Tutorial

[danoconnor]

This game should have a tutorial when the user plays for the first time. Currently it is not clear what the power-ups do without having someone familiar with the game explain.

I'm open to suggestions, but I think the tutorial should just be examples of when to use each power-up, with no player interaction. For example, the player would see some text that says "Use Discharge when you're going too fast!". The player would then watch an automated version of the robot running too close to the front barrier and use Discharge to slow down. Then they would see similar examples for Shoot and Overcharge before they were given a chance to actually play the game. We could add a "skip tutorial" button for players who have experience with the game.

Feel free to comment on this thread if you have thoughts on how the tutorial should look.

[SamLeonard93]

+1

Sent from my iPhone

On Apr 28, 2015, at 12:36 PM, danoconnor notifications@github.com wrote:

This game should have a tutorial when the user plays for the first time. Currently it is not clear what the power-ups do without having someone familiar with the game explain.

I'm open to suggestions, but I think the tutorial should just be examples of when to use each power-up, with no player interaction. For example, the player would see some text that says "Use Discharge when you're going too fast!". The player would then watch an automated version of the robot running too close to the front barrier and use Discharge to slow down. Then they would see similar examples for Shoot and Overcharge before they were given a chance to actually play the game. We could add a "skip tutorial" button for players who have experience with the game.

Feel free to comment on this thread if you have thoughts on how the tutorial should look.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[tws2xa]

That seems like it could work. I thought it may also work to have a "How to Play" button in the menu which cuts to a tutorial.

While I think it would be preferable to have the player actually perform the actions, it may not really be feasible. We could easily do Jump (have the right half of the screen light up and say "Tap to Jump or Double Jump" or something). The description of Charge and the individual powerups would be more tricky. Basically, we'd have to pre-build a tutorial level and have triggers which pause the game, display some kind of text, and wait for the user to perform the appropriate action (swipe for powerups, or press a button if no action is needed) before unpausing the game. I think it could be do-able, but the automated version may be easier.

[danoconnor]

Ok, I'm gonna start work on this and try to make it so that the player performs the actions themselves.

Since we won't be meeting much in person from here on out, I guess the best way to organize things is to assign yourself to an issue that you're currently working on to let everyone know what you're doing. That way we don't have two people doing the same work.

If someone has already started working on the tutorial, assign yourself instead and I'll go work on something else.

[tws2xa]

Sounds good. Sorry I won't be of much use while I'm still focusing on finals... hopefully I can kick into gear after them, though. Do you have much of a plan in place for how you're going to do the tutorial? I had a thought or two on how it could be done, but they're not very well put together.

[tws2xa]

I think we may want an option so the user can exit the tutorial at any time, so if they accidentally launch it they don't have to go all the way through it again.

[danoconnor]

Good point, I'll add it over the next couple days.