Reworking our Demo Approach

[Mark_Everson]

We definitely aren't getting the interest we really need in the demos from the general public, and even team members... This is clearly a Big problem, since without feedback we run the risk of blowing it Badly in one or more ways. Recently the issue of the complexity of the demo guis, and the learning curve in general has come up. It was the feeling of many that this is overwhelming people who are interested in playtesting. I didn't see that because I'm too close to things, and mostly understand all the models. A case of "small gaming company syndrome"

One reason we as a project actively solicit feedback is so we can Act upon it, before its too late! This is a proposal to radically change the demo approach to make it easy to learn in small bites what is going on in Clash.

I’ve worked out with Gary a proposal for a sequence of targeted introductory scenarios with things stripped down to make it a bit more comprehensible. (Plutarck also suggested this in the “Everybody Plays” thread.) The idea is that the player will only need to handle a few new things at each level of the tutorials. It will also constrain Gary’s coding more to one new thing at a time, as he would prefer. All the work that Gary has put into the xml initialization files for scenarios is a good enabler for this approach. There will also be room for others to create more advanced scenarios while we focus on the tutorial ones. More on this below.

Essentially this proposal takes much of the previous Planning for Demos 7 & 8, but reprioritizes items so that we can get in something like four or five steps a sequence of easily digestible scenarios. These will guide a new player through the basics (Obviously if that number turns out not to be on balance easily-digestible, we'll slow down.)

Each of these should teach people how to use the appropriate user interfaces. Game events are also an important part of making the tutorial scenarios more accessible.

Events should be based around objectives of the type we’re using in the AI plan. We would test the AI by running it computer only and see how it goes. One thing these objectives could do is, when achieved, come up with a message like "Good, now try this...". Closer organizational ties between the manual, online help system, and the tutorial “ladder” are also part of this approach.

A further goal would be to get each game aspect and its gui going properly, and maintenance-free, before racing off into new things (which has been my personal preference up to now ).


Now some details

The idea is that we focus for the next series of demos on an expanded Dawn scenario. So that's the only one I'll talk about here. This is the one that will best give a ladder of clash tutorials, and demonstrate the models I'm keen to show, though at a more deliberate and measured pace. So here is my and Gary’s first shot at it.

Tutorial Scenario 1

Start with a fixed map and settlers a la Civ as the focus. Here we will hit the first two “X”s in 4x, Explore and expand.

1. Generate the map, which we can already do no problem.

2a. Make the Clash equivalent of a settler unit and WarriorBand, explore then settle. There will be no “units” other than these two. Since there are no opponents, the warrior bands are only used for exploration.

3. Expansion - we need rules for this, but we can use simple versions of the stuff we're talking about in the Expansion thread. For the purposes of this demo the “people-everywhere” rule I have mentioned before will not apply.

4. Economy - At this point you have a cutting-edge stone age economy with advanced carrot-synthesis methods. I think we should mostly stick to "building" the two units. Also players could use a limited economic gui to build just a few other things, like farms (farm kapital) or increase production (production kapital). One possibility is to limit the player to civ-wide orders to cut down on the confusion factor. For this we will need the capability to let scenarios enable and disable game features. My inclination is to have one special such as gold in the economy to give players some unique squares to try and exploit.

That is it for Scenario 1. The player learns to settle land as in Civ and numerous other games, gets to explore, and expand a bit, guided by the help system. The player learns how to move units, and works a stripped-down economic system gui. I am not sure if there’s a point to having victory objectives for this. Since once people figure the basics out there isn’t much stimulation in going further. But we could make a simple easy-to-achieve target like getting your civ to 300,000 people.

Is this a good amount for the demo? Too much? Not enough?


Tutorial Scenario 2 -- Barbarian Horde!

Here the focus is on introducing technology, military units, and battles. Here we will hit the other two “X”s in 4x, exploit and exterminate. But the issue here is to Avoid being exterminated. The scenario ends with a massive barbarian invasion that must be repelled to win.

5. Tech allows the economy to grow thru enlarging the carrying capacities and production of a given plot of land. Tech advances would allow for building of more advanced units with higher effectiveness. Using both of these in a non-trivial manner will be critical to winning the scenario. For this we basically need the tech functionality described in the D7&8 planning thread (tech gui elements, interconnects with military and economy and the base model, which is already coded).

6. As new unit types become available the player will learn to form functional task forces with them. Ideally some advantage to a combined-arms approach can be demonstrated. Obsolete units will disappear from the build list and new ones become available. Low-level barbarian raids throughout the scenario will keep the player engaged.

Why barbarians? They require basically no AI that isn’t already there, and give a reason for the player to Really use military units. At the start barbs could have a bit of a tech edge, but eventually the player's higher-tech units would give the player a clear edge. We don’t want to move in the direction of the real long-term AI until we are ready to take it on in one focused shot.

7. The economic and other aspects that will be introduced are road building (important for mobilizing troops when the final onslaught comes), Army Supplies which will stop the barbs dead at a certain point unless they capture cities to exploit, and building a variety of units (but more limited than in previous demos).

