Rework campaign maps/add tutorial maps (thoughts and discussion)

[Hans Joachim Desserud]

In general, now that we have the tutorial, I wonder whether the early campaign maps should be tweaked a bit. First of all there is some overlap between what you learn in the tutorial and the first campaign maps, which is understandable since the tutorial was added at a much later time. I would guess this annoys some people who just learned the same thing in the tutorial or others who just wants to enjoy the story and see how that progress.

I also feel that some of them try to teach too many concepts in too short time. I think it might be counter-productive if we try to introduce too many concepts in the same map and expect the player to remember all of them afterwards.

Unfortunately I don't really have a solution (nor time to rework all the campaing maps :p ) but I wonder if we might want to try a different approach. One could be to let the campaigns be entirely story-driven and add specific introduction/tutorial maps describing different concepts. Alternatively (and I think this could be really nice); have a few short maps focusing on different parts of the game, introducing and explaining them.

For instance one map where you run a mine operation, focusing on excavating resources, upgrading mines, another map focusing on warfare, one on expeditions (once we get there) and so on. The maps could even set up a basic economy capable of supporting the basis, allowing players to focus on the topic at hand. These would take something like 5-10 minutes to play through, and leave the player with a good grasp of how the topic works and integrates with the rest of the game.

[SirVer (sirver)]

I agree that the early campaign maps should be tweaked. Frankly, they are pretty boring (imho) as well. I like the idea of the tutorial maps - it would make things easier to digest and would also give a overview over the scope of widelands.

I think the initial babarian maps can be collapsed into one or two scenarios. I would also love to see a campaign selection screen which would allow to play any of the other scenarios first - with a warning that this is not the way they are meant to be played or so.

[_aD (ad-simplypeachy)]

Adding one concept at a time is a great idea. One that is missing - something that people ask about - is how workers are created, and what they need. Many people ask "What wares do I need to create soldiers?" and there are also facts such as "Some workers do not need tools", "Some buildings require a level 2 worker" etc. that could be covered in such a tutorial.

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

Yes, I definitely think we should explicitly explain how new soldiers are created and which wares are needed. (I still have to look that up from time to time, especially when I play other tribes).

Some more concreted ideas for tutorials:
Keep in mind that for each I would expect an existing infrastructure for the non-essential parts is in place when the tutorial starts. For instance, you have some production of building materials, maybe even food in some of the cases.

Mining (barbarians): set up mines in a mountain, excravate a couple of different resources for production of tools/weapons, upgrade miner workers/mines. Goals: know how mining and upgrading buildings work

Recruiting and training solders: How soldiers are recruited, build battle arena and training camp, where are soldiers trained and which attributes are trained in separate places, what are the required wares in each place. Goals: know how to recruit and train solders, which attributes are trained in different places and how to supply them.

Warfare: Some basic pre-setup scenarios (offensive/defensive). Not sure what we want to do here, but would be nice to cover basic attack/defense.

[Hans Joachim Desserud (hjd)]

(Marking confirmed based on general agreement in the comments)

[SirVer (sirver)]

ammentment: we have an awesome tutorial (if I may say so myself :P), but it is too long and linear - i.e. you need to go through the basics to get to more complex concepts. It should probably be split into 5-10 smaller tutorials.

[wl-zocker (wl-zocker)]

My current plan is to make five tutorials: basics (the current tutorial until the expansion), mining, soldier training and warfare, seafaring, economy settings.
After the basic tutorial, the player should be prepared to discover Widelands himself, i.e. he knows how to build buildings, but he has to find out the dependencies himself.
The economy tutorial will be a boring one: It will mainly explain what the player can change in the various menus, trying to give a "real world example". It should include bug 536532 (and many other things).
The seafaring tutorial handles building ships, ports, and expeditions.
For the other two, see comment #3.
I will also have a look at the Barbarian and Empire campaigns to avoid repetition.

That is the plan, I will see how far I get. Once I have some results, I will publish them.

[SirVer (sirver)]

great - thanks for taking this on. Let me know when you run into Lua issues - or anything else :)

[GunChleoc (gunchleoc)]

Fixed in build19-rc1.