[New build - EXPERIMENTAL] 21w45a: New Game Intro and Tutorials

[tsunamayo]

The game now have a new introduction. This features a much refined tutorial built using the new wip mission framework.

A new character will:

• spawn at a station medbay.
• go through a locomotion tutorial to learn about the jetpack
• then tackle a basic building training at the new Training Center platform
• learn about ship building by placing a few systems on a repair ship
• finally use this ship to repair a few modules to learn about flying

This new player intro is still wip and will be augmented with more tutorials. The training platform is designed so that players can learn new features at their pace while visiting any station.

The new mission framework adds a few features:

• Mission Board kiosks
• Mission HUD elements with sub-objective display
• Waypoint display.
• New logic field block to defined region to be used within mission scripts
• New Tag tool to label and tag bricks to find them within mission scripts

Missions are very much wip, here is the high level roadmap:

• Migrate to LUA definition
• State save and multiplayer support
• Player will be able to build and share their custom mission script
• Procedural generation of mission to add variety
• And of course add plenty of missions!

Other features added:

• New Repair Beam brick (still wip)

Hotfixes:

4233 Beam freezes on fire

Landing Improved Repair preview improved

[tsunamayo]

Build is live! If you could test the new intro by creating new character that would be great! I will now do a big bugfix pass and finally release to default.

Phew that update took a lot longer to finish, the repair mission was quite long to do. I had to fix so much things, so working on missions will help us clean the non-building side of the game... I will do some post soon, as the goal for me is to migrate mission script to LUA and have player be able to create their own script! That would also be a first foray into modding. Cheers all!

[tsunamayo]

Also great thanks to 5URG3 for all the modules and kiosks, and Servo for the lovely mini-repair ship (that he had to redo - that one also was tricky!)

[TIKIRobo]

my game does have this new icon however on new worlds im not spawning in on a station nor does it say the correct game version in the top right

[TIKIRobo]

managed to find a tutorial platform by teleporting around, however when i click "start" and "track" nothing happened and the new menu remained blank, also i tried messing around with the computer after that and it froze my game. Player.log

[Uncle-Ulty]

When I create a new character, I start on the old standard position, not in the station.

when I click on "start tutorial" (on the tutorial kiosk), nothing happens, track or untracked. Also, I don't see any spawned module...

:( Player.log

[tsunamayo]

this is weird, you also have not the right version id... The new mission button is still wip, so at least you have some of the features... Let me check a bit more.

[Uncle-Ulty]

I don't see the patch, even after update

[tsunamayo]

@TIKIRobo @Uncle-Ulty Okay there was an issue with steam. Could you tell me if it is all good now? Thanks

[Uncle-Ulty]

-STEAM must be restarted to receive the new patch

HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM...

-I've completed the basic tutorial, but the repair ship doesn't have a yoke or a ship computer

-also, this developer window....

-I've recorded my tutorial attempt: https://youtu.be/fwF3ZobSKzs

Player.log

[Uncle-Ulty]

The repair beam is invisible, both in repair ship and in menu

[tsunamayo]

@Uncle-Ulty Okay thanks for the feedback I am pushing a fix asap for the dev console. The problem is that the tutorial is not moving to the next step, you are supposed to build those brick yourself. I will see if I can reproduce! thanks

[tsunamayo]

@Uncle-Ulty build is up - again. I had a quick test and had no hangar step in detection issue. Tell me if that finally work on your side!

[tsunamayo]

also I havent integrated your kiosks just yet but will do soon - they are amazing!

[Uncle-Ulty]

lets try again

[Uncle-Ulty]

It's Alive!, I mean, It's working!!!! <3

[Uncle-Ulty]

It's working fine! I've recorded it again, https://youtu.be/odjl77NeoSo

The only issue is the subtle fps drop.

I loved the tutorial track, it's very intuitive and with clear instructions Player.log

[Uncle-Ulty]

also I havent integrated your kiosks just yet but will do soon - they are amazing!

Thanks, it's a pleasure to help the game somehow! ^^

[tsunamayo]

yep I noticed a fps drop too, I will investigate that!

[tsunamayo]

yep it should be 100% better than the old one, especially as now you cant destroy the platform or station!