That is scenario 2.


For scenario 3 there are two alternatives, I will show them a 3, and 4 here, but they could be the other way around. We can pick the one that seems best as we approach that milestone. Listed as 3 here is the one that seems slightly better to me to go first.

Tutorial Scenario 3 -- Internal and External Threats

The purpose of this scenario is to introduce the government model, and ethnicity in the social model to the player. The player will have to master these to hold on at the end. The internal threats are from riots of captured peoples of other ethnic groups, The external threat is, as before, a massive barb invasion at the end.

8. Much of the government and social model will be needed for this. The player’s power to tax will be limited by the governmental setup. The properties of the government will also affect technological and economic growth. Deciding how to balance these issues, and the ethnic-based and other riots mentioned below will be the key to winning.

9. In addition to the player there will be either inert civs, that just sit there to be conquered, or we could make them minor civs per the current Expansion discussion. In either case the purpose of these in this scenario is to provide the player with conquered peoples that need to be administered. The reason is that Discrimination-Based riots are relatively straightforward to implement, and provide the player with a reason to engage in internal power struggles using the govt. model. The short version of this challenge is that there is a strong religious power block in the civ that is intolerant, and the player can only reduce overt discrimination by using the governmental apparatus. Trying to wrest away power from the strong religious political block is one way to prevent extreme oppression of the conquered peoples, which causes them to riot and/or revolt.

10. As before a barb invasion will come at the end. Whether the conquered peoples fight for the player, or the invaders is based on previous player actions. (If this comes after the one called Scenario 4 below then the end would be a battle with a civ as opposed to barbs.)

Tutorial Scenario 4 -- Clash at the Dawn of History

This scenario will introduce dealing with other civilizations to the player. It will use a simple diplomatic approach that does not involve the player greatly. The main goal is to expand and either hold at bay, or conquer other civs per the player’s preference. This will be the first scenario with the new AI, and that is the main selling point. However all the balancing and decisions that the player needed to make in the previous scenarios is expected to be needed with a vengeance here!

11. Several other small civs are placed so they're not too close.

12. When you run into other civs, a permanent diplomatic status is randomly generated. My notion is to have it weighted toward peace for now. If the player should attack an enemy then the status changes to war automatically and stays that way forever. Or perhaps a 20-turn or so lull in the fighting could automatically change it back to peace?

13. AI for grand strategy, expansion, military etc. will be used by the computer players.
This will be a proper AI, completely unlike what has gone before.

14. Victory could be military/economic. If at any point you have 4/5 of both the military and economic power on the board, you win, although there would be an option for you to continue playing anyway. Or alternatively there could be other objectives.


Tutorial Scenario 5 -- The Dawn of History – Complete Scenario

In this one, we’ll include diplomacy, and the first diplomatic interface. At this point we will have a relatively complete game that can be played, and should be quite challenging. I am not going to go into details on this one, since it is quite a ways off, and I want to find out first if there is general buy-in to this approach.

Some features: Diplomacy, random map (first version), military improvements, and whatever else we feel is appropriate. This can be drawn out over several demos, depending on the complexity. We could wind up with a whole game variant called "Dawn of Civilization, the Prelude to Clash of Civilizations" or some such.



Other items

We would like to enlist people (Plutarck seems a good example) to make cutting-edge scenarios for those who have already made it up the ropes. It would take some off Gary’s plate, and others would have more time to spend on the scenarios also. So, speak up if you’re interested in the job!


So what do you think? Does this plan for tutorial demos sound right or wrong? I would like to hear comments first on the overall plan, rather than getting into specific details of what should go into what tutorial demo. There will be Plenty of time for those discussions later. If you want to post a completely different approach, now is the time also, since if we get agreement to this plan, we’re going to start in on it more-or-less immediately.

[sas]

First of all This is great !

Mark and Gary, your way of thinking is spot on what I feel is lacking. In my very short review of Demo 6 I commented that the game didn't feel like a game yet. And yes, I think for some of the "oldies" here, there is a great danger of the "small gaming company syndrome".

By making this tutorial, you will help the new player into the game. Frankly, starting up Clash for the first time, I felt the lack of guidance sadly lacking. So this is definitely the way to go

The gradual increase in difficulty looks about right to me.

What kind of diplomacy model do we have right now ? perhaps I will have to check the forum for answers to that.

So what can I do to help?

1. New units

2. How about a nice picture once you finish a lesson ? '

3. Diplomacy modelling if it isn't made yet. This is in my view critical for making the game better.

4. Ideas for scenarios. I'm a history buff, so I know lots of potential good historical scenarios.



-Stian-

[Plutarck]

Sounds good to me


The main problem with the economy, upon looking at it, is mostly just not knowing what each of the categories mean. The use of the word "kapital" totally threw me off, as I still have absolutely no clue what it means. I suspect others may be thrown for a loop there too.

Other than just being too many categories that you can invest in from the begining, without having any idea how much you should be putting in each (if any), and too many boxes for each (haven't a clue what ROI vs the other box means...), I think the underlying economic model should work just fine - probably without modification, for now.

