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Youtuber needs encouragement....


AluminumHaste

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So we have either the option to make a tutorial mission - or add some code magic that adds hints everytime you do something for the first time (hold an object, drag a body etc, equip a water arrow etc). However, that code magic will be very complicated. It is much easier to add loading tips or make a small tutorial mission.

Another easy solution would be to have the training mission preinstalled and have a popup on the first launch of TDM saying "You have launched The Dark Mod for the first time. Do you want to learn how to play it in the Trainingmission?".

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I personally think it would be cool to have narration on the training mission. It helps keep the player focused on the task (learning to play the game) and I just miss those things, the way we used to have 'em in Deus Ex, Thief, No One Lives Forever, Half-life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift, Soldier of Fortune, and on and on and on.

 

I will record something in the morning and stick it up here. You can just have different audio clips play when the player goes to different portions of the map.

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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Another easy solution would be to have the training mission preinstalled and have a popup on the first launch of TDM saying "You have launched The Dark Mod for the first time. Do you want to learn how to play it in the Trainingmission?".

 

While helping a bit, it will not fix the main issue (that the training mission is not for the total newbies, but more for seasoned players who just want to learn the difference between Thief and TDM).

 

I personally think it would be cool to have narration on the training mission. It helps keep the player focused on the task (learning to play the game) and I just miss those things, the way we used to have 'em in Deus Ex, Thief, No One Lives Forever, Half-life, Opposing Force, Blue Shift, Soldier of Fortune, and on and on and on.

 

I will record something in the morning and stick it up here. You can just have different audio clips play when the player goes to different portions of the map.

 

While this is nice, it will also only convert text to audio - apart from making it harder for people who are deaf or have troubles hearing :) it will also make translation much harder.

 

And it won't fix the issue at hand (e.g. that we need a on-rails-tutorial mission, in addition to the free-run-around-training mission)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Would it be possible to set the training level to have difficulties? Instead of making another linear/on rails training mission, just have the 'easy' setting only have 1 door usable at the start (maybe have coloured blocks visibly barring the way to others, when that first section is cleared, the next section's coloured block is teleported away, the door to the first area is forced open and made unfrobbable, giving no doubt what-so-ever as to where to go?

 

Maybe even have some kinda glowing blue foot decal like T3 had for the stealth section, all of which must be easier than making a new training level.

Edited by Xarg

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While helping a bit, it will not fix the main issue (that the training mission is not for the total newbies, but more for seasoned players who just want to learn the difference between Thief and TDM).

Hmn, I don't see why newbies shouldn't be able to handle the training mission. The only places with hard difficulty are the fighting area and some sneaking places.

 

As far as the fighting is concerned, thief veterans can be considered noobs as well because the fighting is completely different in TDM. The difficulty here will teach players pretty fast that fighting is best avoided in TDM, so no problem there.

 

But I'll give you the sneaking practice. It can be tough on a player who has never played a lighting-dependent stealth-game. However, we can fix that! With a little bit of additional decal-placement, specifically arrows on the floor indicating an easy possible route through the course, nothing in the training mission should pose an insurmountable obstacle to anyone.

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Would it be possible to set the training level to have difficulties? Instead of making another linear/on rails training mission, just have the 'easy' setting only have 1 door usable at the start (maybe have coloured blocks visibly barring the way to others, when that first section is cleared, the next section's coloured block is teleported away, the door to the first area is forced open and made unfrobbable, giving no doubt what-so-ever as to where to go?

 

Maybe even have some kinda glowing blue foot decal like T3 had for the stealth section, all of which must be easier than making a new training level.

 

Uhm, why are all people so focused on NOT making a tutorial and instead come up with a lot of crazy ways to retrofit the training mission to some sort of "semi-tutorial"? The current training mission is not a tutorial, and for beginners we need a on-rails tutorial with easy, baby-step instructions that border on the silly (e.g. "Look at the book by centering it in your view. When it lights up, you can frob the book by pressing the ENTER key"). etc etc. You know the things that HL had, where you can't progess unless you learn how you duck and crouch and sneak and sneak run etc.

 

The training mission in itself is not bad, but it is not suitable for this at all. The player can easily miss important things by not reading a book, or not trying some things (Fen f.i. skipped the object handling puzzle, picked up the flash bomb, but never learned how it works e.g. the do not look into the flashbomb etc.

 

This all can prevented when you have a tutorial where the player cannot skip important things and learns them step by step. No matter how many popup messages you pop up, the player will not read them (just watch Fen race through the training mission and tell me he really read all the stuff that is popping up on the screen? :)

 

Fen, you are a good user study - and you are somebody who played Thief. Imagine the player is someone who comes from Assasins Creed or even the FPS scene (shoot first ask later). I have watched such people "play" the training mission and it is not pretty :D

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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This is the pick up and win generation, short of regenerating health, perks, and grenade spam, some people just can't be helped :P. That said, an actual training mission could be fun to make... I'd offer to do it myself if there weren't much more skilled people who could do it faster and better who aren't currently working on a mission, that and I still have to finish my beginner contest map, and I don't think a new training mission would be accepted for that :P........... or would it?

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This is the pick up and win generation, short of regenerating health, perks, and grenade spam, some people just can't be helped :P.

 

Yeah, it is sad, I even notice it on my self, my attention span gets shorter every oooh look, shiny *click*

 

Jokes aside, it is hard to quantify how "real" the problem is that some people do not pick up some things by themselves. Maybe a lot of them do and never post because it just works. Maybe a lot don't pick the important things, think "TDM sucks!" and quitly leave. Hard to say. People like Fen, who post a video are rare, and they are also the ones we can help.