[Kaiser-Indrasil]

@tsunamayo Overall, the tutorial is good, but it needs more cues for the player. Here's my tips in order of tutorial progression:

1. The player needs a cue that they can disable the jetpack by clicking G again
2. The player needs a cue that the doors can be opened with the F key
3. The player needs a cue that they should call the elevator by clicking the F key on the button next to it 3.5? Also, the elevator can be easily missed by players who are less aware of their surroundings. Rotating it 90 degrees towards the player should fix the problem.
4. Interactable elements should be of different colour than their surroundings (like in Mirror's Edge). Buttons are orange, like their immediate surroundings. This is bad because they're not readily visible. Make them of their own unique colours (like the blue from the Building Tutorial).
5. As the lag caused by NPCs strikes hard, during the elevator ride I popped up through its ceiling. Before you ship it to the default branch, you have to do something about the lag.
6. The game objective description is easily missable. It should take the central place, probably above the toolbar, and scale with the screen resolution.
7. The game objective icon is easily missable, too. It should be bigger, blink to attract the player's attention, and remain on the border of the screen if the thing it's pointing to is out of FOV.
8. The building tutorial should teach that we can stretch blocks along two axes - lengthwise and widthwise - and also, that we can do so vertically, but I suppose it will be in one of the advanced building tutorials.

I really appreciate that the player cannot delete other bricks - only the ones they placed themselves. Great feature!

[Kaiser-Indrasil]

@tsunamayo Okay, I didn't notice we should actually proceed with the tutorial to the Mission Board, which further reinforces my 6th and 7th point from the previous post. The tutorial cues should be more visible!

9. The Mission Board should display a pop-up window once the player clicks the Track button.
10. The repair ship building tutorial should explain that the player can switch between the toolbar positions by clicking the 1-9 keys or rolling the mouse wheel, in case they pick up all the blocks at once.
11. There should be a prompt to click the button block to open up the rear hatch of the repair ship.
12. Once the player is in the seat, there should be a prompt to click the button block to the left to close the canopy.
13. The tutorial should tell the player to specifically hold the LMB on the Yoke to enter it.
14. The tutorial should specify that the ship is operated exactly like the 6DOF jetpack, so aside from WASD it uses Space, Ctrl, Q, and E keys (these should reflect the keys the player chose in the Keymapping menu!)
15. Also, the physics engine for the player character should be improved, because I've lost count on how many times have I sunk through an elevator's floor or bumped upwards (even with NPCs completely disabled!).

I love how the tutorial highlights the block projections where the player should put their blocks in. Great job!

Also, I think that the pacing of the repair beam tutorial is excellent, as it lets the player learn the ropes of flying in 3D space, the ship's agility and inertia, shows the layout of the station, and the scope of the game, with the gas giant being readily visible once the player takes a turn towards the damaged modules.

And I love the addition of the repair beam!

But most of all, I CAN'T WAIT for the custom player-made missions feature! Once you fix the MultiPlayer, it's gonna be SO GOOD!

[Uncle-Ulty]

But most of all, I CAN'T WAIT for the custom player-made missions feature!

I'm gonna make some crazy hovercraft races!

[Uncle-Ulty]

I will do some post soon, as the goal for me is to migrate mission script to LUA and have player be able to create their own script!

My goal is to create racing missions, so I have some doubts.

-with mod mission, will be possible to spawn hovercraft, racing track module and other stuff? -will it be possible to program some kind of algorithm to record the lap time, and somehow upload this information to compare to other players? (make a rank with the top10 best times from different players). -will it be possible to play some music and use some sounds in the custom track? I'm planning to use my own soundtracks and some sound effects that are available on the internet.

My goal is to make the "F-ZEVO" content (I'm planning to use this pun to avoid copyright problems with Nintendo)

[Jorpis-Jorah]

@tsunamayo, I think once you ship all this to default, and work the multiplayer. You should begin thinking about engineering planets.

[timethatswasted]

@tsunamayo tutorial looks great so far

@Kaiser-Indrasil already gave a great rundown of stuff to improve on here are my additional thoughts:

1: There needs to be big blinking waypoints over objectives, even the small ones like "take the elevator" people playing the game for the first time will need the buttons for the elevator, and just about everything else pointed out to them until they learn or recognize buttons and other player made mechanisms.

2: The whole building tutorial needs a second look. By default the F1 menu should be set to "Target Brick Grid" right now if you place a block and then do the next step of "rotate and place block" the next block you try and place is off grid and wont line up with the first block you placed. This is going to be supper confusing to new people who have not seen the F1 menu yet.

Though the F1 menu should be part of an "advanced build tutorial" you should probably make people aware of it before moving onto the mission board.