Those are the main stumbling blocks (along with having no Help function, or where you can right-click on an item and choose to have a more detailed explanation of what the heck that item actually Is) underlying the system.


My days have just been flying by for some reason. It's creaping the hell out of me, because it seems that as soon as I've woken up it's time to go to sleep to get up for work - or just because it's sleepytime. Been like that for at least a week...sheesh. Guess I need to get started more with Clash.

Nothing like work to slow your day down (in a good way, of course)



I've got my hooks into the GUI enough so that my layout will show up in the game just fine, just gotta hook up the actual button events.

If I can get crackin' I could probably have a tidied-up GUI (just dealing with the gameplay windows, since I have no problem with the earlier stuff) ready to go before scenario/tutorial stuff is ready to be worked on. Purely Aesthetic and Convenience based, but with a more intuitive feel it could be easier to navigate.


Now, scenario-specific comments:

Scen1:

A good way to stip down the economy is treat all items as something to be built, and allow each to be enabled/disabled by the scenario.

So you wouldn't have to add any special functionality that wouldn't be used in scenarios normally.


Dunno about the population amount idea. Probably just something to tweak once we actually have it available for Play, if a victory condition will even be needed.


Scen2: Rather than using a barbarian invasion, instead there might be an AI city with some units in it. The mission is to take that town for your own.

To do that you'll need to build units and develop technology, as they are technologically superior and better armed to begin with. But they won't attack you, so the player can't really fail. If his attacks are repelled he'll just build up his forces and attack again.

Save avoiding extermination for later...although, perhaps some barbarian attacks wouldn't be bad (nothing crushing), but save the major one for next.


Scen3: Sounds good, I like it. Consequences of ruler actions...nice.


Scen4&5: All sounding good to me



What can I say, but I agree that this is the right direction to be going in

[LDiCesare]

I am all for tutorial scenarios.

However, I believe Tutorial scenario 1 is not good because it is a bit too simplistic, and won't teach many useful things for later in the game. It should have a goal in terms of exploration, like Colonization:
-Explore land and find 3 specials, then build up a population of XXX, then send one of your units to square x,y where a rich village is rumoured to be, and conquer it (i.e. move 2 units there if there is one defending unit).
By using events and intermediary goals, we make a free-flowing, goal-less scenario something more interesting through interaction. This needs events checking, but it is trivial to do and (almost?) all scenarios use events at some point. It is also a selling point for modders, and gives the player the sense of achieving something (note that if the goal was just to reach 300,000 pop, you could tell him "good you reached 100,000" and repeat at 200,000, but it wouldn't be as funny).
Note that for this scenario, economy should allow for production kapital and unit building only.

The other scenarios sound good, but I think the first scenario should be longer, for example:
1)Have a brand-new civ, with some population and an explorer unit.
Goal 1) Uncover 20(?) squares of the map around starting city. At that time, we can prompt the player for a square for expansion of population.
2)The player has 2 cities now, and knows how to move units. Ask them to find some special resources, or tell them they have if they were within explored squares.
Goal 2)Find resources. Introcudes specials into the game, prepare for merchants.
3)Now the player has a thriving economy, they can start building things:
Having specials, we suppose say tin and gold, the player will have the choice to put their cash in tin/gold mining, production or military units. This shows econ orders. The model shouldn't be unveiled fully here, leave that for scenario 3, but the player get to know the interface, and can build units for phase 4.
Goal 3)Get a merchant generating some revenue through the specials.
4)Inform the player of the existence of a far away land, with which trade would be a good thing: The player must explore the land to find it.
Goal 4)Find an existing city on the map.
5)Merchants could set up a trade route automatically to that city, and the player would learn it.
Goal 5)Have a trade between player civ and ai city.
6)The city appears to be inhabited by thieves and the merchants ask that the player intervene strongly and impose their jsut law unto the city. Teach how to stack units in a TF.
Goal 6)Invade the city.

Note that steps 3 and 5 are not needed, but since they require little management from the player and allow the player to understand what specials are for, they can be useful, particularly considering the only thing to explore in phase 2 is specials (beyond admiring the landscape of course).

[Mark_Everson]

Thanks all, I'm glad to see the generally-favorable reception. The idea felt right... I feel pretty crappy now, so my responses will be brief.

sas:

The diplomacy model is now up for grabs since Mikael had to pull out due to a patch of too much RL. You should be able to find the latest thread if you dig back a ways. Or alternatively start by looking at the "current thread" link on the Diplomacy web page and move forward.

Plutarck:

I think your comments are generally good. If you are going to do anything beyond bug fixes, and just shuffling around gui elements, you really should speak to Gary. Also it might be a good idea to post on the forum as to what exactly you are doing because it might collide with others' plans. We have few enough people working that we must avoid wasting effort.

Laurent:

I'm going to hold off a bit on your comments, so we can first get a few more opinions on whether this is the right way to go in General. Though from the responses so far it seems it is.

