool tips and pauses to let the player ease into it. I hate when tutorials are both unskippable AND obviously just a tutorial instead of feeling like an introduction to the game, the world, and characters.

Being organic is key to making it not suck.

Tutorial is slightly easier than real game, in a way that player only has to beat one enemy, not many, like in regular missions.

But enemy itself is just normal enemy.

My new tutorial starts as just tutorial and then gradually turns into story mission.

Quote:
Probably already down that path. You should consider just throwing them into the game, but disable / fade out everything but the viable button, allowing them to do it for themselves rather than from a prompt. Or, show a click animation over the button rather than text.

Just suggestions, from recent UX testing we've done at my work, we've seen people respond more to direction than chunks of text. That, and tooltips. Tooltips everywhere. Iconography gets you nowhere, despite designer's best intentions.

You cannot see spaceship button from screenshot, it appears few moments later.

Everything is disabled.

If tutorial tells player to press tutorial button, player cannot press anything else, just tutorial button.

Theoretically, even if player can't read, tutorial can still be completed just by pressing random buttons!

There will be text, glowing buttons and also tooltips at some places.