3: Again while "repairing" the repair vehicle the yellow highlighted areas you are suppose to build in are hard to see compared to the yellow color on the ships. This highlighted build preview things need to be blinking or a different color.

4: There needs to be a prompt to tell you to press the button on the ship to expose the reactor. How is anyone suppose to know how to do that? Also there should be a hot key / prompt to close the cockpit of the repair ship

5: There needs to be a short linking tutorial before telling people to link stuff

6: Not a big deal, but maybe the repair beam should gimble? it feels supper awkward with the beam locked and the curser moving all over while flying.

6: landing pad enter direction needs to be adjusted, trying to auto land on it is a mess.

[cloudrambler]

@tsunamayo I think the logic field will get adopted by builders as a design aide as it can set out spaces without interfering with the build process. Might it be possible to have a toggle in the debug menu to keep them visible when a different item is selected?

[tsunamayo]

-with mod mission, will be possible to spawn hovercraft, racing track module and other stuff? -will it be possible to program some kind of algorithm to record the lap time, and somehow upload this information to compare to other players? (make a rank with the top10 best times from different players). -will it be possible to play some music and use some sounds in the custom track? I'm planning to use my own soundtracks and some sound effects that are available on the internet.

So yes you can spawn entities, dock them, damage them ect. Yes you could detect player crossing a field and increment lap, or time laps ect. Music wont likely be in scope though - at least at first. It is less needed for mission, but for custom block or such maybe more!

[tsunamayo]

@Kaiser-Indrasil

1. The player needs a cue that they can disable the jetpack by clicking G again well I hope they understood at this point they can switch jetpack mode. There is the little icon on top
2. The player needs a cue that the doors can be opened with the F key well there is already a message popping, Press E to activate. With the tag tool I will update so that you can have a message that shows the button label if defined.
3. The player needs a cue that they should call the elevator by clicking the F key on the button next to it 3.5? Also, the elevator can be easily missed by players who are less aware of their surroundings. Rotating it 90 degrees towards the player should fix the problem. Yep I wanted to add that, I will also try working on a smarter pathfinding waypoint system which will be needed for crowd/crew.
4. Interactable elements should be of different colour than their surroundings (like in Mirror's Edge). Buttons are orange, like their immediate surroundings. This is bad because they're not readily visible. Make them of their own unique colours (like the blue from the Building Tutorial). Well honestly buttons are pretty massive! And they are on a stand. I think that is easily findable.
5. As the lag caused by NPCs strikes hard, during the elevator ride I popped up through its ceiling. Before you ship it to the default branch, you have to do something about the lag. Yes that was planned.
6. The game objective description is easily missable. It should take the central place, probably above the toolbar, and scale with the screen resolution. I simply copied what Far Cry and plenty of other was doing. I need a bigger and dedicated popup when a new mission is tracked though.
7. The game objective icon is easily missable, too. It should be bigger, blink to attract the player's attention, and remain on the border of the screen if the thing it's pointing to is out of FOV. You mean the yellow waypoint? Yes I will do something when out of screen.
8. The building tutorial should teach that we can stretch blocks along two axes - lengthwise and widthwise - and also, that we can do so vertically, but I suppose it will be in one of the advanced building tutorials. Well again there is a HUD instruction that shows all the time when dragging. So they will learn that on their own at their pace. I really appreciate that the player cannot delete other bricks - only the ones they placed themselves. Great feature! Yeah it seems that it was a big neg point with newbies.

Thanks mate for the constructive criticism!

[tsunamayo]

@Kaiser-Indrasil

@tsunamayo Okay, I didn't notice we should actually proceed with the tutorial to the Mission Board, which further reinforces my 6th and 7th point from the previous post. The tutorial cues should be more visible! Yeah the way the meta mission continues after the platform training is crappy. Definitely needs more cues

1. The Mission Board should display a pop-up window once the player clicks the Track button. yep
2. The repair ship building tutorial should explain that the player can switch between the toolbar positions by clicking the 1-9 keys or rolling the mouse wheel, in case they pick up all the blocks at once. Really? I mean I dont recall a game that goes that basic in their tutorial - if you have one in mind please tell me!
3. There should be a prompt to click the button block to open up the rear hatch of the repair ship. This I wanted the player to let the player figure out by themselves - that is a large glowing button sticking in the middle! I might display an help message if they get stuck for too long though...
4. Once the player is in the seat, there should be a prompt to click the button block to the left to close the canopy. Yeah I wanted to do this, but is a lot harder to do correctly. I have to monitor the state of the mechanism for example.
5. The tutorial should tell the player to specifically hold the LMB on the Yoke to enter it. Did you remapped this? He has to press F to enter stuff and it is written in a HUD popup all the time.
6. The tutorial should specify that the ship is operated exactly like the 6DOF jetpack, so aside from WASD it uses Space, Ctrl, Q, and E keys (these should reflect the keys the player chose in the Keymapping menu!) There is now a popup thats fade once you enter the ship that display the controls mapping. Again inspired by Far cry.
7. Also, the physics engine for the player character should be improved, because I've lost count on how many times have I sunk through an elevator's floor or bumped upwards (even with NPCs completely disabled!). Yep though for some reason it is really hard to do...