Cya,

Mark

[Richard Bruns]

I agree. Here's a copy of what I wrote earlier for more details of what I would like. Instead of starting really simple, another option os to open a full scenario and only ask the player to change a little at a time:

I think we desperately need a tutorial. When I opened up Clash I was confused. Even though I read the manual beforehand, I was confused. Despite the fact that I've been on the team for upwards of two years, I didn't know what to do. Mostly this was due to the fact that I have not been heavily involved with the military and econ models, the two main things the demo has.

The current trend nowadays in games is to open the game up and start playing. This is especially the case with demos. None of the professional demos I download have ever come with manuals. They come with a tutorial/walkthrough scenario with some advisor telling me what to do.

This system works. It works well. People expect it. We don't have it. I think that may be a big reason that people who try thr demo walk off confused.

I vote that all manual writing efforts be devoted entirely to creating a walkthrough scenario. Vets don't need a manual and if the walkthrough is good newbies won't either.

Someone would open the game, choose a scenario, and see: Tutorial: Romans. They'd click on it and a popup window would come up, introducing an advisor. Give him a name, like Proconsul Marcus. This advisor tells the player what the game is, what the missions are, and what to click to accomplish it.

He should probably start by introducing the economy, explaining civ orders and square orders. (These should probably be renamed to "city orders" for now.) He would tell the player what all the boxes mean and how to read them. He would direct the player to do something like increase kapital production.

When the game detected that the player did so, Marcus would tell the player how to build a road. The game then checks for completion of that before having the next tutorial come up.

Then the advisor would tell the player how to make units and how to move them around. He would guide the player, step by step, through the capture of a neutral city. Obviously this would require a premade map and not a random one. A real map of central italy, like the one in demo 4, would be great.

At that point the player should know the basics and could finish the scenario. I guarantee that if this is implemented in even a miminal fashion, people would be a lot more impressed with the game and will stick around to make comments.

[Gary Thomas]

I want to grab a tiny bit of glory here. Essentially, what has made this possible is the xml based scenarios. Instead of taking a week of intricate coding to produce a scenario, it is now possible to get the basics done in a fairly short time. It is also possible to copy and modify the scenario files.

There is still a way to go, though. We don't have events yet (you know: "Congratulations! You have found the Spitzenhauer Bird. Now, for your next challenge..."). But I do rather hope they are not far off.

We don't have symbols for resources. Hell, we don't even know what resources we will use.

However, for the first time I am beginning to suspect that that light at the end of the tunnel is not actually the oncoming Express...

Cheers

[Gary Thomas]

The point I meant to make in my last post (and forgot) is that we can have lots and lots and lots of scenarios, and keep the best ones, building up a tutorail sequence. So there is no problem, Laurent, with having a very simple first scenario - them as doesn't like it can skip to the next one.

Cheers

[LDiCesare]

I think the first scenario is very important. People, if they see an uninteresting first scenario won't necessarily look at what's next. They will probably skip it. When I download a scenario for civ2, or a set of, I usually give it one try and then stop if I am not hooked. If we propose many tutorials, I am afraid it will turn people away. We need one tutorial, then a simple scenario, and a complex scenario. I think we should limit the number of introduction scenarios to 3 for learners. Here we have many scenarios. I think they should be merged and follow one another through events: When you finish phase 1, you go on with phase 2. Or we could provide a campaign-like set of scenarios.
As for plugging events, the code is trivial if we can describe the events in a xml or java form. Remember the code I plugged to show how it could work? An Action could be either a java class or a generic class that reads a xml file or set of tags. Look at the thread I opened on events and scenarios for ideas on the syntax of events.

[Plutarck]

I think individual scenarios is the way to go, but they needn't be in an ordered fashion. The way Age of Empires and Empire Earth does it seems just right (except you shouldn't have to do them in order).

Basically you click the Tutorial button, then there is a list of "scenarios", such as "Getting Started", "Your First Settlement", "Going to War", "Gossiping with the Neighbors", "Hostile Natives", "Don't Drink the Water", whatever.

The first few are near-idiot simple, often explaining the difference in various ways to "click". But that's only for the first 1 or 2, then each scenario after explains different parts of the game.

So if you understood how to play the game but didn't really understand how Technology works, you could play through the Research and Technology tutorial. The scenarios don't even have to be related to each other.

Thus when something gets added a new tutorial scenario could come along with it. Otherwise if something was changed/added you'd have to go through the whole stinkin' scenario. And nothing is more annoying, to me at least, then trying to get started with the game and spend 10 minutes having the game explain the nuances of Something You Already Know.



But what I think could make everyone happy is, once the little incremental stuff is done (like working out bugs and getting the various tutorials), is to make a Quick Start tutorial, like Laurent was speaking of.

This would be what every person should be pointed to, and if they want to learn more or get more detailed stuff they could use the more detailed and specific tutorial scenarios.

It wouldn't be real detailed on each subject, but it would give you the general idea and allow you to start playing immediately - learning the more indepth stuff after you're hooked.


Seems like the best of both worlds, and from what Gary is saying (gloating), it sounds like putting the tutorials together won't be at all difficult!

Events can probably wait a little, but a real simple xml implementation would probably be sufficient for quite a while.

