Hey folks,
geoo and me are creating tutorial levels these days. I've attached what we have so far.
Rubix has already made tutorial levels in the past, but their explanations use images. These can't be translated automatically. In addition, some levels were too hard, in particular the batter and cuber tutorial.
You're encouraged to playtest the attached levels. You might even show these levels to new people who've never played such a game, and see if they get stuck. These are some design criterions we had in mind:
- Use the in-level text system. Examine an attached level to see how it works, or read doc/files.txt. Leave room at the top of the level for this text (best) or lower the level height (second best).
- Give several opportunities in the level to execute whatever is taught.
- Make really obvious whatever is to be done. If there is any non-straightforward task, explain it in the text.
- Make it as hard as possible to kill lixes or get stuck. "Tutorial" means a safe sandbox to experiment. (As I write this, I notice that the miner/platformer level violates this too hard.)
- It's perfectly fine to recap a previously learned thing (we use builders in the blocker level), but more than 2 different skills per level may already cause confusion.
- Make the level look good. The tutorial levels might well be the most-played levels in the whole game.
We're planning a group of levels to introduce all the skills (currently, we've only build levels for this), another group of levels to introduce advanced game features and unobvious skill usages (Rubix's advanced tutorials are great examples for this), and a third, smaller group with introductory multiplayer levels.
Our current to-do list (read-only)-- Simon