 

However, if you see how frequently people miss things like that you can pick up bodies, that you have to drop flashbombs at your feet while running away, that you can manipulate objects in the grabber etc e, then I think our current strategies (writing longer and longer texts on the wiki, expanding the training map) do not work. Of course it is easy for me to say "we must make a tutorial", because I am not the one who will make it :D

 

That said, an actual training mission could be fun to make... I'd offer to do it myself if there weren't much more skilled people who could do it faster and better who aren't currently working on a mission, that and I still have to finish my beginner contest map, and I don't think a new training mission would be accepted for that :P........... or would it?

 

Hm, why not? (It is not my decision, tho).

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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Hmn, I don't see why newbies shouldn't be able to handle the training mission. The only places with hard difficulty are the fighting area and some sneaking places.

 

Please go find someone who never played Thief, set them in front of the training mission, and then keep quiet (do not give them any hints). Then see and weep. (My bet is they won't even finish the training mission before getting frustrated) ;)

 

As far as the fighting is concerned, thief veterans can be considered noobs as well because the fighting is completely different in TDM. The difficulty here will teach players pretty fast that fighting is best avoided in TDM, so no problem there.

 

In my case, the test person took one swing at the guard and killed him with a lucky head stroke, then said "oh fighting is soo easy", the second round started, and they left the ring accidentily. This gave them the impression the fight was over. Then they left the fighting area, because "oh I have seen enough fighting, its easier than I thought".

 

The only thing they found disappointing was that there wasn't more to shoot or fight. *sigh* That left a pretty bad impression on me..

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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I just think the training mission is excellent and creating a tutorial mission would make it somewhat obsolete. That's all! For that reason, I'd rather see the training mission altered than creating a whole new tutorial mission. And there is no reason preventing us from adding the features you require to the training mission.

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I can see it from both sides.

 

---

The Training map is really well done imo, and it has everything someone needs to practice.

 

With that said if you want to use it to practice stuff like shooting at a target it would be annoying to load it up and have to go through lockpicking and object manipulation tuts first. Most games anymore have a 'warm up' level where you learn as you go. It definitely makes it easier to get into the game.

 

But it's always VERY annoying when you have to restart the game and trudge through it again.

 

So I don't think making the training map into that is good.

-----------

 

Having a small map where the player learns everything in order and is instructed through it would be great. We do see a lot of players that ask the same questions over and over, and they can learn that stuff in the training map IF they find the area, etc..

 

But having a linear map that forces them to do one thing at a time in order is a good way to make sure they don't miss anything. It could also be a great introduction to the mod.

I like having it installed and ready to go as the first map. They DL, it's there, start...learn.

 

It would add a lot of personality if we had a good thief voice over, of course that doesn't work great with translations/file size. But we could also have the notes, possibly a disable them choice.

 

Saint Lucia is a great 'showcase' map, but the whole break object, make noise, attract attention thing might not be the best intro into thief like gameplay.

Dark is the sway that mows like a harvest

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I'm another person who really likes the training mission. I spent at least twenty minutes in the fighting section alone. It is great to allow the player to explore and learn at their own pace, rather than saying: "Here's how combat works, take a few swings at this opponent and move on down the hallway".

 

I was able to practice the combat over and over again until I got relatively skilled at it.

 

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/252056/tdm_narration.zip

 

couple of example recordings I made. The first is processed with a noise filter, the second I did not bother to do. I used a standard cheap microphone and spoke a bit away to prevent popping. You can hear my refrigerator in the last segment.

Edited by lost_soul

--- War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left.

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I was writing a big post here cause I've got tons to say on the matter (and excited to say it :P) but I actually think I'd like to make a video about it instead. :) (later today)

 

Just a heads up -

 

Can I humbly suggest that when your vids that you condense what you have to say, as the saying goes quality not quantity. Its almost like your talking for the sake of taking, which unfortunately can be quite grating. Also if we go by the amount of vids youve posted your tdm skills should have improved, but after looking at some of the vids with the sound muted I keep thinking "what is he doing"

 

He'd make a great betatester.

+1

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Can I humbly suggest that when your vids that you condense what you have to say, as the saying goes quality not quantity. Its almost like your talking for the sake of taking, which unfortunately can be quite grating.

I'd actually disagree. The stream-of-consciousness is very helpful when you're looking for gameplay frustrations. Not bugtesting. That's for those cool analytical almost-anal-retentive professionals.

 

Video game studios love to do playtesting in this way. Give the man a game, and just let him play (just as Joe Consumer would do). Note his frustrations, listen to anything he says, and even note the order of the list-of-bad-things. Even better: you can't talk to a YT video, so you can't accidently bias your playtester. Just listen to the feedback.

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I'd actually disagree. The stream-of-consciousness is very helpful when you're looking for gameplay frustrations.

I agree a constant stream is fine, but when that crosses over into babbling its then it stops being helpful.

 

@Fen, I'm not being nasty, I would hope that you take my blunt comments as constructive criticism.

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In any case, it's not really our place to tell anyone how to make their play through videos, they're a gift really...especially if that's how they enjoy themselves and are comfortable doing it. Anything else would feel forced and probably much less enjoyable for Fen. It's a great window into how a player views TDM. It has been refreshing.

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And I thought that was just a throwaway line that wasn't very funny :laugh:

 

But seriously, thanks guys. I know I can't please everyone, there's going to people who like my style and those who don't. And I hope more people start recording TDM plays as well so there can be more styles for different tastes, and different perspectives on the game and so forth. :)

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Just for the record, I like Fen's voice and babbling - it has grown on me over time. So please keep it up :)

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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