A huge amount can be done without events entirely, and just a few extremely basic events (even just changing the current "Mission" or "Sub-Mission" of the scenario, and the ability to prompt the user with a message, and thus be able to "Win" or "Loose" the scenario with just those 2) can go a very long way.

Trying to figure out the best way to do events in the long-term would probably take more time then it's worth, and a simple short-term implementation would suffice to allow a lot of work to be done. Thus allowing for a later "Drop-in" solution for more complex and powerful events.

[Mark_Everson]

So there seems to me to be varying opinions that can be satisfied by having both a QuickStart Tutorial Scenario, and Also more targetted ones as Plutarck Suggests. As the Dawn sequence gets filled in, it could be the QuickStart one, and pieces of it and/or unrelated scenarios could be the deep-dive ones.

Is everyone more or less happy with that?

I personally am in favor of the tack Plutarck suggested of having the tutorial bits just be simple html pop-ups, basically of re-done manual fragments. That way progress on implementing the tutorials isn't completely at the mercy of the events system. But we can start using an events system to supplement the tutorials as soon as its available.

What do people think of this approach?

[axi]

...but RL is a *****...

I agree with Laurent on this issue. One tutorial detecting the player's progress and updating the missions, unlocking game models as it goes is perfect; that is IF you can make the needed code in time. If such a capability is unattainable for the next demo then let's do 3 different scenarios, for which I propose the following:

1. Dawn of Civilization: Nondescript map. Player controls only 1 tile (or 1 small province) with no possibility to expand. No government, no diplomacy, no merchants, no technology. Has to explore the map and find special resource sites and the cities of passive civs, by building and moving units (only warriors, horsemen and transp.ship available), even across water. At the same time he has to attain an economic goal (such as doubling production or doubling population) by investment on the 3 kapitals (farm, production and services) while keeping out of red in the budget. This can be played by more experienced players as a challenge for best completion time.

2. The Rise of Rome: Uses a map of Italy. Player controls one province (Latium) with one Roman (Dodecatheist) and the map is filled with barbarian tribes which do raids. Southern tribes contain Greek (Dodecatheist) and Carthaginian (worshippers of Bhaal) EGs and are advanced in tech (they may contain military units), while northern tribes are of 2-3 Italian (worshippers of WarGod) EGs and are low tech but are more aggressive and have more internal mil power. Player has to conquer 80% of their combined land (even across water: Sardenia, Corsica, Sicily), by building units that advance in tech (up to phalanx and trireme) and forming TFs. Provinces are static even when they change hands. Player can build roads. Economy works in full and there is use of a couple of resources for production bonuses only. No diplomacy, no merchants, no migration. Existing social classes are Patricii, Plebei, Military, Religious, Bureaucratic and of course minorities and slaves, who don't have a say in the govt, but have PAFs. Ideologies are Republic and Oligarchy initially (with current close to Republic) As Rome expands and more EGs get incorporated, the ruler needs more power and less discrimination to keep them at bay. This means political struggle against the plebei and if the non-dodecatheist EGs are riotous, suppression of the religious PB. In this scenario the player is not really threatened and can muster the control of his civ before going off to conquest.

3. Deleda Carthago: Uses a map of the central mediterranean, like the one in demo4. Here diplomacy (whatever we will have coded until then, but at least war/peace) and merchants are enabled, internal migration is enabled too. Units are up to legions, elephants, catapults and quintiremes. Resources give both production bonuses and can be traded. Provinces are set as before. The AI civs are Carthage which is more aggressive, has strong naval power and high commerce but not much expansion space and Macedonia which is mpore passive, richer and has more and better lebensraum. Civs have to conquer a province before their EG can migrate to it and there is an EG of the owning civ automatically created after conquest (agressive expansion). EGs more or less as before, but more as there will be more tribes on the map.
The political situation in Rome will be the same as before, but at some point (either once x% of land is conquered or by using RPs from wars and conquest) a new ideology will be introduced: Principium, based on the political situation of the late Roman Republic where there were 1-3 powerful generals that held power with the help of their armies (increased rulerpp and armypp, decreased peoplepp, increased foreign policies) is discovered. Principium will help give the needed power for more conquests and it's success will be based on the "glory" the Roman generals get from each conquest (increasing it's ideologic spreading). In the other two civs, if we make them playable, then the main ideologies should be despotism and oligarchy and later republic for Carthage, where the main issue will be war fatigue and popular unrest but the situation will be quite straightforward. In Macedonia we will have monarchy, oligarchy and democracy and the main issue is to reunite Greece (tribes culturally close or identical). This will mean that either a shift away of monarchy will be needed, or a more despotic regime mimicking the events in Rome. Macedonian goals are to protect their lands from the Romans (chiefly Illyria) and their trade from the Carthaginians and play as the wildcard in the enmity of the other two.

