This is a quick (but very important!) poll about everyone's experience getting started so far.
You guys have all done an amazing job figuring out OC so far, and I'm immensely encouraged by how far you've all gotten with the existing materials. Every time I get a screenshot of something you guys have done in-game, it really, really leaves me feeling great.
As you all know, playing Outer Colony is a bit more mechanically involved than playing a traditional RTS. It's just the nature of the beast. There's far more depth and there are far more things that you can do, so this naturally necessitates a much larger control scheme. Again, the invariable consequence here is a steeper learning curve. No matter what we do, the following holds true:
More Depth in Gameplay -> yields -> More Controls and Interfaces -> yields -> More Things to Learn in Order To Play the Game
This is fundamental, and it's a 100% OK part of Outer Colony. The goal has always been, however, to make the "More Controls and Interfaces" piece as intuitive and simple as possible, so that anyone who wants to play Outer Colony can learn its mechanics as easily as possible.
Again, I'm extremely encouraged by how far many of you guys have gotten into learning the interfaces via the existing tutorials. This is a very good sign that the controls themselves are pretty good!
However, almost everyone has gotten stuck at some point or taken a misstep in navigating the existing tutorial. We've improved it a lot, but most of you guys are probably more patient and dedicated than typical new players will be. With that in mind, do you think a fully guided, in-game tutorial would be a big help for getting started in Outer Colony?
I have not implemented one to this point, because it's going to be a significant pain to do, and I'm not exactly sure how I can pull it off. However, if it would help you guys and, by extension, help future players experience Outer Colony, it's something I'll find a way to do. A primary goal of the project is to make Outer Colony accessible to as many people as we can, and if I can double the number of people that can experience the game by building a guided tutorial into the game, I'll do it. If one spends two years building a game with (what I think are) neat mechanics, spending another couple of weeks to make sure that many people can learn it as easily as possible is a worthwhile endeavor.
Feel free to share your thoughts on learning Outer Colony so far, as I'd love to hear them, and thanks as always to you guys for the time you've put in as testers!
In Game Tutorial
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Re: In Game Tutorial
Hmmm I'm on the fence over this one.
I found some bits easy to pick up and other more complex ones like the mining and refinement much trickier.
I would say that if you can actually do an in game version, then videos on youtube with 'How to...' for people to dip in to in case the written isn't enough for them to visualise then that should do the trick (it would for me anyway)
Like you say, the complexity is the nature of the beast however I wouldn't want to see people stumble at the first hurdle particularly if they found written instructions more challenging to get their heads around than visuals.
I think that makes sense lol!
I found some bits easy to pick up and other more complex ones like the mining and refinement much trickier.
I would say that if you can actually do an in game version, then videos on youtube with 'How to...' for people to dip in to in case the written isn't enough for them to visualise then that should do the trick (it would for me anyway)
Like you say, the complexity is the nature of the beast however I wouldn't want to see people stumble at the first hurdle particularly if they found written instructions more challenging to get their heads around than visuals.
I think that makes sense lol!
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Re: In Game Tutorial
RetroPrincess wrote:I would say that if you can actually do an in game version, then videos on youtube with 'How to...' for people to dip in to in case the written isn't enough for them to visualise then that should do the trick (it would for me anyway)
This is actually what I'm thinking of doing as I first figure out the design for the tutorials. I think there should be a pretty straightforward way for me to embed YouTube videos directly into the game, and players will be able to follow along with the videos as they play. The content will basically be identical to the current tutorial, it will just be presented as a series of videos in the game itself.
I wouldn't want to see people stumble at the first hurdle particularly if they found written instructions more challenging to get their heads around than visuals.
Exactly, I just don't want people to get stuck at the very beginning. There's so much fun to be had once you've figured everything out, so I need to just make sure that initial learning curve is shallowed out as much as practically possible.
I think in-game videos are going to be a big help, and I'm going to start investigating how to pull these off this morning.
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Re: In Game Tutorial
RetroPrincess wrote:I would say that if you can actually do an in game version, then videos on youtube with 'How to...' for people to dip in to in case the written isn't enough for them to visualise then that should do the trick (it would for me anyway)
I've knocked out the design work and implementation for embedding video guides this morning, and it's looking something like this (still a bit rough, but should give you an idea of the direction I'm going):
I'm going to present the user with an ordered list of videos, from start to finish, that cover all the topics in the existing getting started tutorial. Right now, farming is the only topic that appears in the list, and what's shown isn't even a proper tutorial video, but hopefully it gets the idea across. This way, users can watch me do something in a video, hear me talk about how to do it while I'm showing it, and so long as the tutorial video itself is well made, it'll all be clear. I will likely hire a voice actor / actress to do the official voice work for the final videos, too.
I think this ought to make things much easier on everyone.