Cheers

Edit: sorry for the crappy formatting.

[tsunamayo]

@timethatswasted Alright thanks too for the feedback!

1: There needs to be big blinking waypoints over objectives, even the small ones like "take the elevator" people playing the game for the first time will need the buttons for the elevator, and just about everything else pointed out to them until they learn or recognize buttons and other player made mechanisms. Yep I want to add another waypoint for the elevator button. I could also make it blink, like in far cry. Also it is supposed to show distance but there was an issue with that. 2: The whole building tutorial needs a second look. By default the F1 menu should be set to "Target Brick Grid" right now if you place a block and then do the next step of "rotate and place block" the next block you try and place is off grid and wont line up with the first block you placed. This is going to be supper confusing to new people who have not seen the F1 menu yet. Well this one I dont quite understand. I think it should be Global brick grid, and that way blocks will always align. But even with Target brick with the way the platform is built blocks will align too. Though the F1 menu should be part of an "advanced build tutorial" you should probably make people aware of it before moving onto the mission board. Yep this is too advanced. 3: Again while "repairing" the repair vehicle the yellow highlighted areas you are suppose to build in are hard to see compared to the yellow color on the ships. This highlighted build preview things need to be blinking or a different color. I didnt though about the blinking, I will give it a shot good idea. 4: There needs to be a prompt to tell you to press the button on the ship to expose the reactor. How is anyone suppose to know how to do that? Also there should be a hot key / prompt to close the cockpit of the repair ship Well the button is big and in the middle, and you can see stuff beneath. I will give a hint if they are stuck - but honestly I would like to see how new player really react to that (I mean if they need to be too assisted they will never like an open world creative game). Also we will get a smarter hint: Ie Press [F] to open the hatch. 5: There needs to be a short linking tutorial before telling people to link stuff Yep, but again I think I need to display a smarter HUD hint: Hold LMB to create a link. 6: Not a big deal, but maybe the repair beam should gimble? it feels supper awkward with the beam locked and the curser moving all over while flying. Yep I wanted to fix this. 6: landing pad enter direction needs to be adjusted, trying to auto land on it is a mess. Well if you could tell me what happened in your case? In that direction the landing procedure will be much easier as the ship doesnt need to rotate. It is fine for me (but I had to change plenty of things in the landing logic to get there)

Thanks!

[tsunamayo]

@tsunamayo I think the logic field will get adopted by builders as a design aide as it can set out spaces without interfering with the build process. Might it be possible to have a toggle in the debug menu to keep them visible when a different item is selected?

@cloudrambler well I am not sure what you want to achieve with it. Is it for decoration?

[cloudrambler]

@tsunamayo I think the logic field will get adopted by builders as a design aide as it can set out spaces without interfering with the build process. Might it be possible to have a toggle in the debug menu to keep them visible when a different item is selected?

@cloudrambler well I am not sure what you want to achieve with it. Is it for decoration?

@tsunamayo I think the logic field would be useful for defining dimension planes, so that we can build up to certain proportions. So you decide how big to make a ship, get the grid centre correct, then place a logic field to define the limits to build within. At present I do that with sacrificial blocks that get deleted after, but I don't like doing that as I still remember all the bugs associated with incomplete block deletion and invisible blocks.

Maybe I'm trying to solve the wrong problem. It would be useful to know if there are any residual problems with block deletion, as it was a major headache before and it just sort of went away quietly. In other words, is it truly safe to spam loads of blocks and then delete them again, without burdening the game with extra file size to handle, or causing anomalies that ruin your ship.

[tsunamayo]

@Kaiser-Indrasil Okay I finally fixed the lag - it was a bug happening during NPC combat. It was always there to some extent, but since the station update we have a lot more bricks in memory so the lag have gotten a lot worse. thx