That's my take on the subject. We could complete a whole Rome campaign in the future, by adding a "Caesar" scenario (conquest of Greece and Gaul and Roman civil wars featuring characters & dynasties and coups & civil wars), a "Pax Romana" scenario (conquering the rest of the civilised world, colonising it, culturally assimilating it + the rise of christianity & it's persecution, the tetrarchy and the whole conflict where the player has to decide anmong christian or pagan) and a "Fall of the Roman Empire" scenario (featuring nomads, nomadic civs and external migration, where you are either East Roman Empire or West Roman Empire or a Goth nomadic civ).

I would prefer it if ancient Greece were the basis of the Clash scenarios instead of Rome, but I have to admit that Rome is exemplary for the job. Plus the map of Greece is rather difficult to create without huge errors. I would rather wait for the diplomacy and merchant models to come into full strength before attempting a Greek scenario.

[roquijad]

Tutorials are an excellent idea! This plan for demos sounds great. (I prefer Mark's than Axi's)

More comments:
1) I agree the first scenario could be a little more complex. Just give the player the ability to build units, found more than one city and connect them with roads.
2) I feel the civ->province->city approach has to be more explicitly shown in demos. In early scenarios you have only city orders. In a later scenario you learn there're things called provinces and that you can give orders to them. We have to show people there're different levels of management (civ, province, city) more explicitly.
3) I like the idea of having an scenario focused on barbarians and others on ai civs.
4) I strongly believe tutorials and on-line help should be developed together. The advisor helps you understand what you should do and learn in the scenario, but at the same time you can explore game elements with a help-click. That way the advisor won't bore you with lots of stuff you may know already.

[Gary Thomas]

Sorry Axi, but there is about a year's coding work in your plan, and it is unattainable in the immediate future (think about implementing code to have the AI decide to load troops onto a boat and send them to Africa).

The whole essence of the new scenario plan is that it should be incremental. If the the first scenarios are simplistic, at least they will exist. As more of the program gets written they will become more sophistcated. So there is not only a player learning curve, there is a coder writing curve involved here.

The real point is that each step should provide a real improvement in game capabilities. We tried going the whole hog, and we have to be realistic and appreciate that we are trying to do, with very limited resources, a project that would normally have about 20 full time coders, at least several full time artists, and we won't even discuss the architect, the program manager, and the numerous testers. Doing it the way we are, while cheap, is also slow. And trying to go too fast will just cause burnout.

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

BTW, I had a Very serious fever and came home from work, so if this isn't particularly coherent, please just ignore it. I think it makes sense, and so does the Elephant.

Gary: Cool Avatar! I'd noticed it before, but never remembered to remark upon it. Thanks for the clarifying post, I was about to do the same.

Axi: The old approach that I championed, where we do as many things as we can and move forward as quickly as possible, has pretty clearly failed. So, as Gary says, we're trying to regroup, and take more of a step-by-step approach where I won't drive Gary Quite as crazy . There are both coding and architecture constraints built into the plan he and I worked out, that I simply didn't mention. My omission, I should have said more about them. We will eventually have a decent QuickStart scenario, but it may be a few demos from now, once some of the code building blocks to support it are there. And of course, you can try designing your scenarios to match the ones you'd like. It Will work eventually. But the toolbox to exectute them, especially the AI, doesn't exist yet. The AI to handle a Barbarian Horde Does exist, and that is why the first scenarios in the proposal lean heavily that way.

Part of this new approach will be thinking about better-quality gui elements to go with the new model stuff that gets coded, especially for the economy one that I threw together myself that has ended up confusing and/or intimidating a lot of people.


Everyone:

Thanks for all the good comments and ideas. To move things along, I need to ask if there are any major dissents with the basic plan. We will do what we can to make a QuickStart scenario with what we have, as soon as its practical. IF we judge that the Best we can do will bore people, we can simply not announce that demo level beyond the team. It will still be of use in educating team members, who will presumably be more charitable than the general public. What do you think?

-Mark

[axi]

Or have I misunderstood something?

Weren't we talking about the far future? Anyway, the scenario plan I've made is for when we will have the basic game functionalities available, which are military, economy, infrastucture, merchants, technology, diplomacy, government, riots and AI. I thought only diplomacy, riots and AI haven't been coded yet and that they are going to be coded (at least partly) before demo 7. If this isn't the case, well then at least the first two scenarios are possible.

I am not urging anybody to go fast. Code as much as you can, whenever you can. And of course I am not the one who will tell anybody what to do. Specially since I haven't been the most helpful of the team. There are lots of issues open for discussion lately and I admit that RL has not let me keep up with all of them, that is carefully examine other's ideas, ponder on them and post my own. I haven't even done anything worthwhile with the testbed. I'm sorry.

I feel that Clash, although it has progressed, it hasn't reached maturity yet. This is not a reason to revise our tactics. This is a reason to work to mature it. We cannot judge the game with basic stuff missing from it.

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Axi:

Originally posted by axi
Have I been misunderstood?
Or have I misunderstood something?

Probably some of each.

Weren't we talking about the far future?

I was talking about a set of well-defined stepping-stones from where we are now, to the moderately far future. The character that your proposal lacks IMO is that going from scenario 1 to 2 there is addition of a lot of things that either don't exist at all (AI, Ship Boarding), or are in a somewhat primitive state (Govt Model, tech...). Whereas the progression I outlined adds basically one thing at a time. By my old definitions the models you are using in scenario 2 were "good enough" to see what people thought. Well, unfortunately, nobody is giving their thoughts except you and one or two others.

Anyway, the scenario plan I've made is for when we will have the basic game functionalities available, which are military, economy, infrastucture, merchants, technology, diplomacy, government, riots and AI. I thought only diplomacy, riots and AI haven't been coded yet and that they are going to be coded (at least partly) before demo 7. If this isn't the case, well then at least the first two scenarios are possible.

Many of the things that are "coded already" are not well-refined, have no or poor gui elements etc. The use of such things, in FE the econ model, seem to be preventing us from getting useful comments on the game models from the general public, and frequently even team members. Even more important than having things coded is to have them validated as fun from more than the few of us in the "small gaming company". This lack of interest is what I took as a sign to slow down, and consider doing things a bit differently. That was the overall purpose of this thread. With you as perhaps an exception, everyone seems to agree the current plan was somewhat misguided, if not completely broken.

I feel that Clash, although it has progressed, it hasn't reached maturity yet. This is not a reason to revise our tactics. This is a reason to work to mature it. We cannot judge the game with basic stuff missing from it.

Well, all I can say is that IMO without broader feedback, we're in big potential trouble, and that's why I thought it was time to revise our tactics a bit.

Cya,

Mark

[Gary Thomas]

There is also my input, which tends to be do it small, do it right, then take the next step, rather than a whole lot of things that don't work. You eventually get there with my method, though it might take time. Going the other way, you give up in despair before you arrive.

Axi, there is certainly nothing wrong with your plan as an eventual goal, and I believe we will work towards something like it. But, realistically, and being realistic is quite painful, that is around two to three years away. And we have to keep people's interest up in the meantime. Hence the proposed mini scenarios.

Cheers

[axi]

Let's focus on economy, population, the GUI and AI before functionally adding more models into the game. That is if I haven't misunderstood you again. There are several proposals about economy and the GUI in the D6 thread which could be worked on.

Ship boarding should be a functionality added now, at least for the player, so that we have enough time to refine it. What have we made the coasts for, if we aren't going to use ships. Boarding AI can wait.

[Gary Thomas]

Ship boarding should be a functionality added now, at least for the player, so that we have enough time to refine it. What have we made the coasts for, if we aren't going to use ships. Boarding AI can wait.

While I do not disagree with this, it does mean that computer directed civilizations cannot use boats. The scenario should be designed around this.

One of the things that is presently available, though not used in the existing scenarios, is the possibility of restricting the player to a subset of the civilizations in the game. There is a flag called "selectable" when it asks the player to select a civilization. So we could very easily set up unsymmetric scenarios (as in the tutorials for Age Of Empires, where you can only have one of the civilizations).

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Hi Gents:

The restricting civs the player can take idea certainly sounds good to me. Being able to have any number of capabilities that the AI doesn't support yet will be a big enabler for testing things as early as possible.

[Gary Thomas]

The xml file that defines the scenario just needs (in the &ltcivilization&gt section) a specification:

&ltselectable&gtfalse&lt/selectable&gt

Cheers

[Mark_Everson]

Seemed like a good time to bump this up, since we're trying to close in on D7!

[Dale]

Can I just make a suggestion? (BTW, thanks Mark for pointing out a "scenario" opportunity going )

To suck people into playing the scenarios through to learn the game so the full-on game is not so hard, a few rules need to be kept in perspective.

1. If it's boring, I'll EXIT.
2. If it assumes I'm stupid, I'll EXIT.
3. If it's too hard straight off, I'll EXIT.
4. If I have to make 30 clicks to finish a tute and start the next one, I'll EXIT.
5. If I just sit there, read and click once or twice a turn, I'll EXIT.
6. If I can't experiment in the tutes to see how things work, I'll EXIT.

Here's my suggestions:
1. Rise Of Rome is always the perfect tute choice as it provides depth, everyone knows briefly the history, it's easy to introduce it (1st battle, is with a particularly accepting region in Italy, proceeding through regions till you hit the Greeks, Carthages, Egyptians, Brits, etc).
2. I want to explore the game. Let me play with the economics (with limited help since I haven't been introduced to economics yet in the campaign) and starve my nation to death.
3. I want some decision in which direction I take (assumes I'm smart ). In battle one, you could either choose diplomatic takeover or conquest for example.
4. I won't learn if I don't lose. But I won't play if I get tromped!
5. I want my advisor feedback, even if he's telling me "I told you so!" when I starved everyone to death by stuffing around with in-depth economics in the first tute.

BTW, if you want some help writing scenarios/tutes let me know.

Dale

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Dale, thanks for the coments. We can clearly use 'em as things get further along. I'm not sure they apply to what we're doing right now completely though. What you're talking about are demos for finished games. FE we may violate your #5 especially in the Dawn scenario tutorial which is designed to be a slower-paced intro to the game as it exists now.

Right now I am the default guy to write the tutorial. If you'd like to take a shot at it, I'd be overjoyed. If so let me know. After you're familiar with D6 (means reading the dreaded manual ) we can set you up with a preview version of D7, and after you've kicked it around a bit, you could write up the tutorial. Scenarios are probably best left till D7 is further along, or maybe after D7. FE there is no map editor right now, and probably you'd want that going first.

[Dale]

Mark:

I've got a few ideas of a good tutorial campaign in mind (was going to use it for HOE actually).

Setting:
Ancient Egypt. At the time of the Sirian wars.

This can all be done on the one map, the one game.

Mission 1:
"Pharoh is marching through the Sinai at present and requires you to clear a critical pass of Sirians. You have 10 turns."
Objectives:
1. Move units to head of pass. (Introduce unit movement)
2. Explore the pass to find the two entrenched Sirian defenders. (Introduce exploring/scouting)
3. Kill the two entrenched Sirian defenders. (Introduce simple combat)

End mission 1: Pharoh appears with a number of units. Well done!

Mission 2:
"Pharoh's scouts have located a poorly defended frontier Sirian town to the east. He requires you to take this town so that a forward base of operations and supply can be setup. You have 5 turns."
Objectives:
1. Move units to the east. (Only needs to be a couple of squares)
2. Attack the town and capture it. (Introduce simple town warfare, no walls, one defender)

End mission 2: Pharoh appears again with his army and takes over the town.

Mission 3:
"Pharoh has given you some of his elite chariot units to use as scouts. He has heard rumours of rich gold/gem mines to the south. He wants you to find and secure them. You have 20 turns."
Objectives:
1. Move chariots (fast scouts basically) south to find the mountain range there. (Introduce advanced exploring)
2. Move your army (from missions 1 & 2 after being replenshed by Pharoh) south to secure the mountain range. (Introduce combined military actions)
3. Kill all the Sirian units in the mountain range. (Introduce ranged attacks with arrows and flanker chariots since the chariots are war chariots and archers)
4. Capture the mountain city from the Sirians. (Introduce sieges cuz this town has a wall!)

End mission: Pharoh congratulates you and sets you up as Governor of the city.

Mission 4:
"Pharoh has ordered you to begin supplying a stream of gold/gems to fund his new Pyramid. You must setup an economy based on moving 5 gold/gems per turn to Egypt. You have 40 turns. Pharoh's military advisor has warned you that the Sirians may counter-attack."
Objectives:
1. Setup an economy that isn't going backwards.
2. Setup mines for the gold/gems.
3. Setup a trade route back to Egypt for 5 gold/gems per turn.
4. Defend against the Sirian counter-attack.

End mission: Pharoh has ordered that you be known as a cousin to him. You have been promoted.

Mission 5:
"Pharoh has ordered you to capture 5 more Sirian cities in the region. You have 50 turns."
Objectives:
1. Produce a military unit.
2. Produce a barracks.
3. Explore further.
4. Produce an army.
5. Conquor 5 cities.

End mission: Pharoh loves you blah blah blah.

Mission 6:
"Pharoh has ordered you to conduct diplomacy with the Sirians and obtain their technology of metallurgy. You have 20 turns."
1. Conduct diplomacy with Sirians. Sue for peace.
2. Advisor tells you that the Sirians will not give metallurgy, but believes our technology of "whatever" will sway them. However we must finish researching it first.
3. Begin research of "whatever".
4. Sirians conduct diplomacy asking for trade route of ivory.
5. Pharoh wants silk from the Sirians. You conduct diplomacy with them.
6. Finish research of "whatever" and conduct diplomacy for tech trade.

End mission: Pharoh congratulates you and orders you home for a banquet in your honour. Campaign completed.

What do you think? Of course that's quick thinking and may have ideas not in Clash yet. But it's something.

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Dale:

I think its reasonably compelling! I don't think we should tear up the D7 plans, but something of this sort could probably be done for D8. That is aside from the things we don't have implemented yet, or where ya' guessed wrong on how it works in Clash

Lets see what the others think!

[Dale]

Mark:

Yeah I know. I'm gunna fiddle with demo 6 this afternoon. I'll find out where I went wrong eh? But if enough people like that sort of tutorial flow it's at least a base to work from.

[Mark_Everson]

Hey Dale:

"Went wrong"? Had you tried it before and couldn't get it to work? I couldn't remember... Anyway it will be good to get some comments on it!

[LDiCesare]

What I think is missing in the demo for such a tutorial:
Maybe some events checking (turns/"victory" condition/fate if failed to accomplish it)
City walls and siege.
Diplomacy.
Tech trading.
The warfare/building/trading part can probably be done right away. I could start thinking about/coding sieges or diplomacy, whichever people out here prefer (my current efforts at getting a war declaration when getting into neutral territory only resulted in frustration and unusable/boring/useless user interface so I might as well do something else).
Dale, if you can try to see if archers make any difference to you in D6 (D7 will have more feedback for them), I'd like to hear: Currently, combined arms exist in the code but may not be balanced and the feedback is rather poor :/